New TacOps Game Starting Soon

As always, anyone is welcome to play, but understand the following things:

1. The game is still in development. There are bugs.
2. You are not obligated to help bug hunt, but it helps. That said, just being in the game helps!
3. Don't make suggestions for improvement for now; only point out bugs and or cases where the behaviour is different than the manual.
4. Be moderately aware of the progress of WCTOO, you can do this by reading through this forum!

Alpha Game 5 is going to focus on three things:

1. The new 'Basic' Pilot Skill System
2. Tailing (still very buggy)
3. Missile Evasion (mostly good)
4. EDIT: Large maps! (This will be our first map that takes a lot of scrolling to play)

That means I expect you guys to try to use the above features at every opportunity, even if that means tailing your wingmates. (If you're really dedicated to the cause, fire a missile at your wingmates!) If I haven't chased you away yet, Welcome Tester!

To join Alpha Game 5, you must do the following things:

1. Go to the Phase 5 Game Site and make an account if you don't already have one.
2. Post here that you are going to play and declare your ship choices!
A. Everyone gets 3 ships.
B. Each ship must be from a different category: (light/medium/heavy fighter, bomber)
C. You can mix confed/kilrathi ships, but realize the FF's IFF recognition is by race, not team. (In fact, teams don't exist)
D. I will be "randomly" assigning a different skill level to each of your ships. Some of you will be stuck with a 'Green' ship, some with an Elite, and a lucky person is getting a 'Legendary' ship. The rest will be spread so that everyone will have at least one Regular/Vetaran.
E. Post the Ship's Callsign and its Pilot's Name (this can be your username, but doesn't have to be).

No rush, but I expect this game to start in about 2 weeks.

WC TacOps Seeking One More Pilot

Things have been quiet on the Wing Commander Tactical Operations Online front lately, but Avacar, Ironduke and the rest of the beta pilots are still plotting their next move. They have one player who's dropped out of the current test game, so one person who is up to speed on the rules now has the opportunity to take over the missing person's ships. Reply within the next 24 hours to be considered!

I did find someone who will, when I get around to explaining what is needed, build the map editor for us (which I feel is the one tool I don't want to make that is holding this project back). If/when that happens, I'll also go back into a development mode for other game features.

Meanwhile, on test Game 4, it sounds like most of you want to continue. What shall I do with the remaining ships Pantheos ships?

Watch Out, Enemy On Your Six!

Wing Commander TacOps Online has added several new features in the last couple weeks. From a gameplay perspective, the "tailing" feature has not been implemented. Selection of stacked objects has also been improved in the interface. Test Game 4 is currently in progress to test out these and newer features as they're implemented. You can peek in at the progress here.

I am pleased to announce that tailing is now fully functional! After a fully successful test case of 1 trial, I am 10% confident there will be no further problems! Unfortunately, like many of the phase5-based updates, only a signed-in account can properly witness how this will change things. As you probably should expect by now from my 'design intent' during a Movement Phase, an extra tab appears at the top, and should theoretically list all the tailing information you have available.

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After 4 hours of work, and a fair bit of diving into the inner workings of the jquery-ui widget I was trying to use, I have made a vast improvement to the multi-selector! I honestly didn't think I'd be able to understand what was going on well enough to fix this, but I think I finally pulled it off. Ironically, we're now using a bug-fixed, more improved version of the selectmenu jquery UI over anyone else on the internet! Sadly, I'm simply not interested enough in jquery development to go open up a github fork of the current selectmenu-ui tree, and put in a pull request to that community.

Okay enough blathering, let's deal with this from a WCTOO point of view: the select menus should now disappear when you mouse away from them. I haven't fixed the 'you have to pick something new' bug yet, however, but I believe that this was the key annoyance with them.

More Wing Commander Tabletop Gaming Rules Previewed

I use conventions as motivators to get painting and rule development done. I am hosting a Battlestar and a Wing Commander game at the con noted in the link. Rules can be found at the link or on my website thirdfatecreations.com. Battlestar and Wing Commander rules are similar but have their differences (implementation of shields, jump technology, energy allocation). But I try to keep the rules relativly simple for fast uptake at cons. Once all sides know the rules the battles generally go pretty quickly. Fighters die like flies (as it should be).

