I realize this is probably quite ambitious, but if anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.
For those who have played Sean O'Connor's "Critical Mass", I am trying to recreate the same kind of movement arrow.
For anyone else, here's what I'm talking about...
The player controls a spaceship, in a turn-based game (not grid based though). There is an arrow coming out from the ship, showing it's projected path during the next movement phase. You can drag the end of this arrow around to choose how to move your ship. You can only drag the arrow head to places reachable, given the ships maximum acceleration/deceleration/turning rates.
A demo is available at windowsgames.co.uk - it's well worth trying.
Wow this looks GREAT! I loved critical mass, had it on a "Game Empire" CD or something like that. Unfourtunatly I can't think of how to make a bendable. Actually, maybe you could have indivual invisable balls, and then use vectors to create a kind of bendy arrow? Like a ball for each segment, and then have lines connecting the balls?
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That's a screenshot of critical mass, not my game, just to be clear. They changed the visuals to make it look all 3d.
I was just thinking of making a clone because I have heaps of space fighter type graphics lying around, and I want to put them to good use.
Here's an example of some ships I designed. On the left is how they look in Critical Mass, and on the right is how I'd like them to look.
Anyway, thanks for that suggestion. That could actually work quite well if I can figure it out. I think I need to read that article on bezier curves *again* - I still don't understand
The hard part will be limiting where you can drag the arrow to according to the turning/thrust I think.
The alternative, which I'm hoping I won't have to resort to, is to have a kind of joystick control, like in "achtung spitfire".
Any thoughts on wingman/enemy AI also appreciated. Critical Mass pilots are fairly dumb - can't dodge asteroids let alone hit something with an unguided missile
The arrow should be possible with the drawline object. You'll have to draw 2 more lines for the tip of the arrow, I guess. It's much easier to do it most programming languages than in MMF, though. I suggest you find an alternate solution. Or use Construct
Maybe just go with the typical RTS circle on the ground where the ship heads to?
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
To be honest, drawing the arrow itself isn't the part I'm really stuck on.
The main problem, is how do I calulate whether a point is a valid destination, or if it would require the ship to turn or accelerate more sharply than it is capable of?
The movement is like this:
Ship has SPEED and ANGLE. These are used for normal 360 degree movement (each "turn" is a few seconds, during which everything happens simultaneously in realtime).
The ship also has TURN and ACCELERATION variables, which are constantly added to ANGLE and SPEED respectively. These are limited according to the ship's performance.
I need a way to make it so the player can select a destination, and the game calculates the TURN and ACCELERATION variables to get there. If either the required TURN or ACCELERATION are outside the ship's limits, then I don't allow the player to choose that as a destination.
There's got to be some kind of formula I can use to calculate TURN from X-target, Y-target, X-current, Ycurrent, SPEED, ANGLE (and also one for ACCELERATION).
Obviously it's going to be pretty complicated, but I don't even know where to start
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