Setuping up the Project

Ok, so I have a rough idea for the end result of my game and I started to write up some user stories.


Main Concept:

This is a board game where two players have a set of "pieces" that they can move around the board and attack the other player's pieces. The moves will be turn based: each turn the player gets to move one piece and cause one piece to perform an action. Actions may attack the other teams pieces which will may result in the termination of the attacked piece.



Ok, I'm hoping that with a little modification the game platform can provide the functionality for both a chess game and a Final Fantasy Tactics (great game by Squaresoft fyi for those who haven't played) style game.

User Stories:

User opens the application and sees the game board. Game board is a chess board (8 x 8 - alternating black and white squares) background is a gray. Camera is looking at the center from above and toward one side.

The user has one piece (a blue ball) on the board that is located on one side of the board.

The user can select a square on the board and the ball will move to that square. Movement is shown and not just a sudden change in location.

All movements are logged.

User can have eight balls. To move one, the user must select the ball to move first, then select where to move the piece.

The opponent will have 8 pieces also but of a different color.

User cannot move onto a square that is already occupied.

After the user moves a piece, the opponent will move one of its pieces in a random direction (no piece can move off of the board).

Pieces can move up to three square away.

When a user selects a piece to be moved, the squares that are within range will change color to indicate the possible ending positions for that piece. Attempts to move to a square that is not showing the indication is ignored.

User can choose to attack a piece belonging to the opponent if that piece is within 2 squares from the user's piece. To attack, the user selects the piece that they wish to attack with, then select the opponent's piece that is the target. The attack is logged.

Attacks are logged to the same log that the movements were logged.

Some visual representation of an attack between two pieces is shown.

Pieces have a sense of "health". Each piece can take two attacks before it is destroyed. Destroyed pieces simply disappear from the board.

Add an indicator for the health of the piece.

The pieces can be of different types:
- large, can only move 1 spaces but takes 3 hits to destroy
- medium, can move 2 and takes 2 hits to destroy
- small, can move 3 and takes 1 hit to destroy

Balls bounce in place while they wait their move.

The smaller the ball, the faster it bounces.

The pieces can be loaded in from an external model(s) - maybe spaceships.

When the game starts, the user can choose to play the CPU or play another player.

Network enabled games.

The user's stats are kept from game to game: wins, losses.

When the user starts the game they are asked who they are (username) so as to keep building on their stats.

The user's pieces' stats are kept: number of opponent pieces destroyed

Piece rank based on number of opponent pieces destroyed.

Upgradeable pieces based on number of opponent pieces destroyed.



It's a small backlog and it'll grow. And the stories that are further out are a bit more vague, but they'll become more clear when they start coming to the front.



Starting Development

In the meantime, I decided to setup my continuous integration environment. I am developing this in Java (the graphics done in Java3D) using Maven for my build and Continuum for my continuous integration. Java was chosen because I know it the best and I'm a bit more familiar with Java3D than other 3D programming APIs. Maven was chosen for the use of it's dependency management. I've written a couple of standalone applications in the past and I've refactored out some useful tools dealing with things like error handling and whatnot. And with Maven, it's real easy to include the dependency in the pom and not have to worry about it.

So I got the project all setup with automated builds going and email notifications upon failure. I really think that this is crucial for any project starting up. Get your CI environment up and running. Now I don't have any other developers joining my project at the moment, but non-the-less, it is vital to make sure that whatever you have in your repository is stable (tests pass) at all times.

Interesting bit on the email notifications... GMail has been gracious enough to allow external smtp access to their servers. So it made setting up the mail notifications really simple.



And now I'm all ready to start tackling the first story...