Sunday, September 15, 2013

Lame Teaser

Since my last post was a lot of words, and very little pictures, this time I'll show pictures.  After an absolutely daunting amount of coding time this weekend (wife is sick), I am making significant progress getting everything working.  

Here are some examples of my not yet finished cards, but I think accurate data (please point out anything that isn't).  There is a lot missing from the Strategic Operations conversions, like what if I have a long tom on the rear of a vehicle, but more BV up front, does it become a worthless item?  


Anyway, here are a few ugly pics of a work in progress, of my totally dynamically created cards, with *no* optional rules of mine:

I think this one is a first.  I made stuff fit, but it got a bit small.  The Luftenburg has even more armor and I'll be making the card double up in size when the circles get too small to use.

I haven't implemented the IF ability yet...

Oooooo, scary.

One of the more complicated tanks, and kinda scary too :)

The mech I lost in 4 die rolls over the weekend.  Die roll 1, landed ok.  Die roll 2, missed with my charged HPPC.  Die roll 3, rolled '2' for my supercharger. Die roll 4, rolled '12' for criticals taking out 3 engine slots.  Quickest game ever!

My original favorite.

And the Royal SLDF version.

I think the points may be wrong on this one.  I kinda think that the armor/structure should be split by entities.  So, if you did 5 damage, you would kill 1 with 1 armor and 1 structure hit, while the other 3 was wasted as you focused on 1 target... I dunno.
An old favorite... this one looks good and may be right.  Oh, my point values will eventually include the tech rating beside them (so 18C or something in this case). This is so when you play games, you get a gist for just how advanced your force is.

The doors are wrong, I just fixed that code.  Looks like I shouldn't have the LRM/FLK in there either (that is an optional rule of mine).  Also gotta work on the fonts in the attack block, and figure out why ER isn't showing.  The 2nd attack is capital missile, it'll show a "MSL" after the bracket typically.  "DT" is damage threshold btw.
Again, doors not right, but check out how perfect the nose fit in the gap!
Many warships *do* work, though obviously some have FAR too much armor.  This one fit ok, though I'm not sure why I don't have TP defined, the doors/cargo are broke, and the attacks are a bit small.  The first attack I believe is capital, the second capital missile.

 And what happen when things go wrong, very very wrong.  The attacks are overlapping (and still not showing ER for some reason.. it *used* to work!).  The armor is just, well, too much at 2000 points.  The structure of 99 is even pushing it.  There is just no way to fit 2000+ points of armor on this little bitty card.  I'll be checking for this in the near future, and if the number is too high the height of the card will be doubled.  The extra room will be used for more armor/structure.  I *might* instead double its width, move the special up beside the top and middle blocks, and make the entire bottom row a big armor block.  The image will get a bit smaller and be placed up top to the left of the PV.  Lots to do to make the Leviathan II work, but it does create the card with only a couple minor errors (my bay door format is broken for pretty much all DS/WS/JS/SS and large SV right now, so I gotta redo those units).

Again, these are *NOT* finished yet.  I'm pretty sure the Jormungand is 100% right, as I was using it to test against the example in Strategic Operations (which was wrong, with no errata, ugh).  I have a lot of minor typo's to fix in my database to get more up and running, and a few sequencing thing.  If I can be productive again over the week, I may have a roughly 90% success rate by next weekend.

After stuff gets working I'll start working on allowing you to specify the skill of the crew, the environment your fighting in (so you get a different card for underwater battles, and another if there is high winds, high temp, high gravity, etc, etc).  Oh, and all the settings of the cards are configurable, so if your Davion and print your cards, you can make the back of blocks yellow.  You can add textures as a backdrop, change colors of *everything*.  I'm hoping the color cards can be fully supported with the right user settings.

I updated the Battletech Engineer site with this code, so know most stuff is broken right now.

Go post on the forum!

3 comments:

  1. Are you using the new MUL values (ie. have you figured out how to scrape them yet?) most of the ones I've looked at have the old svg code commented out under the new image code, but there's a few missing fields (specifically type) but that's available in the blurb at the top of the unit details.

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    1. I can get the new values, however, all these values I'm creating are programatically done. For example, the current MUL doesn't have stats for things like buildings, mobile structures, support vehicles, dropships, warships, jumpships, or space stations. Also, by progamatically doing it, when they release the Strategic Operations errata some time in 2025, it'll be easier for me to change the code. AND, by creating the values myself, I can help find issues with the current MUL data (which I know there are many, its unavoidable) and apply some of my own stats like a rocket launcher ability that can be crossed off after use, rear arc weapons, ammo tracking, etc.

      There is a JSON sorta API for the MUL, you can view a unit like:
      http://masterunitlist.info/Unit/xml/1006
      and you can get the stats that way easier than scraping the page. There *used* to be a page you could go to that listed all units too, but its broke. I used this with my first incarnation of a quick strike card maker and whenever I update my Alpha Strike card maker again I'll use this method instead of the cached data I have now.

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  2. Those are crazy looking cards. Love all those circles.

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