[u]0 A.D. GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE: SESSION CREATION[/u]

[Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/!SessionCreation2.jpg) Acumen's Second Draft of a Session Creation Screen (using Malte's layout)] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/!SessionCreation.jpg) Acumen's First Draft of a Session Creation Screen -- based on AoC Layout] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~art/firegiant/shell_GUI/session_creation-concept_v1.jpg) Malte's Session Creation Screen Sketch (based on multiple sources)]

[Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/RoNSessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Rise of Nations" Session Creation] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoCMPSessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Age of Conquerors" Multi Player Session Creation] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoMSPSessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Age of Mythology" Single Player Session Creation] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoMMPSessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Age of Mythology" Multi Player Session Creation] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoMMPJoin.jpg) Reference: "Age of Mythology" Multi Player Join Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoMMPCustomiseOpponents.jpg) Reference: "Age of Mythology" Multi Player Customise Opponents Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/AoMMPOtherSettings.jpg) Reference: "Age of Mythology" Multi Player Other Settings Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/WC3SessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Warcraft III" Single Player Session Creation Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/WC3AdvOptionsSessionCreation.jpg) Reference: "Warcraft III" Single Player Advanced Options Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/!EmpiresSessionSP.jpg) Reference: "Empires" Single Player Session Creation Screen] [Image(http://0ad.wildfiregames.com/~gamedesign/GUI/!SessionCreation/!EmpiresSessionMP.jpg) Reference: "Empires" Multiplayer Session Creation Screen]

1. RANDOM MAP?

A Random Map game is the instant action mode of 0 A.D. Unlike the campaigns, which have a very fixed structure, Random Map allows the player to specify the conditions for a game, and duke it out either against AI players or other humans.

This section describes the creation of a Random Map game session, an option available either in Singleplayer (SP) or Multiplayer (MP).

Once the necessary choice has been made from the shell interface main menu, the player(s) are taken to the Session Creation screen.

2. STARTING CONDITIONS

The session creator (the host in MP, the player in SP) has the ability to specify the following game attributes:

2.1. Drop-Down Lists

* Border Timer: Specify the number of minutes that borders shall remain "up" at the beginning of the game. If the session creator chooses 0 minutes, borders will be immediately open from game start. 0; 5; 10; 15; 20; 30; 45; 60.

* Game Speed: Specifies the starting game speed for all players. To ensure players remain in sync, in multiplayer games, this rate cannot be modified in-game. - Slow: Normal clock time. - Normal (default): 50% faster than clock time. - Fast: Twice as fast as normal clock time (1 minute expired on the game clock is equal to 30 seconds on the real time clock).

* Game Type: Custom rules that create a certain kind of gameplay. - Random Map (default): Standard game. Win by destroying the buildings and units of all enemies in military conquest. - Turbo Random Map: Gathering, building, researching, and training is faster than normal--twice as fast as playing at Fast Game Speed. - Death Match: All players start with huge stockpiles of Food, Wood, Stone, and Ore (circumventing the economic build-up stage) and fight to the death. - Herocide: A variant of traditional Regicide. Each player starts the game with a random Hero from the three choices for his civilisation. If his Hero is killed, his game is over. - Diplomatic Betrayal: A variant of Herocide, where the victory condition is last man standing. Since there can only be one winner, alliances will be made and betrayed throughout the game. A popular strategy is "vassaling", when a player is under threat from another and agrees to do whatever the threatener wants. He basically becomes a slave. Usually, the Hero of the vassal is garrisoned in the threatener's fortress, so the threatener can kill the Hero if the vassal misbehaves. - Nomadic: Each player begins with only three starting units, and no starting Civ Centre. Unlike other game modes, the player must build his first Civ Centre, wherever he chooses, plus he can build two additional Civ Centres, for a total of three in any game session. The starting units (based on those authorised by the selected civ) are one randomly generated Infantry Citizen Soldier, one randomly generated Cavalry Citizen Soldier, and one Female Citizen, all scattered randomly about the map. Borders and settlements are not placed on the map. There are no aggressive wild animals, and all players' units must have access to each other. May be played on any land or water map, except island maps. - Emigration: As a hybrid game type between standard RM and Nomadic, each player begins with a starting Civ Centre but no additional Settlement on a relatively small island, on any islands type map, having sparce resources which soon force emigration to a much larger central 'island paradise' having plenty of resources, at which point the game turns "Nomadic" in that Borders and Settlements are not placed upon the map, the player may build two additional Civ Centres anywhere he wants on the main island for a total of three in the game, and with the exception that aggressive wild animals may be encountered anywhere there. - Free For All: A last man standing free-for-all. Teams are disabled and alliances cannot be made. Fight to the death until last man standing. - Who's Suckin' Eggs?: A variation on the Random Map Standard Game, as a head-to-head limited to 1v1 and 1 Civ Centre plus 1 Settlement per player that is based on points acquired but in a non-traditional sense in that the victory condition is based instead on achieving a 5:1 ratio of points over and above that of the opponent, at which time the game is over. A tournament game for online Multiplayers, a somewhat shorter game for those who want it as Single Players (as the player doesn't have to hunt down and destroy every last enemy unit on the map). At moment of victory, gamescreen displays, "<name_of_loser> sucks eggs NOW!", and post-game Achievements screen displays the gruesome results. May be played on any map. - Instant Army: Citizen Soldiers are all available from the Civ Centre at Village phase. They are not available from the Military Centre. - Custom Scenario: Specify a player-made map from the popup-window.

* Map Size: The dimensions of the map. Up to six players may play on an a map of any size. - Small: 2 player. - Medium: 3 player. - Large: 4 player. - Huge: 6 player.

* Map Type: The distribution of land, water, and terrain types on the map (eg Islands). [u](See Maps:BIOME CATEGORIES & TYPES for the full list)[/u]

* Military Centre Cap:The maximum number of Military Centres that can be built in any province (default is 2). 1; 2; 3; 4; 5.

* Number of Players:This determines the number of player slots available for human or computer players. 2; 3; 4; 5; 6.

* Population Cap:The maximum number of units each player can create. 25; 50; 100; 150.

* Resources: The quantity of resources in each player's stockpile when the game begins. Low; Normal (default); High.

* Seasons: If Enabled (default), seasons will advance every 15 minutes (with the first and last minutes devoted to a transition period between the two). If Disabled, the game will instead cycle through day and night at the same rate. If Locked, there will be no seasons in the session, and the season will not advance beyond beyond the Starting Season for the duration of the session.

* Starting Season: The season when the game first begins. Spring (default); Summer; Autumn; Winter.

* Settlements: By default, the number of Settlements per player is determined by the size of the map and the number of players (unless the Map Type does not use Settlements). The host can modify this setting from here. If the Game Type does not use Settlements, this number is fixed to zero. 1 .. (map size cap).

* Starting Phase: All players begin the game at this level of advancement. Change this setting to jumpstart the players to a certain level of advancement. Village (default); Town; City.

* Visibility: The state of Shroud of Darkness (SoD) and Fog of War (FoW) in the game. - Normal (default). SoD enabled. FoW enabled. The player must scout to reveal the map and maintain knowledge of enemy movement. - Explored. SoD disabled. FoW enabled. The player does not have to scout to reveal the map, but does have to maintain knowledge of enemy movement. - All Visible. SoD disabled. FoW disabled. The player can see all activity on the map at any time.

2.2. Toggle Buttons

* Auto-Save Game: If enabled, regular background auto-saves will occur, to ensure that, if the game is interrupted through disconnect, lag, or system failure, the game can be restarted close to the failure point.

* Quick Research: When enabled, each player's technologies are automatically researched for free whenever their pre-requisites are met. Since the attributes of civs are largely determined by their available technologies, this quickly allows civilisations to compete at full strength, with recognisable strengths and weaknesses.

* Teams Locked: If enabled, players cannot change allegiance during the game. They cannot send tribute to enemies, nor can they send private chat messages to enemies.

* Team Together: If enabled, players on the same team will be given a starting point adjacent to each other.

2.3. Player Attributes

Each player can specify the following attributes for himself (the attributes of computer-controlled players must be specified by the session creator):

* Name: The name of the player. For human-controlled players, this is the player's profile, and is fixed (though the session creator can set this slot to Closed; in MP, this will boot any player currently occupying the slot). For computer-controlled players, this is used to specify the Artificial Intelligence that will govern this player's actions (standard or custom).

