in a flash of inspiration, one sunday morning i downloaded images of phantom leader and/or hornet leader from the BoardGameGeek site and cut them to managable size , like 64x64 pixels for the counter graphics and 768x768 pixels for the mainboard (tactical display).
ECM Pod Counter
MK-84 Weapon Counter
F/A-18C Counter
F-35 Lightning II
Bandit Counter 
SA-2 SAM
SA-10 SAM
SU-24 Fencerthen i fired up my Macbook Air 11 (2011) and run XCode4 with the excellent SPARROW FRAMEWORK to load up the images and put them all on display with touch event handling the counter movements.. (more on Sparrow Framework later)
basically its all just a simple exercise extending the sparrow's own Scaffold sample. I load up the images as SPTexture because each image will be used more than once and if i load the images in each iteration of SPImage then i waste memory.
Since this is just a prototype i dont use the SPTextureAtlas that consolidate all images into a single large bitmap (must be in power-of-two size like 512x512,1024x512,2048x2048,128x128). The task of combining all images in your apps into single bitmap is handled thru a third-party apps called TexturePacker. its a free apps if you use its essential features , however to use the advanced features you must get the license for a small fee.
get texturepacker here : http://www.texturepacker.com/
Pseudo Code:
SPTexture*enemy1 = [SPTexture TextureWithContentsOfFile:@"SA-2.png"];
..
NSArray *enemyArray = [NSArray ArrayWithObjects:enemy1, enemy2, .... , nil];
then i add event listener to the stage (self) to catch the touch movement on the counters. except for the display board / tactical board, everything is movable.
off course this is far from a playable game yet the thought of playing hornet leader on an iPAD anywhere without bringing the big box is tempting.. so i began to list down requirement to finish this apps. A fully functional game need some mundane stuff that people only gloss over but its important and sometimes waste too much development time.. so here's the list of what stuff must be done in coming weeks :
- Game Menu System including Campaign Selection, Options , Credits , Helps
- Campaign Setup and Initial Pilot Selection Screen
- Campaign Tracking and Scoring
- Pilot XP and Stress administration
- Tactical Board Display complete with user interface for movement, attack and defense
- Target card selection
- Event card resolution
Im looking for a faithful conversion so that people who is familiar with hornet leader boardgame wont have much trouble adjusting to the iPad version. That means no animation / fancy sound effect except on the menus. However this brings another problem, that is limiting my Apps to people who understand boardgame/wargame term/lingo. A faithful Hornet Leader iPad conversion means ordinary people will have a high learning curve when they buy this game..
I post some stuff about this on the BoardGameGeek forum and get a mild response. I dont think lots of people are interested in this game .. and even then i still need the permission of game publisher to upload this apps on AppsStore. So if i want to publish this i need their permission and if i fail to get their permission then i just use this apps for my own consumption
Below is the Photos of my white iPad with Hornet leader running on it, my Macbook Air's XCode still showing the source code for this prototype
i use Hornet Leader tactical board and Phantom Leader counters and mission cards/aircraft pilot cards to test if iPAD's screen size is big enough / feasible enough for boardgame conversion , notably the air leader series..
the counter size and tactical display size is ok, still visible and managsble, although i have to change the touchscreen behaviour so the counters are not coverer by fingers when we move them
There's no AI yet , no mission cards, no event cards, no campaign tracking .. just tactical board and counters on it =D
a fully optimized Hornet Leader application for iPad is fun =D
No comments:
Post a Comment