Ye Olde Blah

http://www.elvenfyre.com/shining/

The old version is now up and running, you do need to make a user if you want to play over multiple sessions but that takes about 10 seconds.

Game Details Currently
All you need is your browser.
Player vs Player
Player vs Bots
5 character teams (hard set)
Two turn modes: Alternating and Shining
Lobby with (global) chat.
Game invitations, withdrawals, declines and acceptances.
Game spectating.
Game events low quality.
Interface low quality.
Turn options: Move, Attack, Move+Attack, Stay, Surrender.  

Version 2 Goals

Improve Chat and Lobby look and feel.
Login / registration faster and easier
Allow guest accounts.
Provide sample on splash screen.
Put current unit whose turn it is into a separate datum.
More obvious graphics on whose turn it is currently.
Turn abilities to include Move + Attack
Allow challenge posting to people who are offline, since this game works over long time frames.
Quickstart instructions for the uninitiated
Improved targeting graphics
AI Battle
Quick replay of finished games.
Only retrieve Chat data when there is new Chat data.
Recreate codebase with classes.
Fetch all on screen information with a map draw to get rid of hover calls.
Hover calls to be reduced to javascript.
Keep position details in two variables.

Sounds cool! I always thought a "play by email" kind of mode would work well for Shining Force, especially as you can probably have a few games on the go at once.

Have you thought about using something like web sockets for the chat room?

Gotta say - this is a really cool project :)

Yeah, you could easily take turns at this over very long periods of time.
Hook up some kind of email notification or what have you.

to be honest i haven't thought about it much at all.
what it is today is what it was 7 years ago.

now I'm just looking at taking it to the next step in terms of functionality.
As long as it's working, I'm not too fussed if it takes an extra second or two at this stage.

The ws is new to me and would result in a lot of learning curve and less doing.
Not to mention, IE8 is a big thing (still same percentage as use IE10).

You're more than welcome to create it so that it seemlessly downgrades for me, and I'll integrate it - full credit to you :D

haha

This evening I found a couple of problems (range graphics weren't showing up in the character list), and mage was set to 2-2 range I think he should be 1-2.  Also one more insecurity of old database handling methods.  Fixed now though!

Crossed a few things off the list, and established a new set of tables (yet to be completed) for version 2.
Of note is the ability to sign in as a guest, and set up games against offline players.

Tried to include scalability for map size changing, further characters, more than 2 players, and other such nicities.
We'll see whether that clogs me up too much.

so this evening i tackled going back to a shining turn system.
this involves the options of

Stay
Move + Stay
Move + Attack
Attack

Also for the time being I skipped the need to press stay if you move to a square without an enemy close enough to hit.  this is because unlike shining force i don't have any other actions yet, so there are no utility spells or items to activate in a non-combat mode at this time.
If I were to add them, the interface would need to change, and flashing priority would need to move to the action options.

Quite a few other little fixes were achieved in the game code along the way, and I believe I sped up the thing somewhat, reducing needless ajax calls to run something I already knew was going to fail or return nothing.
I did also ensure that game players couldn't maliciously move their team member into an invalid position, or do more damage than is possible, attack someone out of range etc.  I'm guessing this has slowed down the processing of perceived valid clicks a bit.

I'm fairly excited to give AI a go at the same time as giving the graphics one run over.
So I guess that will be next!

I logged in as a guest, but once logged in as a guest I find myself unable to make a "real" account ;).

Thought it'd be worth to mention here?

I should make the log out button bigger?
Or maybe include register when you're there as a guest I suppose :)

Thanks for the feedback.

but basically at this point Devlyn, if you're in as a guest you will have to find "log out" in the menu and click it to get back out.

I made a couple more changes to handling, including a marginally better victory notification, victory notification in the lobby for past games (so everyone can see how I have lost 3 times to the only other real people i've played [sigh])

and now i'm trying to get an "easy" AI going.

Easy Bots now live!

It's quite neat.. if I suppose a bit easy.  I guess the challenge is to not lose a single unit!


The link to play bots is around where the offline user list is on the main lobby page.
It acts like an invitation to a user so you'll see an accepted game show up, people can even spectate you thrashing those bots ^_^.

edit: added more bot modes for different difficulties.
I can beat Advantaged but not hard.

Today I did nothing on the list, which is a bit : /

However I instead improved the general feel of the interface because I wanted to show a few more people and I was utterly embarrassed by what it was.

So it is at least above rubbish tip and the look and feel now reaches the level of gutter runoff.

Improved timer code to stop multi-popping of events, and pre-loaded images to create a smoother first run experience.

Looks good! Everything just feels a little more polished now, and the new changes to chat and the battle system really make a difference. I like the new sidebar too, and I'm intrigued by some of the items on that top menu :)

This evening I made a slightly more obvious "turn" indicator and "attack" options indicator.
This is in the nature of a cursor square like in shining force.
However given the static nature at this stage I chose black for my active character and white for all attack options, which after implementing, I don't really like.

Anyway the big news is tonight I finished recording and replaying of games.

It's not perfect, but it plays ok for me, from new games onwards.
So any previous game with a link can be replayed (so you can watch me beat advantaged bots.. just!)

Getting there.

night off!

I did have a quick go at making a different style of character image.

I'm wondering if I should try to stick with a shining style, or go with something a bit more my own like this.

Looks good to me :) From experience it's always a problem having to stick to another art style.

I logged in again and it looks way more sophisticated than last time! :D

Btw. feel free to rip sprites from BABS for this if you like ;). there are plenty there, including oozes, werewolves and rats :)

I've been browsing http://opengameart.org/ a lot lately to get graphics for various prototypes. Might be a good site to find some inspiration from :)

That's really cool, thanks!

I'm in between phases at the moment, just no real belief I can make it much more than what it is, and no real desire to spend time on it if that is the case.

Maybe next month when I'm settled from moving I'll take another stab.

I've said it since I first talked to devlyn ~ 2000 .. I'm not an artist.

Inspiration comes and goes. I try not to get too down when the mood isn't there. I will say though that playing a Shining battle online is really cool, and something I've wanted to do for a very long time, so I hope you continue the project in one form or another :)

well I have a feeling like it's coming back a bit with Devlyns forays stoking the shining fire.

I'm really trying to nail down what I want to do next with this.

Really feel a list coming on with a whole lot of the features I put into the menu.

However I probably need to go over the basic mechanic if I'd like speed to not be an issue for future envisaged applications of the platform.

So I think it's time for me to take a look at web sockets as Ty mentioned and prepare a test.

Looking on wikipedia I see this:

Excellent, that's what I'd want if I were to change the mechanism.

The only downside is
Which breaks my previous comment about wanting to stick with IE8 min.

I'll have to grow up if I want to run with the big boys I guess.

So I'm thinking that will be my next step here.

Here's my test to see if websockets work at all on my server and browser.
http://www.elvenfyre.com/sockets/

It seems like my host doesn't natively support ongoing connections which means I may have to skip it.  I've sent them an email though.