The Wing Commander game will be Nephilim against a coalition of Confed, Kilrathi, and possibly Border Worlds (with leftover lance tech). The coalition will be larger in size, but hey, they will have two ship/fleet killer weapons bearing on them. A third race will come into play if the coalition is getting its but kicked too quickly=). I will be playing the Neph as the defender of their foothold in the Kilrah system. The coalition will have a couple objectives, that don't require exterminating the Neph, to win.

WCTOO Wants You Too

There's a new test game of Wing Commander TacOps in the works, so now's your chance to get in on a preview of the action. The game will begin as soon as the new tailing feature is added, which could be just a few days away. Curious players can sign up at Crius.net and choose their fighters now (no capships in this battle!). A sample of the previous game can be found here (works best in FireFox). Game rules can also be found at the TacOps website.

General progress update: I've now put in a rough form of a movement-phase field report (seen during CP phase). It's completely untested and pretty basic; hopefully it looks okay. I've also started roughing in the code for tailing. It still doesn't do anything visible to you, but it is now trying to pass forward some info to the movement phase from the end-phase. Let me know if you see any side effects, and especially watch out for processing error messages on the turn selection screen that you reload to detect new turns on.

WCTOO Completes Turn Summary Task

Opinion time! I finally finished the End-Phase Field Report (aka what happened during Combat Phase) update demo. This is pure html/css for now, but I wanted your opinion on the readability. Colour/spacing/fonts/etc.

See the static demo here. I'll probably update this page with the other 2 field report demos as we go. I know starting with this one is an odd choice, but it was probably the least clear of the three.

WCTOO Engages Evasive Maneuvers

There's been more progress in the online version of Wing Commander TacOps. Under the hood, Avacar has programmed in email integration that informs players when a new turn is ready. There's also been a lot of experimentation with the missile and anti-missile systems. The current test game (best viewed in Firefox) shows Friend or Foe missiles in flight while pilots attempt to take advantage of their point defense and chaff systems to avoid getting hit. The testing is finding a lot of good issues, and the team is working through them.

Three new features have been added to the system (for testing). First, emails sent out should now contain a link to the current turn/phase. Second, when you submit an order, the 'intercepted communications' tab should reload on the fly, and move the ship over to the green side.

Third, if you're correctly logged in, you can click a red ship you pilot on the 'intercepted communications' window to pull up its orders window (this is an alternative to clicking the 'orders' button on its ship pop-up). None of this has been tested, so feedback is appreciated.

WCTOO Upgrades UI

The online iteration of Wing Commander TacOps continues to get better and better. A number of testers are playing through a mock game now to work out bugs and implement new features. The most visible addition in the last month is a bright new starfield & nebula background, and there are also cool dropdown windows for player accounts, turn reports, navigation and communications. It's all looking pretty slick. You can see the test game and the latest interface here (works best in Firefox).

On a side note, what do you guys think of the improved turn navigation system of Phase 5? Is it working for anyone? It isn't 100% done. When I next have time to code 'new' features, I'll add an 'update' button which would be the same as refreshing the turn selection list (in that it would run the engines if all orders are in) as well as an auto-countdown to do such a refresh automatically.

WCTOO Now Has Pilot Registration Too

Wing Commander TacOps has received a sharp graphical upgrade! Or rather, I've upgraded my web browser, and the existing art assets all look how they're supposed to now. Avacar has also made great progress on 'phase 5' of the plan to develop an automated version of the game. Recent advancements include significantly enhanced pilot roles. Players can individually authenticate, create unique personas and develop skill stats. Game navigation, display options and reporting functions are also more polished. These improvements can be seen in the game's test environment (here for unregistered players). Last, but not least, the project has a new acronym. WCTOO - short for Wing Commander Tactical Operations Online - has seemed to stick.

