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[Chantcd_com]

Hi everyone!

If you could go to a website (from work, school, a friend's house, etc.) and play a real-time strategy game like Warcraft -- totally free, and with nothing to install -- wouldn't that be cool?

I have ALREADY WRITTEN such a game -- sprite-based, runs in a browser (Internet Explorer only), using Ajax technology (Javascript, DHTML, etc. -- though the XML part of Ajax will not be necessary). The dynamics are very similar to Warcraft II. You build up a city, gather resources, and build an army -- while the computer opponent does the same. Your object is to eliminate the computer opponent. Resources are more spread out (like in Age of Empires), which makes it more fun to conquer land. In WC2, the only important land is near a gold mine.

I am in need of at least one graphic artist -- there is a lot of animation in this game. All the units have an Up/Down/Left/Right, and there are two frames (each direction) for walking. Then I need 2 frames (each direction) for hitting, and maybe 1 frame each direction for "gather/build/repair".

There are several units though that need to be created. I need more building sprites (hospital, school) and a few more units (mobile tower, mage). Sprites are 40X40 pixels, no limit on colors or anything. I can convert them to transparent GIFs myself.


A bit about the status of the game right now:
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The game is real-time of course, and I have already implemented "fog of war". You can move around the game world using the arrow keys. The mouse is used to select units (including selecting several at once with SHIFT, or selecting several nearby units of same type with ALT) If you right-click while several are selected, they ALL follow that command (gather, fight, guard, move, etc.) and if you make a unit move to the edge of the screen, the game auto-scrolls in that direction. When you select a unit, a "close-up picture" is shown, as well as the unit's Name, Type, and Health represented as a colored bar (green, yellow, or red depending on how much is left). Each unit has different icons that show up (move, fight, build, etc.) and you can also use the keyboard Hotkeys ("p" creates a peon when the Town Hall is selected, etc.).

Most of the computer AI is finished (though I'm sure I will adjust it quite a bit). He already gathers resources, builds up, defends himself, and attacks the human player.

I have also -- prepare yourself for this -- implemented saving and loading! Since this is a Javascript game, the only option here is to write data to my webserver. So I am doing just that, using Ajax. Right now the game saves the entire world map, plus the complete data for every unit on the board. It takes about 20-25 seconds to save, and about 4-5 seconds to load.

This is going to be SOME javascript game!

It has all the goodies like sound effects, background music, and a special mouse cursor.

Also, I have removed ANYTHING that would remind you that you're playing in a browser. The game launches a pop-up "game window", which has no navigation buttons, etc. and is resized to the correct size and placed in the middle of the screen. All "keyboard shortcuts" like "F5 - reload page", etc. are re-assigned to a game function or disabled. When you right-click somewhere, the selected unit goes there (or fights that unit, etc.) To put it simply, the game feels and plays like a real video game, or just like Warcraft II in particular. You really forget the thing is being hosted by your browser!

This game will only require A) Internet Explorer B) a 1 GHz PC with 256 MB of RAM, and C) a dedicated video card. (Graphics are always horribly slow on motherboard-based "let me borrow 32 MB of your slow SDRAM for video RAM" video cards) Right now the entire download (program, graphics and sound) is about 1.3 MB. Of course that will go up before the game is released, but not by THAT much...
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A bit about me -- I got my first computer when I was 16 (1992) and started programming right away. I wrote a couple of Zelda clones in Quick Pascal in the mid 90's, and started several games after that, which I never finished. I wrote many other programs in C++. Around 1998, I began studying software engineering, program design, software testing, etc. on my own, using various college texts. That is when I really learned how to program -- I left the ranks of amateur programmers, and become a professional. I got my first job programming in 1998. I took up web programming in 2004. Here I am a year later, proficient in HTML, Javascript, DHTML, and PHP! :)

I would like to give out a link to the game, except it's not ready yet. Plus I need to write my Code Obfuscator (a script that will remove comments and white space, rename variables, functions, etc.). I don't want to see 100's of cheap clones of my hard work :)

UPDATE:
The computer AI is functional (he will gather resources, build up, defend himself, and attack the human player until he wins) but further tweaking is likely. All difficult elements have already been coded -- only easy, fun stuff (like adding new types of units) still remains to be done.
Behavior AI (fight, build, guard, move, gather resources, etc.) has been completed, tested, and works well.
There is much more to the game than can be seen below -- the graphics are around 20% done, whereas the programming is around 80% done.
For example, the peons and soldiers use the same sprites, even though they act completely different!

Never-before seen screenshots of the game:
<a href="http://www.chantcd.com/screen1.jpg">Screenshot 1</A> - A view of home
<a href="http://www.chantcd.com/screen2.jpg">Screenshot 2</A> - The bad guy's civilization
<a href="http://www.chantcd.com/screen3.jpg">Screenshot 3</A> - Note that units DO walk between tiles.

I'll keep you posted!


Matthew McDevitt