3D A&A variant for PC, Web, and Mobile

I was hoping that this thread would generate some lively discussion, but perhaps IL spoke for everyone when he suggested targetting Global War 1939. I have proceeded in this direction, but should anyone care to lend their voice in agreement or disagreement please let me know.

In my previous post I raised a question as to whether or not to base the software version on a real map which can be zoomed in or out or use the same type of map used in the physical board game. I am hoping to hear some feedback on this since I have already put work into automating the map-creation process.

In the meantime I have been working on a very simple UI prototype to sort out the most intuitive method of displaying a lot of information in a small space as well as monitoring or moving pieces across the board. This means that I have taken the opposite approach most developers (myself included) would take in creating a game, where normally one would implement the engine and only then worry about the UI. In this case I am of the opinion that the engine implementation is fairly trivial, meaning that the rules are well known and it is simply a matter of implementing them, and because there is no complex math involved the process is trivial albeit laborsome. The UI, on the other hand, can make or break a game, and I believe that it is the crucial element for me to get right, and as such I am devoting most of my efforts into evolving my UI into something that makes it a joy to use instead of a an encumbrance that needs to be tolerated in order to play the game. I have seen many good games ruined by a terrible user interface, extremely cumbersome to navigate through and very unintuitive, taking many clicks to get through the simplest tasks. A&A is particularly challenging because of the lack of real-estate (most regions are small, islands are worse), each region can contain a relatively large amount of varying unity types, and each country can have their own unit of each type in a region. Creating an interface that will allow 7 countries (let’s say 6 defending allies and 1 attacking axis), each with varying numbers of each of 7 different unit types, to be easily deployed and easily differentiated and quantified at a quick glance on a small island such as malta is a huge challenge, made even worse when you add naval units which are parked right outside the island.  Add to that the task of creating an interface in which the player can easily move pieces around and keep track of which and how many units are attacking what from which region, whether certain planes are involved in land assault or bombing run, etc… makes for a UI developer nightmare. I have already started serious work into exploring these issues and would appreciate any ideas and thoughts from the community. I plan to post varying evolutions of the UI prototype from time to time in order to get user feedback and help refine the process.

Hello everyone,

I’ve been busy working at my day job and on a couple of projects on the side, one of which is the Axis and Allies variant I mentioned. I haven’t posted in a while so I thought I’d stop by and let you see where I was at so that you wouldn’t think this was vaporware. I’m posting a link to a technical demo of a 3D sphere with a custom map on it that can be zoomed in/out and rotated. The map used is very much a work in progress (sea zones need cleaning up) and will most likely end up being an alternative map that can be downloaded, but I’m working closely with one of the A&A veterans in creating a map that is more in keeping with the Global 1940 style or the 1984 Milton Bradley map; something more in line with the period. I do, however, want to get away from the old practice of distorting parts of the map since that was done on physical boards due to real-estate limitiations. We no longer need to do this due to our ability to zoom in and out of the map; this means we can use a real map that is scaled correctly, which is what I’m using in the demo.

In any case, here is the demo of what we have so far; there are no units since this is just for testing the 3D map :

http://www.quantumward.com/AA/WebPlayer.html

edit : for those with a 64-bit browser you may need to install the following plugin (instead of the 32-bit one) at http://webplayer.unity3d.com/download_webplayer-3.x/UnityWebPlayerFull64.exe

For Full-Screen mode, right-click and select from the menu. To exit, press escape key.

Regards,

Anthony

It should most definitely work on IE… do you get the “unity web player - install now” button? did you install it? let me know exactly what you experience.

edit: Would someone else confirm that they experience the same issue in IE?

Ahhh, let me guess… you’re using IE 9 64-bit?

If so, the default Unity plugin on the page is only for 32-bit browsers. The 64-bit version can be found at http://webplayer.unity3d.com/download_webplayer-3.x/UnityWebPlayerFull64.exe.

Let me know if this does the trick!

Anthony

I updated the page to include some units in the mediterranean region for testing, just to get an idea of what their size looks like from different zoom levels. Any input regarding scale, colors, or anything is appreciated.

BTW, you can view full-screen by right-clicking and selecting Full-Screen option. Exit with escape key.