I encourage *everyone* who intends to play WCTOO when the Beta comes out to start registering (click "Account") their user accounts now. Even if we migrate servers, I'll take that with us.

Still to do for phase 5:

1. Games/Deaths/Kills tracking at the user level (slots are there, just not the code)
2. More fixes to indicator stacks?
3. Pilot skills firmed up
4. Better user controls re: options/changing passwords/etc.
5. A drop-down at the top called 'game' (or maybe in the navigation pane?) that will let you see who hasn't issued orders yet.
6. Automatic background counter that will refresh the board every X (=30?) seconds in case you don't, so that if you're playing a highly active game, it can be semi-live.
7. A 'force check to see if turn is ready yet' button.
8. A short email script that will send email notifications on turn completions (subject to user preference?)

Many of the above are actually sort of fluffy and not strictly necessary. Based on popular vote/opinion, I can drop off the more user-friendly ones, and stick to the core game mechanic ones, if, after sufficient testing of what's already there in phase 5, we want to push forward to a beta and start really playing.

Finally: I can't stress enough that this is really meant to be played in Firefox 3.6.10+ for now. Wedge has also been busy this week, so there's no guarantees of anything in Phase 5 being at-all cross-platform safe yet, although I'm trying to be better about it. We will continue to do our best as time moves forward however.

Automated TacOps Game Moving Full Speed Ahead

There are a number of cosmetic icons that would significantly improve the look/feel of the game as well. If anyone out there can make or has access to the following, it would be awesome if you sent it our way:

1. A missile schematic to use as a faded background behind the missile targetting options.
2. A schematic of a weapon system (or frankly, just a cool looking circuit) for use behind the standard weapon targetting system.
3. Small icons of missiles, crosshairs, etc. Maybe icons for simple maneuvers (something that looks like an immelman, barrel roll, etc.)

TacOps 'Combat Alpha Demo' Phase Reached

It certainly took me long enough, but the combat alpha demo is now ready. This hacked version will alternate between the movement alpha and the combat alpha, on a phase-for-phase basis. As before, this is all within the fake 'turn 1' that normally wouldn't have infinite phases.

I need everyone's help right now. I suspect there will be a lot of bugs; some may lock it up and need me to fix it. Some may simply be wrong behaviour. I've got the same ugly overlayed reporting working, and it should report all gun and missile fire.

The pre-engine pop-up should only allow valid targets, but doesn't yet list the difficulty of the shot, nor does it have all the tooltips working. Also note that, since missiles are resolved in the end-turn phase, if you fire one, it will record its details, and just sit there. I'm not finished with the missile class; I don't know if they'll even show up at the moment, but I will look into that in the next day or so.

I know this has taken a long time, but this was the biggest bulk of the work. We still have a ways to go, but we're now past halfway through phase 4.

TacOps Tech Demo Adds Mouseovers

The Javascript layer development phase of Wing Commander TacOps online is now complete. Avacar has set up a sample page of what a simulated game might look like in the 'engine' here (may not work in Internet Explorer). Ironduke has also updated his wish list of graphical elements. All current TacOps ships have been converted for the software-based game, but craft like Free Trader, Venture, Talon, Gothri or Tarsus (in the TacOps art style) would be much appreciated.

Everything else is a nice bonus. Also, I haven't listed ships like the Arrow or Scimitar, for instance. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want those in WCTO - if you want to contribute anything at all, feel free! The only prerequisite being that it should match the existing art style. (And while I'm dreaming: I'd also love some civilian ships from Howie's Pioneer project... )

Online TacOps Taking Shape

If you go check out the window demo page, you'll notice the new, and improved 'reduced profile' ship info window. Additionally, the last prototyped window, the 'end phase' is available at the very bottom.

Yes, I realize some of the windows interact; that's probably because I'm reusing names, but all the command windows will never be open at once (since even if you have multiple ships, you'll never have them at different turn phases at once). Also, right now, the 2 ships have their slide-out linked; I haven't decided if this is how it will remain, or if I need to add a last bit of unique identifyer code in there.

I need to do an update to the weapon class initialization and tie it into the ship class, and then I can finish up phase 3 with the self-generated display of a ship pop-up in the context of the phase 2 end demo. All ships will currently be piloted by me, since I haven't even written the pilot class (and don't really intend to until phase 5, if I recall the plan correctly).

Online TacOps Game Grows Each Week

Hi Everyone. I have a nice Phase 3 bonus for you. With the skills I picked up on Saturday, and using the framework I built for the Phase2a demo (i.e. this is not database fed, like the real game will be), I give you Fun With Rapiers. The formatting on the dialog is a bit chunky, but it took all of 30 mins to do this entire demonstration.

My next update will likely be longer in coming, as I now have to tackle the actual Phase 3 objectives (build the ship info dialog, and weave it into the code so it is turn/phase database fed. I also intend to build the pilot class, which I haven't done yet, and tie it in).

Help Build the Fleet

This list shows all available graphics for use with the computer-aided version of WCTO. Mainly meant for Avacar right now, but it also shows the progress of the graphical side of the project.

Personally, I'd love to include the WC1 fighters, but their stats would be tricky to balance... Actually, I have all the WCTO ship stats worked out for pretty much all craft from WC1 to WC3 and Privateer - I'm just lacking ship models that are on par with Marc's excellent work.

Test Basic TacOps Tech Demo

Online TacOps Version in Development

Phase 1: Establish a working, static html/css board which successfully overlays the grid on a background, and puts ships in grid cells. Being static, I expect a hardcoded change is necessary to move the ship to a different cell. I also need to work out how ships that are larger than cells will work (since images typically aren't positioned based on their center), and how to handle multiple ships in the same cell.

The key thing shown here, is that we have determined how I'll layer the css and the html, what is a child to what, tag wise, and how I'll move ships around. While this static version can't move ships without a hard code change, *where* to put that hardcode change is obvious.

The next step, I'll put in the hex-coordinates to pixel-position math, and a form to let us control them. Additionally, I may mess with some simple jquery. finally, I'll start playing with the php GD library that lets us rotate the image on-the-fly, and see if we want to do that, or simply store 6 orientations for each ship.

I haven't decided the best way to address if 2 ships are on the same square yet.

All Fighters Up!

Jalkehi vs. Sabre so far... Anyone else up for the challenge? Volunteers for a Sartha wing? :)

TacOps Squadron Regrouping

It's been a year or so since the last TacOps scenarios took place, and the gang is getting restless. Ironduke and several players are looking into possibly setting up a new play-by-mail or IRC chat-based session. Pilots from previous games, as well as new recruits, should let them know if there's more interest! Wing Commander Tactical Operations is a fan made strategy game with an advanced set of rules and fun accessory cards. Check out the game's website or rule book for more info.

IRC would be perfect - if only you guys were anywhere near my time zone. :) However, you could host your own games any time if you want to! The rules are all there, so it would just be a matter of displaying ships' positions and stuff. (Using MapView or something similar might help.)

TacOps Ship Sheet Preview

No, I'm not dead - I'm actually working on those internal damage rules in my spare time. I think I finally found a quick, easy and "realistic" solution! And I've put together a sample ship sheet for the ever so popular Epee light fighter (see attached jpg).

Ships are now divided into front and rear arc when it comes to determining damage, which means that armor will also be divided into a front and rear portion. Once a ship's armor is gone, hits will damage internal systems - starting from the outermost components and working their way through to the critical parts. Hits can affect the first 3 rows of subsystems, until one of the first 3 rows is completely destroyed. (If you destroyed the subsystem in row 2, then damage could be done to row 1, 3 and 4 instead of 1, 2 and 3.) Which also means that it's possible to literally rip a ship apart from bow to stern - or vice versa. (I know it's not an exhaustive explanation of how internal damage will work, but I think you get the idea.)

Oh, and you might notice I've included a gun energy chart in that ship sheet... I guess the next manual will have to be version 0.2 instead of 0.15, since I'm probably going to change quite a bit of the game's mechanics... (For the better, I hope!)