Army

Next step is to build an army. Started a little on creating the different army types. Just threw in a couple.
They are:

• Peasant
• Lightly-armored Vikings
• Heavily-armored Vikings
• Berserkers
• Mounted Vikings
• Viking Archers

They are divided into melee, mounted and ranged and got attack, defense, hits and cost properties.
So far nothing about the game has had any fantasy over it. I'm thinking of adding monsters and creatures into armies too. Some might wield magic and have special skills. Also thinking that it would be cool if you can upgrade any army with special skills. For example, extra attack or defense, or an army specialised in raiding or using special weapons and so on. It's easy to have too many ideas at once. Have to finish the basic and then build on that.

Save/Load

The past days I've worked a bit on saving and loading. Had to add serialization to some of the classes, but when I got that working, it was easy to save and load the game. I've just made a very simple feature at the moment, where it's only possible to have one saved game at the time. It's not graphical at all yet either.

Why Silver Island Media?

Why did I name the blog Silver Island Media?
Well, firstly I needed a name brand name for the namespace in the code. Secondly, if I do more games, it's good to have a name that brands them together.

But why Silver Island Media?
I started programming when I got my first computer (a Commodore 64). I was 13 at the time and computers weren't that common. I just knew a couple of people that had one. We all played games together, but I also wanted to learn how the games where made. This was before the Internet became known around the world. I played around writing textbased games, but quickly learned the limits of the computer and my own skills.
Over the years I tried to learn more and more and did lots of half finished projects in different languages.
But then by the end of the century, I finally finished a game! It was called Silver Island and was a simple roleplaying game. I published it online just for fun and was shocked by the reception. It was free and everyone could download it and it was downloaded by some 40000 people and got quite good rating for such a simple game.
I started on a second game (called Twilight of Eternity) after that which was much more advanced (based on my skills and not the market!), but never got around to finish it.
Many years went pass and I felt like doing some game programming again. Then I needed a brand name and in memory of my first game I called it Silver Island Media. So that's why :)

Woohoo!

It's now an actual game! Sure, it's a real bad and boring one still, but it's a game nonetheless.
It's now possible to buy improvements for the regions and the resources are added each turn.
There's still lots of checks to be done before that part is complete though.
It's time for some new screenshots I think. The screenshots are showing how it's possible to select a region and then buy improvements on it. The graphics needs to be improved and everything is just thrown together to make it work.

Buying

Couldn't resist doing a bit more work on it. Now it's possible to buy things. Only added a couple of region improvements yet, but it's a start at least. Resource is reduced (no bottom limit yet) and improvements are added as they should.
Just fix a couple more things and then it's a playable game!

ListBox

Not done much programming again. I'm quite bored with World of Warcraft at the moment and downloaded a trial of "Age of Conan". 24-mb downloading is so nice! Love it :) The game is quite fun and since I've just got a 7-day trial, I've focused on that.
Today I took some time to program again though. I worked on a listbox that can be used in many different parts of the game. No controls like that are included so need to do them all from scratch! Got one working though with up and down buttons and a way to select a value. That value is then available from other parts of the screen. It looks terrible at the moment, but the functionality is there at least!
Next step is to make it possible to buy improvements. That shouldn't be that much work now I hope. The tough part was the listbox.

Dynamic code

Been a bit lazy the past week and not done much coding at home.
Today I refactored some parts to make the code more dynamic. This was done while adding code for resources and improvements in the regions. Now those things are handled with XMLs too.

Good day

Went a lot better than expected today. Finished a basic game loop and also started on managing regions. Just started on it, so much left to do.

Clickable Map and new ideas

The map is now clickable and regions is assigned to most of the home countries of the vikings.
Some factions has also been created. They are Svear, Goter, Gutar and Danes. Now it's time to start on the game loop logic.

Today I got some new ideas on the region management. The original idea was that each region had a settlement where you build buildings. Instead I thought it would be fun if you could instead "research" regions. For example you can improve the mining capability or the farms of the region. The better the region is at something the more resources you get from it. But of course each region are different. Mountainous Svealand can improve mining more than Denmark, while Denmark can improve farms more than Götaland and so on. That makes trade important. And trade is also different between regions. Gotland has better chance of improving trade than Svealand has.

Another idea was that you can improve the capability by improving the existing mines/farms/woodsheds or you can send out scouts to find new ones. Scouts are more risky but yields a higher result if successful.

Third idea was that in the viking age it was impossible to know much about the neighbors, so the player shouldn't see much about regions they don't control. That way scouts, spies or diplomats can be used.

Fourth idea continues on the third one. It should be possible to send in small raiding parties into neighboring regions. The bigger the raid party the bigger the chance of being seen, so a small party can take the enemy by surprise. Parties can be led by heroes and they can either stay in the region and keep raiding or raid and then hurry back home. The owner of the region can then send search parties to locate the raiding party.

Lots of ideas and much to do!

Introduction

The purpose of this blog is to have as a kind of documentation of the progress of my work.

At the moment I've just started on a game which I call Halls of Midgard. It's planned to be a kind of strategy/rpg during the age of the vikings. It wont be realistic though, but more how it would be if the viking mythology were true. The gods are real and so are all the creatures and monsters the vikings believed in.

I'm doing this entirely on my sparetime and I have on idea when or even if I will ever finish, since I'm just doing it for fun.

Here's a first screenshot of the worldmap: