Risk Game

[TStach]

Hello,

I'm new to these forums and I would like to begin by making a risk-like game. I've been programming with my calculator independently since last year, however I'm not as nearly as good as anyone else on these forums. Oh well. I'll learn as I go I guess.

I'm thinking that it will be very possible as long as it does not become too graphically intensive. I've never made anything except programs that calculate formulas for math (which I did on my calculator). I've seen games that others in my school have created and they are far from impressive. If they work, the screen flashes and does not update quickly enough. However, the games in MirageOS can do some pretty amazing things. I'm hoping that by using these simple drawing commands that I can program a game as intensive as this. From what I see, I think it's possible.

I might search on the internet for some sites tonight and see if I can find a decent programming tutorial site.

[Weregoose]

Welcome to the boards, TStachioed one! (Don't worry, I'll regret saying that later...) ;)

Risk is a good choice for learning how to manage a great number of variables.
From the sound of it, I believe you have more skill than you're willing to admit.

I hope all goes well according to your plan.

–Goose

[Bryan Thomas]

Yeah man welcome to the forum and better yet. Welcome to the TI-Community. The best way to learn is to do exactly what your doing now. Setting a goal/game to make and using what knowledge you have and what knowledge youll have to experiment with to make a game. Thats exactly what I did. Started out by making small games and my skill improved after everyone I made. If you really enjoy programming, it will come easy. Once again welcome and I wish you the best of luck.

Btw keep us updated on Risk. I have not seen that for a calculator yet :biggrin:

[Liazon]

So do you want to learn Assembly or Basic? And what kind of calculator do you have?

[TStach]

Thanks for all the optimism! :biggrin:

[elfprince13]

<shameless self promotion>If you're making a game, this should be helpful,</shameless self promotion> and yeah, in general Asm is faster the BASIC, but not necessarily, and some of the people here (myself included) can do some pretty cool stuff with Basic.

[DarkerLine]

Don't link to ticalc.org, link to us. http://www.unitedti.org/index.php?download=93 have some patriotism.

[elfprince13]

I haven't yet memorized the URL to my Unitedti author profile, and being the lazy person I am I went for TiCalc.org instead....anyway, programming risk will be really hard (youll want to simplify the map a bit)

[TStach]

Yeah, a few things are in question as of now:

- How should I go about producing such a map?
I'm clueless as where to start with this one. Obviously, best way is to use a picture variable. But where would I make/obtain that? Maybe I should just stick to a text-based risk with a good computer player?

- How should countries be selected?
I'm thinking of using numbers and a key. For example: North America = 1, South America = 2, et cetera. Shading or anything else to fancy is too memory intensive or slow.

Other than that, I finished the tutorial because I skimmed it over the last few hours. I might be a bit busy tomorrow night, but the weekend is open for me! :biggrin:

[elfprince13]

[TStach]

The Extensive Risk Rulebook
That has everything I need and more. Rules are going to be based off of that because of the extensive formulas and everything else on the site.

Current Status
xLib is doable. I would rather have it in my code only, but oh well.
But: I'm still on the question of how to draw the map. What program(s) do I use to draw all of this- obviously it cannot be done by hand (I want to game to turn out good). I think everything else will work out alright. Just a heads up, as you all probably know - the program is going to be large after saving features and everything else has been completed.

For now this will have to do:

North America:
Alaska, Northwestern Territory, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Western US, Eastern US, Central America, Greenland

South America:
Peru, Brazil, Argentina, one is illegible

Africa:
North Africa, Egypt, East Africa, Congo, South Africa, Madagascar

Europe:
Scandanavia, Ireland, Great Britian, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Ukrane

Asia:
Middle East, Afghanistan, India, China, Mongolia, Japan, Siberia, some are illegible

Australia:
Eastern Australia, Western Australia

[Liazon]

Using xLib stil counts as your own code. It's just that tr1p1ea gave you more Basic Commands. I personally have never used it myself (I prefer ASM :biggrin:)

If you have the space, you should draw the map and then use storepic # or storegb # to save the image on the calc. Use recallpic # to recall the picture of the map. (# is where you store it, usually 0-9).

Since the map itself probably won't be moving too much, this sounds like a good idea to me. I duno what others would say though.

Are you going to include battle animation? because that'd be kinda cool.

edit: wait there is no way you can fit a world map on 95x63 pixels! i think

[chipmaster]

Oh it can be done


Unless you are taking a very non-graphical approach, Risk seems like a big challenge, especially in TIBASIC. The other games you saw with slow speed are probably in BASIC. If you were to make an ASM version, that would allow for much higher quality graphics and better appearance. On another note KermMartian was able to make a pretty good risk game completely in Basic click.

[Liazon]

Really nice pic, Chip!

But isn't Risk not very graphical in itself? What are you moving? The only animation I can think of is troop movement and battles. Then you can make it almost Reign-of-Legends-3-ish. You might even just render simple cut scenes with Basic. That in itself would amaze me: fullscreen animation in Basic, that doesn't flicker! w/o xlib of course

[TStach]

Darn, that map is flawless! I've haven't even made one complete BASIC game yet, so I think rushing into assembly so quickly is not the best idea. I took a glance for a second and tried to make sense of anything (which never happened).

[chipmaster]

Well the pic isn't mine. I never meant to take credit for it. The pic comes from World Domination, which I mentioned above.

You could do this game in Basic, but what I think would be the problem would be redrawing the map after each battle animation to show troops and the battle animations themselves. Unless you use an ASM utility or make the battle scenes have little or no animation, you really can't avoid terrible framerate in BASIC (unless you Kevin :biggrin: ).

[Jeremiah Walgren]

[bananaman]

One idea is to have on picture that has the entire world and then you move a selector around to a continent and click on it to bring up only that continent and all the countries that you can attack to from the continent. Then the zoomed in picture could have the amount of armies on each country and the color who owns it.

BTW You can't use this for the basic contest because you just told everyone about it. I would still suggest doing it because it would be awesome. For the contest you don't have very much time left. I suggest doing a graphical game that takes little effort to program a good AI.

[TStach]

[elfprince13]