Preface: I played Empire Earth when I was around 8, when I was first starting that stage where I could create simple strategies, it was my training ground for that skill. The one we had was Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest, which had the Space Age.

Now, for the game I'm making:
I'm starting TImpire Earth (tentative title). I don't have much done yet, but here's what I plan:

*An overworld screen and map screen for viewing enemy cities
*Create your own city (plot-based)
*"Ages" (Stone Age, Bronze Age, etc.)
*Battle against CPUs and conquer them
*Download another player's town data and add them to your world

If you are more familiar with Empire Earth than I am and you have a suggestion, feel free to suggest!

Sounds interesting... Is this kind of like Clash of Clans or Boom Beach type of thing? Not sure what they are but I am pretty sure its like an empire creator or something. Coolio

It's basically Clash of Clans (with technological ages), but you can build multiple towns for your empire, so you aren't restricted to one plot per empire. I'm sure you could find videos of it on the Youtube.

Anyway, I've started work on the engine, but haven't gone into xLibC, which is what I plan to use for this project.

You can add and remove multiple rendered "entities". For right now, the limit is 4 entities on a screen, but I plan to make it more, because I redraw every entity every loop iteration, so that if your cursor goes over it, it stays drawn.
What I plan on doing is having it test if the entity was erased by your cursor moving over it and moving away (therefore erasing it, since I'm not using double-buffering yet). Once I start using double-buffering, I won't need either method of keeping those entities loaded.

Once I start to work more on this, I will start to add the ability to create the town buildings, or maybe I'll start with moving between map screens.

mmm looks like you have a plan. Also where do you make those signature bars, I was searching for them but I didnt find ti :-/

I worked a lot to change the method in which objects stay rendered. I want all of them to be rendered, even after walking through them, so they would be "actually there". I first just made them be refreshed every loop iteration, but the most I could stand onscreen was four, and that was being very generous.

With a For( loop and an If statement, I got it able to handle 6 objects around that same game speed! It goes through the temporary list of all objects onscreen, and sees if you are 16 pixels away from the object. If you're exactly 16 away, it refreshes the object's image, but if not, it leaves the object alone. This way, any unnecessary object image refreshing is avoided. The reason I chose 16 was because you teleport 8 pixels in a certain direction every time you walk. If you're any closer, you collide with the object's "sprite", which looks weird if it's being redrawn over your character, and your character is also being redrawn over the object.

Nice! Screenies?

Not yet, but once I have some more done, I plan to.
Here's some more of what I did:
*Now, you can select your "home plot" (meaning for right now, your only plot, which I plan to change )
*You can't edit any other plot besides your own
*Fixed refresh testing algorithm to work when your coords aren't 16 away but still around 16 pxls
*Added some startup code including selecting your home plot

Some of my short term goals (so I can gauge what I need to do):
*Read (all) overworld objects and mark it on map screen plots [X]
*Start working on ability to create soldiers/citizens, do same above for people
*Add ability to choose your nation's color [X]
*Complete first time run code [X]
*Create Startup menu [X]
*Start enemy AI
*maybe have ability to hit edge of screen and progress through the map in that direction?

I have screenies and a beta to share now!

Download here!
Of course, if I decide I will use hybrid basic libraries, I will definitely make actual sprites for everything.

Some more of my short term goals:
*Start working on ability to create soldiers/citizens, mark them on map
*Start enemy AI
*Try to complete data transfer ability [X] (Should work, although I don't have a compatible calc to test with at the moment)
*Add more to Help menu, eventually make a new menu for Help, data transfers, etc. [X]
*Look more into hybrid color libraries
*Add more types of objects (buildings) [X]
*Figure out what F1 will be and make it [X]
*implement money [X]

This looks great! I was going to make something like this for the monochrome, but it just got out on hold... Maybe I'll revive it sometime...
But I look forward to sprites!

Mmmm I would love to try it but my mom took my calc ;(

I have been making progress. Sorry, no screenshot, since nearly nothing visual has changed. The game now correctly handles multiple sections of your save file, split up by a header containing the most important parts of your save file. For right now, the game pretty much ignores it. This is useful for allowing the player to own multiple plots now.

I've also done a bit of work to the engine, where now every other loop it checks for (partially) erased objects with the test I mentioned earlier. Since you can't move far enough away for the test to be skipped when something is erased, it still works. However, when you have a lot of objects onscreen, it goes really fast for a few frames, then really slow. But, it's still a little playable. Eventually, I'll draw the object limit somewhere.

I've made some amazing progress! I added a menu to add different types of buildings, so now there can be houses, mines, a town hall, etc.
However, it really slows the engine down when there are even two objects of different types around, so I'll be thinking of a solution. Once I've just checked over everything, I'll upload a screenshot.

Edit: Screenie! Ignore the visual glitch in the map menu, I know what's wrong, but I forgot to fix it.


►Todo:
*Start working on ability to create soldiers/citizens, mark them on map
*Start enemy AI
*Look more into hybrid color libraries
*Start creating Age system
*Takes time to build?
*Add support for multiple object sets marked on map screen
*Make different types of buildings do more than lag the engine (OOOOOooh! Burn!)

Wow, that looks amazing! I can't wait, it looks a lot like the vids I've seen on youtube. Can you explain what each symbol stands for?

Oh, I forgot you can't see what I'm typing
The theta is the Town Hall, the ^ is the house, and the M is the mine.

Nice progress, Mateo. I see that one of your to-do items is exploring the Hybrid libraries more, and of course we're more than happy to help with any Hybrid BASIC questions you may post up. Please keep us up-to-date on your further work on this.