* Civilisation: The player's civilisation, selected from a drop-down list. Random (default) chooses a random civilisation. If this player is set to play cooperatively another player's civilisation, his Civilisation attribute is set as "Co-Op", since he has no civilisation of his own.

* Colour: Player colours are fixed to the player numbers (defaults are [color=cyan]P1-Cyan[/color], [color=yellow]P2-Yellow[/color], [color=magenta]P3-Magenta[/color], [color=orange]P4-Orange[/color], [color=red]P5-Red[/color], [color=chartreuse]P6-Chartreuse[/color]. Each player can then use the colour picker to customise his perception of those colours to suit his particular preferences and/or vision needs. This does not affect how other players perceive these players. Clicking a player colour box brings up a Photoshop-like colour spectrum picker (The advantage of the colour picker is that it allows a partially sighted player to see all tints at once, so he can tell them apart at a glance and pick those colours that are most distinct for him). The player can move his cursor over the spectrum, and the player colour box will change colour to suit the current hovered selection. When the player clicks in the spectrum, the window will close and the player colour box will be updated with this colour (the player can also click the player colour box or hit Esc to cancel and close the window).

* Team: Select team number. Players on the same team are allied at game start. ? (Random team); - (no team; all are enemies); 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6.

2.4. Multiplayer Latency

Multiplayer games run only as fast as the slowest computer in the game. The slowest player will be marked with a turtle icon beside his attributes row.

Players with a ping that is going to bring the game down to an unacceptable frame rate are also marked with an icon: A yellow dot indicates latency of 300 milliseconds to 1 second. A red dot indicates latency greater than 1 second.

2.5. Starting the Game

In an SP game, the session will begin as soon as the player clicks the Start Game button.

In an MP game, all players must click Start Game before the game can begin. Once clicked, a player loses the ability to modify his attributes. The names of players who have clicked are shown in green. If a player changes his mind, he can click the button again to disengage his ready status and make the necessary changes. The session creator does not suffer from these limitations, and the game will not begin until the session creator clicks Start Game.

To cancel the session creation and return to the previous menu, click the Cancel button.

3. LOADING SCREEN

Prior to beginning a game session, we will need to load in starting game resources (whether the game is created from the Session Creation screen, or is a campaign/standalone scenario).

3.1. Storyboard

Game resources will load in the background while the scenario's storyboard is playing (see [u]Scenario Editor[/u]).

The player can choose to skip the storyboard at any time by pressing a key. The storyboard will stop at its current point, freeing up a few milliseconds for loading time.

If the scenario does not have a storyboard, a random stock background image, progress bar and tips will be displayed instead, and the game will begin as soon as resources are loaded.

While this would obviously be of the most use in single player campaigns, we could have stock storyboards set up for Random Map games too (which explain the principle of that game type, map type, how those settings will affect the type of game you'll play, tips when fighting human versus AI opponents, all on a single page -- in fact, maybe that could be the default storyboard for a newly created scenario, which can then be modified by the designer as he wishes).

3.2. Progress Bar

A progress bar at the bottom centre of the screen indicates the % loading progress. Once it is completed, the game session will begin, unless the player is still viewing the storyboard. This is essential to ensure that the user knows how much time is remaining, and isn't inclined to assume that the game has locked up and then reboot.

3.3. Tips

Random text tips will appear during the load, in a banner just above the progress bar, providing hints about advanced gameplay features. Each time the storyboard advances to a new page, a different tip will be displayed. Tips are enabled by default, but the scenario builder can choose to disable this option for his scenario.

3.4. Technical Considerations

According to programming input, our optimised archiving code and demand loading scheme should ensure that essential data loading will not take more than a few seconds. However, if the player needs to be briefed, it is agreed that we might as well load as much as possible in the meantime, and also entertain them while pulling in what we do need to load. The effect on the loading time is minimal; estimates for music are 20 KB/s (OGG/MP3), and pictures 250 KB every few seconds, which leaves plenty of room for grabbing other data.

Last modified 16 years ago Last modified on Feb 23, 2008, 4:18:58 AM
Note: See TracWiki for help on using the wiki.