Echoes of EarthWork > Programming > Echoes of EarthAbstract: Echoes of Earth is the best game I've ever written. Hands down. It's a turn based civilization game that is played on a large square map. Unlike other games, however, it is played on two fronts. You can move units above ground and below ground, using guard towers and your central base as elevator points. The focus of development was on the multiplayer system, so the AI in single player games is pathetic. However, it works extremely well over a local network and also supports a central game discovery system. I programmed the yellow theme into the game very carefully, and every control was designed from scratch. So if you're interested in making your own listbox or editfield, this is the place for source and examples. The control panels are also dynamically created on runtime with some interesting code. The game also uses the Bellman Path Finding algorithm to find courses for the vehicles, and the source for that is included as a separate project.
Requirements: EoE requires a 500MHz machine with about 256MB or RAM. It can be run natively in Mac OS X, but should be run in the classic environment. There are several problems with the graphics engine in Mac OS X that I can't explain. So just get info on the application and switch it into classic. It'll be best for both of us. Game Tutorial: Download the game using the link at the top of the page, unzip it and run it. The screen will fade and a few moments later you'll see the Echoes of Earth splash screen. If you can, it'd be best to install it on two machines and start off with a multiplayer game. The computer players in the single player games are very, very bad, and sometimes don't even make buildings. (Like I said earlier, the focus here was on online gameplay). But either way you go, the beginning of this tutorial is the same. Use either method, and just press the Start Game in the lobby window.
The screen will transition to the in-game interface. You'll see a grid of greenish squares with a bright patch in the upper left corner. This bright patch is the area of the map visible to you. You'll notice the grass in this area has yellow specks on it. This means it's your territory. Go ahead and double click one of the buildings in this region. You'll see a block info window, with building options. This is how you begin building your civilization. Locate the mothership button and press Build It! to begin construction on the square. Repeat the process to build a power plant, refinery, and barracks on neighboring squares. You can also build a couple others, if you want. I'll go into more detail about the buildings in a minute.
Once you're done placing buildings, press the "Finished Turn" button in the lower left corner of the screen. This advances the construction on all of your buildings and gives your opponent a chance to do things. If you're playing a multiplayer game, the window freezes until your opponent makes his moves. Computer players are almost instantaneous, so you can continue playing if you're in a single player game. Press the Finished Turn button four times to complete all of your buildings.
Click on your refinery. Before we go any further, I'll explain how you make money. Your money is displayed in the top bar above the map. To earn money, you'll need to mine the minerals underground. Click the Switch button in the Map Options part of the side panel to see the underground level. You'll see patches of crystals and the foundation of your mothership. Now go back above ground. Double click the refinery to open up it's control panel. In the top half of the window, select the mining vehicle from the list and buy one. Close the panel and click Finished Turn twice to let the build finish. You'll see the vehicle pop up on the square. Double click the square again and you'll notice that the bottom half now contains details about the vehicle. Click the add button on the right side of the window. The panel will close and the cursor will change. This is how you tell your units where to go. Click the mothership and you'll see a line appear between the mining vehicle and the mothership. This is the path the vehicle will take. Using the add button in the control panel, you can give the vehicle a more complex path if you want. Click the Finished Turn button until the vehicle is on top of the mothership. Now double click that square and press the Transfer button to take the vehicle underground. Click the Finished Turn button again, and switch to underground view. You'll see that the vehicle is now beneath the surface. Following the same steps we used earlier to move the vehicle, make it go to one of the patches of mineral. Keep taking turns until you have the mineral. Then go back to the mothership and transfer back above ground. Take the vehicle back to the refinery and whalla! money!
That may seem overly complicated, but I promise, it's a lot easier than it sounds at first. Now let's talk about some of the other things in the game. A lot of the buildings have custom control panels, such as the power plant. You can see the power grid on the map once you've built a power plant, and you can turn off power plants to save money. There are tons of different tanks and vehicles in the game. Some of them fly, some of them can go through water, some of them can fire from a distance. Attacking other vehicles is relatively simple. Just open the control panel and press the Add button, click the opponents building or vehicle, and bam. Your unit will approach and fire. The goal of the game is to destroy all of your opponents buildings... good luck! And a few more closing notes: Some vehicles can be taken underground where you can sabotage your opponents mineral collection operation. You can also build guard towers above and below ground to make attacks more difficult. Pavement can also help you in the event of an attack, because it allows units to move more rapidly.
That pretty much covers the basics of the game. There's an in-game chat room you can access at the top of the screen so you can taunt the other guy. It also allows you to enter cheat codes (yes - I made cheat codes. What good game doesn't have them? I'm gonna make you look in the source for them though...) The Source - Not Something You'd Want to Meet in a Dark Alley: The source to this game is very neat, and extremely well organized by my standards. However, it was built using RealBasic 4, not 5, and there are many small changes that need to be made before the app will compile. Also, it uses a plugin to do the screen fades and transitions, and I've lost it. i'm not sure what it's called, and the app will not build without it. Feel free to mess around though. I used the Bellman Path Finding algorithm to do the vehicle movement, and that may be useful for anyone interested in building their own game. Enjoy! Version History: - J. Benjamin Gotow | |||||
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