Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas => TI Z80 => Topic started by: jsj795 on January 04, 2010, 09:42:14 pm

Title: TI Starcraft???
Post by: jsj795 on January 04, 2010, 09:42:14 pm
I had an idea about starcraft for TI83+/84+/SE, using xLib. It will be Turn-based tho, and more like RPG tactics and such.
So each player starts with a base and 4 workers. When the worker is on the mineral or gas extractor, you have an option to 'mine' which will mine whatever price balancing requires. You can make a total of about 5 moves each turn, and once the unit moves/takes action, it cannot be used again. You may group up to 3 attacking units of same kind and move them around and attack as a group, and count as one action (workers can be grouped and moved around but only 1 will mine/build each action). Attacking happens like the usual RPG tactics, and the defending unit will be able to attack back if it is possible (within range). The building/unit will cap at around 30~50 for the memory sake.

I don't know, it's just an idea I got thinking about TLM's tactics battle,
http://ourl.ca/360950#lastPost (http://ourl.ca/360950#lastPost)
and will not work on it right at this moment, but what do you guys think?
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 05, 2010, 07:45:37 am
Mhmm that would be interesting. There's another SC game on Calcg.org using xLIB but I never really tried if it was any good:

http://calcg.org/cgi-bin/files.cgi?id=1123
http://calcg.org/cgi-bin/files.cgi?id=1155

And there were the two ASM projects, one in 2003 and one in 2007, but both authors stopped them :(
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: jsj795 on January 05, 2010, 09:45:49 am
yeah i played them before (the protoss one, anyway) and found a way to kill the computer all the time, so I stopped playing (the key was to build as many nexus and tech up to build reavers and mass them, with an observer or two.)
However, it would be awesome to get the sprites from their games... I guess I'll contact the author if I decide to do this project :/
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Hot_Dog on January 05, 2010, 10:43:13 am
You would be the perfect one to do it!
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Eeems on January 05, 2010, 11:21:28 am
You beat the ai?!?! Wow, props to you!
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: jsj795 on January 05, 2010, 11:26:44 am
yeah, after few trials and error, massing the nexus and probe for the resource and teching up fast to get a lot of reaver proved to be the invincible strategy. There's no need to build any cannons, and if you have excess money, building some zealots or dragoons helped in defense early in the game too.
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: simplethinker on January 05, 2010, 01:16:12 pm
Sounds like a good idea :)  The battle system sounds similar to Civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_%28video_game%29) (though each individual unit had a certain number of moves instead of the player having a set total number of moves), so you might want to look at that to see how they handled some things (I'm just guessing that, while programming, you might run into some situations that aren't straght-forward).
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 05, 2010, 07:39:27 pm
I would like better sprites than the xLIB SC game, tho. I like them, but they just don't look like Starcraft to me :/

I would go 16x16 for large buildings
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Builderboy on January 05, 2010, 07:41:44 pm
You should totally use my Isometric engine (^^,)
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 05, 2010, 07:52:01 pm
that could be an idea actually.  You would most likely need to explain to him how to use it, though, it seemed a bit complicated x.x
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Builderboy on January 05, 2010, 07:54:06 pm
Yeah, it works in a very unorthodox way to preserve speed.   But i think this would be a very good application for the engine.  :)
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 05, 2010, 07:55:16 pm
Is collision detection in your engine easy to handle? Sometimes, an engine may be very easy or small to use, like string-based tilemaps compared to matrices ones, but collision detection may slow down the engine a lot more than in matrices tilemaps
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Builderboy on January 05, 2010, 08:01:08 pm
It would actually be very fast, using only a single matrix access.  The only difficult part would be setting up the code to handle the offset variable.  The weirdest thing is that the cells relative to your cell are not constantly defined inside the matrix, they are dependent on your position.  (What i mean to say is that if you are at 1,1 inside the matrix, the cell below you graphically does not have any set offset inside the matrix :( )
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 05, 2010, 08:26:42 pm
do you mean like how if a matrix would be

111111
222222
333333
444444
555555
666666

Your map would look like
Code: [Select]
          1
        2   1
      3   2   1
    4   3   2   1
  5   4   3   2   1
6   5   4   3   2   1
  6   5   4   3   2
    6   5   4   3
      6   5   4
        6   5
          6

?

If that's the case, collision detection shouldn't be that hard. The only issue would be for key detection. You would need to assign different arrow keys or different arrow key combinations to each directions a character or cursor can move to
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Builderboy on January 05, 2010, 10:12:44 pm
That actually would be pretty easy, unfortunately, its a bit harder than that :(

Matrix:
[111111]
[222222]
[333333]
[444444]
[555555]
[666666]

Your map would look like:

Code: [Select]
1   1   1   1   1   1
  2   2   2   2   2   2
3   3   3   3   3   3
  4   4   4   4   4   4
5   5   5   5   5   5
  6   6   6   6   6   6

See what it does?  This was used to get speed from the xLib tilemapper, as each row could be mapped all at once.

(I never thought of using graphics to explain it, silly me :P)
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: JCW on January 05, 2010, 10:22:40 pm
Sounds pretty interesting.
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: ztrumpet on January 05, 2010, 10:49:18 pm
Oh, I see how yours works now Builderboy.  That's really cool.  I think Starcraft with that would be neat.
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Builderboy on January 05, 2010, 10:54:51 pm
;D It makes for strange collision tho :( Once its all set up and figured out it should be a bit easier tho, as it doesn't change for anything except row number.
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 06, 2010, 12:11:50 am
Oh wow I see now, this might make things harder x.x
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: willrandship on April 12, 2010, 10:08:39 pm
How about an actual Civilization II Clone? I only say two since it used an isometric map, otherwise they never seemed that different.

One thing that I think is a must: Support for Multiplayer!!!!!
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on April 12, 2010, 11:32:16 pm
KermMartian did a civilization isometric clone 6 years ago, but it was not intended for gaming. It was an experimental project to see if TI-BASIC could render such graphics. It looked pretty nice for a calc, but the controls are not that great and rendering is slow. It made front page news on ticalc.org. I suggested an ASM version back then but I don't think he felt like doing one. I wonder if when Axe Parser supports line(, if it could be ported to Axe Parser? I don't recall Civilization Simulation being large in file size. Here's the link:

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/10/104/104103.html

I would really like a SC clone, tho, but it must be very hard to do for a 84+...
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: code241 on May 09, 2010, 11:46:06 am
I think this guy was close to it but he hasn't posted anything in a while.  It's in TI BASIC.  http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/294/29460.html   Anyone want to help me?
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on May 09, 2010, 02:19:35 pm
wow didn't knew about that one, probably cuz he spelt the game title wrong (it's Starcraft, not Star Craft).

Unfortunately I never did strategy games, though, and TI-BASIC might have an hard time pulling a Starcraft game
Title: Re: TI Starcraft???
Post by: Stephan on May 10, 2010, 12:20:47 pm
okay, Starcraft on a TI Calculator would...be....EPIC!!!! Yay!!!! :D