The incredible 'Task-o-Matic'

Here at BattleGoat we use our own custom task/bug tracking system, which we so affectionately like to call the 'Task-o-Matic'. As we approach 'Gold' date we have the fun of going through and finding out which bugs/tasks must get done, and which are ideas that we can put aside for the future. One thing about these last few weeks going towards our release date is that we see just how big the Supreme Ruler 2010 project really is.

I think it is a compliment to our User Interface (which was redesigned 4 times) that most people will not really see how detailed and comprehensive SR2010 can be; unless you really 'drill down' in the UI, you'll only be seeing the surface of the game, and everything else will either be just rolling along under the hood, or will be taken care of by your Ministers. However, when we have bugs to fix and features to test, we have to look at everything - and there sure is a lot!

Oh well, I better get back to tonight's task list - including work on Missile Silos, Minefields, Campaign defaults, Map resizing, testing Victory Conditions, Map/Region Grouping, and maybe another cup of coffee...

-- George.

Déjà Vu

Having worked on our maps for more than four years now, I’m certainly very familiar with some of them. Development of a game with such depth has caused us to make major changes a number of times over the years, changes that caused the balance of all existing maps to be thrown out the window. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone back to Australia, the first map I ever did, and started over the balancing of the eleven production commodities. Since the maps and the game engine where works in progress we had to leave some things for later on. Preset diplomacy between regions is an example of an element that is only now nearing a functioning stage. However, this means once again returning to maps that had previously been set aside to flag any pre-existing treaties or state of war. Can’t have North and South Korea making nice on the first day, just would not be realistic.

Since we are nearing completion of the project, there was a need to go back to most of the maps for finishing touches anyway. Most needed some boat that was previously unavailable in the equipment list or to mark a technology we recently discovered they should have pre-researched. It is nice that our map work in some cases is getting to the quality control stage and getting away from the hours of mind numbing drudge work. It’s just not much fun looking up the crime rates for the Ivory Coast or the life expectancy for residents of Nepal.
But at least we still get to spend some time playing the game testing new features and looking for bugs. Our test game this week got off to a slow start thanks to a misplaced “S” in a line of George’s code which was messing up multiplayer. We made sure he heard about that one for a while :)

-- Chris

Round and Round and Round she goes...

Of the 40+ Scenario maps that we include with Supreme Ruler 2010, there is one that is unique compared to the rest. In the program code I refer to it as the top level map, but in discussion it is simply called "The World".

The World Map has a few unique features to it. First, and most obviously, it is our largest map, at 900 hexes wide. Not the type of map you'll be able to play an conquer in a single night. The world is a big place.

Secondly, it is our only map where there is no 'external' World Market organization. In each sub map there is an off-map force - the new "UN" - that controls external trade and also gets involved with subsidies, military interventions, sale of arms, and so on. (Much like the United States does today.) In the World Level, what you see is what you get - the borders of the sandbox are defined, and nobody can come to help if you start getting beat up by the bullies.

However, the biggest internal engine difference is the fact that, unfortunately, the world is not flat. Ignoring for now the protestations of the Flat Earth Society (http://www.flat-earth.org/), the world has this roundness to it that is a challenge to represent in a strategy game. Some games have pulled it off, but nothing with the complexity of detail that SR2010 stores about the world. Even just moving around - internally units use a very sophisticated "A* Path Search Algorithm" that can scan thousands of possible paths to determine the best way to get from point A to B. We don't just take into account terrain, but add in unit movement types, bridges and bridging units, supply zones, transit treaties, and a few other elements, and you have a pretty complex process. Now you also need to toss in the fact that you can go off one end of the map and appear on the other - or more precisely, you just keep going round and round.

This 'wraparound' implementation is something that has just been, well, "wrapped up", and is being incorporated into the game engine. It works pretty well, though there are a number of oddities to address (such as the mini-map display). Of course, this isn't really a "round" world, since we only allow East-West scrolling. North/South scrolling would just be too confusing to the player, and so it really isn't worth attempting. (For example, if you scroll up from North America without changing viewpoint you would end up seeing Europe upside down, etc). Maybe someday we'll do a truly round tactical world, and really give the A* pathing a workout...

So, welcome to the Cylindrical World of Supreme Ruler 2010...

-- George.

As the days count down...

As we get closer and closer to the infamous "Gold Date" things can certainly get "interesting". There's a flurry of final bugs, unfinished features, incomplete scenarios, and a mix of "I wish we could change this..." and "There must be a better way to do that..."

Supreme Ruler 2010 is like no other game the PC has ever seen, in both its depth and vast array of gameplay styles and features. A lot of our design debates center around elements that other games have never even tried to pull off to this level of detail.

We're at the 'feature freeze' state, but now that we are approaching completion it's pretty impressive to see how all our existing ideas have come together. Just a few hundred more 'to-do' items to complete and we'll be ready to go...

Time for the last "Performance Tests"

In a game engine like Supreme Ruler 2010 where we have so many "no limits" elements, performance bottlenecks can become a major issue. A lot of other games solve this problem with the simple "you can't do that" solution, such as a unit maximum, a map size maximum, a buildings limit, and so on. We like to think more like that credit card commercial, "No pre-set spending limit"...

So now that most features of our engine are complete, it is time to take one more look at performance testing to see where we can make things go even faster. As an example of how important even small performance elements can be, consider the fact that SR2010 gives each unit the opportunity to react to orders once a minute - 1440 times per "day". If you have a huge number of units, say 10,000, then there are over 14 million "unit slices" in a game day. In those slices units will need to use their spotting, their supply capabilities, scan for targets, scan for opportunities, avoid threats, and respond to their commands and rules of engagement. And leave enough time for the other 14 million such scans that have to happen on that particular day.

