Invincible Countermeasure (RTS/programming game)

[linley]

I've recently released a new beta version (beta 2) of my game Invincible Countermeasure, which is a game about attacking and defending computer systems (in a very abstract way). On one level it's an RTS, and it comes with a number of RTS-style tutorials and missions. But it's also a programming game, and you can use the built-in C-based compiler to design new units and write their AI.

Here's the sourceforge page, with source code (licence is GPL v3 or later; compiling requires Allegro 5.0 or 5.1), Windows binaries and an OSX binary package compiled by Peter Hull: https://sourceforge.net/projects/invincible-countermeasure/files/beta2/

And here's a github repository with a UNIX package set up by Brandon McCaig: https://github.com/bambams/invincible-countermeasure/

It looks like this:







And here's a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1-NLIPyJjo

All comments welcome!

[Julius]

That looks quite amazing!

Would it be easy to have it work in another programming language like lua, javascript or python?

Is it intended to be edutainment for learning programming?

[CryHam]

Very cool. Looks fun.
So you write the code for AI in C directly in game?
What do you use for that, is that code interpreted?
Any idea how much performance it needs or how much code can a ship use to not slow down game?

[linley]

The AI code runs in a virtual machine emulating an imaginary 16 bit processor, with bytecode representing basic machine code instructions. The game includes a compiler that turns C into this special bytecode (it includes an assembler that builds the bytecode as well, but it's not very user friendly), and has a basic development environment designed for coding in C (you can see the IDE open in one of the screenshots). It could work in other compiled languages as well, but there'd need to be a special compiler to produce the game's bytecode.

Each process (ship) runs its AI routines a couple of times a second and has a certain number of instructions it can execute each time, which is enough to create complex AI but not enough to slow down the game. Even my old laptop with a Celeron processor has no problems running it.

It could be used for learning programming, and it also has a kind of turn-based multiplayer so it can be played competitively as well.

[mdtrooper]

Hi.

I have played the game and it is great. I am the guy who opened the issue in github about the fail with Makefile .

But I have been searching the strings for to help in the translation into spanish (for example) and the strings are in the files (into the media folder) that are used for the "bytecode".

Then I wonder...is it easy to add the __() function of gettext into interpreter?

Thanks, regards.

[linley]

Hi mdtrooper,

Good to hear you've got it working! Unfortunately, I think adding gettext or the __() function into the game's compiler or interpreter would be very difficult. It would basically require re-implementing gettext for the game's own compiler, which would be very complicated and require a lot of work. Sorry!