Coding progress for 0.3.8

These are my favorite posts: I get to say what is going in next rather than moan about code / apologize for bugs!

Anyhow, the next phase of SPQR needs to have battles in some way, and their addition will mean we need:

Some enemy units
A game turn
Extra unit stats
Some actual combat decisions
Retreats and unit damage

And this will be 0.3.8. There will probably need to be some extra 'bling' as well when we show information about the units.

After some playing around with the code today, here's the first things to do:

Make some players (just Romans and Celts for now).
Give each region an owner.
Add some more units to the game, and give them owners and stats.
Allow some way of displaying those stats.
Check for special case if you move into another region.
If the region is empty, just more the region over to the side of the unit that moved in.
If the region is not empty, start a battle.

So far today:

Make some players (just Romans and Celts for now). - DONE
Give each region an owner. - DONE
Add some more units to the game, and give them owners and stats. - DONE
Allow some way of displaying those stats. - PARTIALLY DONE

I suppose also we'll start to add some regions to the map as well. At the moment it's a pain when we do this, but the task can be made easier with some code. I'm on the case

So, I will start by come back with some gentle stuff as I re-read the code base. I will insert the regions for Spain and Greece, and also make the making of data for them a lot easier (it's a small pain right now, and could be easier).

So, after a look today and yesterday, I decided to first work on getting all the unit + region highlighting properly done. There were (are) a few bugs, and I want to change a few things (like the fact that we don;t highlight the selected unit, which I think is a bit silly. Hopefully that can be done in a few days, and after that add the simple battle code.

So MAYBE this version can be out in 3 weeks or so? Let's aim for a mid-April release, eh?

Just an update; Iḿ slowly going through the rendering code, tryiong to make it a bit better and fix all the little gfx artifacts as they come up.

It's a case of just "getting it exactly right", and hopefully I can finished by the start of next week (maybe today if I'm lucky!)

So yesterday I did a LOT of bug-fixing and getting the rendering just right: I think most of it works now (although I am sure that it needs more work somewhere).

I also started the Spanish regions, I've done the graphics but I've yet to do the data files.

That means that this week I will be starting to code the battles & unit calculations; so version 0.38 is not actually that far away

As of revision 194, the Spanish regions have been entered. The game now also tracks population of cities, and a region can have no city at all (technically, a population of 0).

So in the next day or 2 I shall write the basic battle code screen, which will be a simple "choose a few options" screen, apply the results, move the units accordingly and tell you what happened.

With that coded, essentially 0.3.8 will be done and I will move onto 0.3.9, which will concentrate on getting the cities in the game.

The battle screen has been added, but it is currently very ugly

Maybe this week I can finish all the battle code. I hate to say something like that because of all the times I've said something like that in the past, but I feel that 0.3.8 is not that far away.

The battle code widget has been done. I will add some code to resolve actual battles in the next few days, but I will keep it simple for now as it will need to be play-tested a lot.

The actual code for making units retreat and so is pretty easy, so I expect 0.3.8 to be finished by this time next week

I am very very close to 0.3.8 being ready. I had a bit of trouble getting the highlighting done properly (in the end I brute-forced it, and it seems to work fine).

So.... MAYBE this will be released today or tomorrow