It has required some very innovative design ideas to pull this off, and I'm pleased to say that we do a pretty good job of it. Even with our final optimizations, large maps with large unit counts will probably still end up moving a bit slow on older hardware, but I think we've taken the standard a huge step beyond anything else out there.

-- George.

Where in the world is the Supreme Ruler?

Until now we have been marketing the fact that Supreme Ruler 2010 has over 200 starting regions to play from. Scenarios will be used for multiplayer or single player games when you want to play a particular map or region of the world in non-campaign mode. Introduce our new feature of "grouping playable regions" and things get interesting.

Take the Canada map for example... which is divided into 5 regions. Ontario, Quebec, The Prairies, The Maritimes and The West Coast(which includes Alaska). When you play the campaign, starting as Canada, you will play as one of these five regions. But when you play Canada as a scenario (in either single or multiplayer) you'll be able to group these regions together, if you wish. You could play the east versus the west with the dividing line between Ontario and Quebec or you could play in another other combination you can think of.

Another way to look at groupings is how it will provide its own levels of difficulty and challenge. If you find yourself overwhelmed with running a country when you are starting out you could take a scenario and give yourself all of the other regions except for one. As you get a handle on things you can hand off regions to AI control and eventually play as one region in a 16 region map.

So, just think of the possibilities... How will you divide the world?

-- Daxon.

The World is MORE than Enough!

All the cities in the final scenario (The World) have now been placed. But now is the challenge of adding all the population to each region that is not in the big cities but in the surrounding areas. This would be easy if we didn't have to keep the population distribution accurate... Don't worry though, we are keeping the world map as accurate as all the sub-maps! So if you needed to know how I'll be spending my week --- that's it!

- David

Challenge of the Big Maps

I think one of our challenges with Supreme Ruler 2010 will be making sure people know that not every map we include will appeal to everybody, and they shouldn't judge the game on a map that they think is too big/small/cluttered/sparse etc. This is made even worse by the different gameplay options - for example, a large map like Europe may be very interesting and challenging in single-player turnbased mode, where it may very well take a few weeks to wrap up, but it will be utterly overwhelming to most players in real-time multiplayer mode. The world will be even worse in this regard. However, a map such as Michigan, Mexico, UK, and even larger areas such as France, US SouthEast and Australia, can make very good Multiplayer games.

I know that large maps such as North America, Europe, and the World will be attractive targets for people to try in Multiplayer mode, so we have to try to cool expectations that these are NOT good beginner/multiplayer maps to try. One of our technical innovations is that we've allowed creation of tactical maps larger and more detailed than any other strategy game, players will need to know that "bigger" does not always mean better gameplay if a large "epic" game is not what you wanted that particular evening...

Tag! You're It!

Now that North America is finished the World map has become a shared task. The terrain layer and most cities are placed into the World so the next step is setting population. David and I have started sharing this scenario so it's a matter of taking turns as we work towards our gold date. Most mornings and afternoons I work on the World map and David takes over in the late afternoons, evenings and past midnight. We've decided to focus on areas of the world we are familiar with based on who created sub maps. When we are not working on this scenario we are compiling numbers and figures towards future work such as regional supply and demand numbers, military units and combined figures such as debt, treasury amounts, research and tech levels. If only there was a way to work on the World Map at the same time...

I am already seeing requests to share the map editor before we release SR2010 and can only theorize what maps will emerge in the future. Perhaps I'll have to create a section of our web site dedicated to map design. It can cover BattleGoat Studios' approved maps, instructions on map design and other suggestions on getting started with using the map editor. I should also create a new forum at our BG Forums web site dedicated to discussing map design. As for sharing the map editor, there are still some improvements to be completed. Good luck to all of our future cartographers.

-- Daxon

Maintaining Focus

Like all jobs, even making video games includes drudgework. Sometimes it is difficult to get the small things done. Who wants to stop and check if the railroads in China are right when we still need to work on the World map, add more future units to the equipment file and implement Covert Operations? I had to pull myself away from map editing today to take some screenshots of the game. Strategy First is in contact with various press people and needs a batch of new screenshots fairly often and this became one of my duties. Other things kept me from map editing such as a meeting with our graphics guy and another meeting about campaign progression mechanics. As we get closer to our deadlines, many elements are fighting for attention and we’re working hard to be sure no element gets missed.

-- Chris

War in Europe, continued...

Our weekly Dev Team testgame was the freshly-completed Europe map. Definitely going to be a popular map, with lots of options and regions of different capabilities. We also tested using the "31 Region" version, which is actually an internal test case since the "official" game specs say 16 regions maximum... There is some thought that we may release the 31 Region version as an option or a later downloadable file, depending upon time schedules. (Of course, not a lot of people will be successful taking over Europe from Croatia or Estonia...)

The battles started with Germany launching a surprise attack against the Benelux AI region (as if that has never happened before!), but this time France and Germany were allied and so carved up the remains. Denmark soon fell as well. After that, France and UK both rushed to take Ireland, which resulted in an accidental "war on incursion" declaration between the two. As the UK I decided to keep the war status and drive France out of Ireland, however French air superiority won the day - after a number of rebuffed air drops, a cross-channel sea landing at an undefended port was the clincher.

The remaining human players then worked on eliminating the AI regions, which was inevitable under the weight of the German, French and Italian armed forces. Unfortunately there is not enough time in one night to entirely finish a multi-player map of this size, so there is no "Supreme Ruler" to be declared...

-- George.