Hornet Leader Design Doc Summary

This is my update on the hornet leader apps :

• converted all game counter graphic elements for use in ipad hornet leader graphic assets
• designed game datastructure and entered data required for primary database regarding weapons, enemy, enemy stats, aircrafts in plist format
• creating the game framework and gameflow structure in XCode

The next to-do is these steps :

• convert all target and event card graphic elements into managable resolution (dithered RGB4444 if possible)
• entering pilot data , target data and event data into primary database in plist format
• creating Game menu screen and Campaign Select / Setup screen with Aircraft selection in Text/List format

When the game is playable and/or in presentable mode, i can e-mail it to you for testing on your iPad (assuming you still want to)

Game Design Document (Sep 2011)

Objective : 

To faithfully port Hornet Leader CAO into an iPad tablet with minimal change from the physical game. Animation will be used only in game menu interface , sound will be for UI elements only. Additional animation and sound can be added to game elements later.

Target Platform : 

iOS iPAD 1 (minimum), iOS version 4 (minimum)

Development Platform : 

Objective-C 2.0 , XCode4 IDE , Sparrow Framework v1.2 , Mac OSX Lion , Macbook Air 11" 4gb/128gb

Graphic Format : 

OpenGL , Potrait 768x1024, Tactical Display 768x768, Counters 96x96, Cards 256x512

Number of Developer : 1 (one)

Game Interface list : 

a. Game Wrapper

• Main game menu screen
• Animated Game menu with background music 
• Option screen
• Sound / Music Toggle
• Animation Toggle
• Alternate Counter Toggle (display a more pleasing counter graphic)
• Credits screen and High Score/Achievement
• Standard credit screen 
• High Score list sorted by campaign map and campaign length
• Achievement list , possible list :
• Achievement for not using special weapons in campaigns
• Achievement for using only old aircrafts in campagns (eg A7 and A6 only)
• Achievement for using only AIM9 in air-combat in campaigns
• Achievement for using only iron bombs in campaigns
• Achievement for scoring great in Short / Med / Long all campaigns
• Achievement for using less planes in every mission
• {ideas needed}
• if possible add option to post high-score and achievement on the GameCenter
• Help/Tutorial screen
• Standard tutorial screen depicting gameplay sequence 
• Campaign setup and options
• Ordnance selection suggestions
• Target-bound phase
• Over-Target phase
• Home-bound phase
• Stress,  XP & Leveling and Scoring
• Glossary and Terms
• Splash screen
• Standard Splash Screen with DVG logo, Sparrow and TexturePacker logo and my own logo

b. Campaign 

• Campaign Selection screen
• A Grid selection of campaign maps , depicting Target Country, Year , Aircraft Available
• include the EYGPT 2015 and LYBIA 2011 free campaign
• if possible create iPad only Campaigns. Possible scenarios are :
• Tanker Wars (Operation Praying Mantis)
• Lebanon Marine Barracks Bombing
• SS Mayaguez incident in Cambodia
• Campaign Setup and Optional Rule screen
• Detailed campaign info including : Campaign description, Special Operation Points availability, Scoring system, Length of campaign and weapons available.
• Selectable campaign options including : Night Options, Marine Big-Deck Campaign
• Select Advantage and Disadvantage for added difficulty
• Aircraft Selecton screen
• List of pilot info (scrollable text) using minimal graphics to conserve memory. 
• Pre-Game pilot promotion using SO
• Campaign Tracking screen
• Tracks all INFRA , INTEL , RECON result
• Campaign scoring screen
• Tracks campaign scoring 
• Calculate Achievement
• Update HighScore board

c. Tactical segment

• Strike Group Aircraft Selection / Arming Screen
• Card based interface for selecting pilots for current target
• Counter based interface for arming aircraft
• Special Operations Weapons expense and Air Refueling is resolved here
• Target Selection and enemy site/bandit generation
• Showing Target deck interface with drawn card laid horizontaly for each card , available for selection
• Drawn cards thats not selected as day's primary/secondary mission are discarded (unless they have improvements)
• Target Improvement are resolved immediately here.
• Event Card draw and resolution
• a pop-up message box showing events that happen at Target-bound, Over-Target and Home-Bound phase.
• Immediately resolve event effects including :
• Player Interaction : Spending weapon counters to negate card effects
• Player Interaction : Using E2C special abilities to negate card effects
• Player Interaction : Using previous Event Card to negate card effects
• Event that have immediate effects are resolved now
• Events that influence the end-of-day result are kept in buffer to be implemented later
• Events that influence next-day mission will be kept in buffer tobe implemented later
• Tactical Display map board user interface
• Site and bandit spawn will be arrange in a grid fashion according to the tactical display grids.
• Spawn are done in this sequence : North , East , South , West
• Possible Move is saved on every Grid location (pre-calculated)
• Main game layout is :
• LANDSCAPE Orientation :
• ? not sure if i want landscape orientation but this may change later on ?
•  POTRAIT Orientation :
• Tactical Display Top
• Game Toolbar bottom
• Aircraft selection bottom (above toolbar) , Scroll horizontally
• Control Toolbar bottom (above Aircraft Selection)
• Attack and Defense user interface
• Player Interaction : Targeting (single) and Selecting Weapons
• Player Interaction : Targeting (multiple) and Selecting Weapons 
• Player Interaction : Evasive , Suppress and Defense Resolution
• Show D10 roll number and the modifier separately 
• Stealth Check is done automatically
• ECM Pod roll is done automatically 
• Stress management is done automatically including the shaken and unfit results
• Miscelanious Stuff
• Player Interaction - Homebound : SAR roll to recover pilots 
• Player Interaction - Event Cards that can be used for cancelling other events
• Pilot Stress and XP / level-up tracking
• Stress and XP is calculated automatically every end-of-day
• Promotion also done automatically
• Player Interaction : Replace a MIA pilot (roll for replacement)

d. Other

• Save Game / Restore Game Function
• Save Game , still wondering if the savegame is on the beggining of day only or player can save at every phase ? 
• Save Game slot will be limited 
• Optional Scenario play (single mission)
• still in doubt on how to implement single target scenario play. maybe implementing a free-form format where player can choose target he wants with any aircraft with no restriction..

Designer Note:

• Part b and c will take the longest development time and need lot of polish in user interaction / user interface.
• Part a can be designed as a bare-bone menu/screen system and be filled out with more graphic and animation (and sound/music) later on.
• Aircraft selection screen will be a text only display (minimal graphic) to conserve memory. Attempt to show pilot aircraft cards will be  made later because optimizing it took lot of time (compositing aircraft pilot cards from different graphic element manually instead of showing a ready made card from HLCAO graphic scan)
• Scanning and manipulating graphic took a lot of time and sometimes the result is not good since a scanned graphic quality sometimes degrade from the original
• Entering numerous game data (pilots, aircraft, enemy, targets, events,weapons..etc) manually in EXCEL spreadsheet and converting it to Apple's PLIST (Property List) file also took lots of time.
• Game Engine can be converted easily to accomodate Phantom Leader and other Air Leader Series (Assuming the new air leader dont deviate much)