I have quite a lot of experience at making 3d computer games, including several Real Time Strategy games. Here are a few shots of my last RTS in action:





Given that Vassal seems to be in the process of being shut down, I'm vaguely considering making a vassalesque program for playing Epic (and theoretically many other wargames) online. If I make it, it'll be in a full 3d engine rather than the 2d sprites of Vassal.

I've never actually used Vassal, but as I understand it, it provides a basic framework whereby you can place and move units around a map, and roll dice, and the players effectively provide the rules. Is this correct?

If I were to put such a program together, would there be much interest in using it?

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

That looks like a game I once worked on... heh.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

You worked on it for two weeks, I worked on it for years...

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Yeah but without me you'd just have guys running around in a void.

I agree that something pretty cool could be done with the DP Engine.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Nah, I knocked together a few test maps in a terrain generator.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I'm interested, but I'd be more interested on how you'd get past the GW Legal hurdles that Vassal tripped over.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

There will be absolutely no GW IP involved in the released engine. It will come with a built-in module for a generic "Battle Wars" game, but will also include detailed instuctions on how to make modules to play different games (which will be very easy to do).

If people then decide to share such modules around on forums such as this one, that's not my problem...

I've been thinking about how it'll be done, and the best idea I've come up with is basically a "virtual tabletop". There'll be a plain board and you'll be able to move and look around it, and there'll be four buttons at the top of the screen, each of which brings down a "box" full of objects.

One will have terrain, which can be simply placed wherever you like on the board.

The second will have units for your selected army, defined in the external module for the game. These will again be easily placable onto the tabletop from the box, and movable once on the tabletop. I'll make it so it displays the distance a unit moves (in cm or inches depending on module), so both players can see units are moving legal distances.

A third will have a selection of different coloured counters (for tracking shield, wounds, DC, blast markers, or whatever the needs of the game being played). These will be placed and moved similarly to the units.

The final one will open a box for rolling dice (visible to both players of course). I'll initially only have a selectable number of D6 to roll, but I can easily add other options later on.

Interface-wise it'll be as user-friendly as I can possibly make it.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

I'd certainly be interested - I played VASSAL and if you can make it more easy to use than that then you've got me sold.

It seems like an insane amount of work to me, but then I'd have thought the same of some of the other projects on this forum!

As for legal issues, VASSAL works on the same principle (it is only Vassal40K module that is being sat on by GW legal, not the core engine itself), so you would probably be fine doing what you suggest, but someone would have to do a lot of work to make a module we could use to play games and THAT would have to survive GW legal's depredations.

Yes, user-friendliness would be my main goal. I loaded up Vassal once and couldn't work out how to get anything to work.


It seems like an insane amount of work to me, but then I'd have thought the same of some of the other projects on this forum!

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Zombo, sounds fantastic. I can give you a very detailed list of desires based on using vassel

Though vassel itself isn't being shut down, just the peoples site where they do a module for it. The module itself isn't even hosted there.

Check out the vassel epic forums for complaints/suggestions as well.

Anyway I'll do a detailed list of suggestions after I've had some sleep - also personally I don't care if its 3d or 2d, whatever is fastest to code!

(You could even fire vassel up easily enough to see how it works, tis not much of a download.)

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I'm going to be making it as basic and easy to use as possible, at least initially, just so it doesn't become some ridiculously long project that I never complete and release. Once I've got the basics working I can look at adding new features.


Though vassel itself isn't being shut down, just the peoples site where they do a module for it. The module itself isn't even hosted there.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Interesting. I wasn't actually planning on coding movement distances for each unit, I was just planning to display distances moved in real time and let the players both see, so it would be something the players could deal with themselves.

I could theoretically code movement distances for each unit, and then have a ring around them showing how far they can move in their remaining distance, but that'd be way more work.


Second problem is creating all the sprites (or what's the term in 3d games). That's going to take a lot of work.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Ideally this would be the way for sure - you could click on a unit and an order and it would show a semi-transparant circle within which you can move to and which it would not let you move further than. Or something like that.

Much as 3D look prettier I hope could be desgined to be viewed from above too, so it'd be both? I've not played much 3D games but sometimes find moving around them and all the viewing angles overcomplicated and a pain, plus from above is the view you'll want to be able to copy and paste views from for playtest write-ups.