Harris, strategy game

Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby charlie » 18 Jul 2014, 12:59

- Side-view line-art for all the aircraft
- Top-view pixel-art for those fighters that were still missing it

Did you do all these yourself? Really nice update.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 18 Jul 2014, 20:15

charlie {l Wrote}:
- Side-view line-art for all the aircraft
- Top-view pixel-art for those fighters that were still missing it

Did you do all these yourself? Really nice update.

Well, I started with three-view line-drawings from Wikipedia, and used muchly layer masks to colour all the surfaces. It was quite a lot of fun :) TheGIMP is awesome.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 19 Jul 2014, 00:16

Harris 0.2.2 is now out. Download for Linux x86_64 or for Windows, or pull from github and compile.

This release fixes a bug in 0.2.1's difficulty handling where sinking ships was always insanely hard.
(Details: an intended lower bound of 5% on the chance that a 'hit' would result in a 'sink' was actually an upper bound.)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby charlie » 19 Jul 2014, 01:06

Problem with the 64bit Linux download:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
~/Games/harris-0.2.2 $ ./harris
Loading data files...
Failed to enter data dir: chdir: No such file or directory
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 19 Jul 2014, 11:48

charlie {l Wrote}:Problem with the 64bit Linux download:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
~/Games/harris-0.2.2 $ ./harris
Loading data files...
Failed to enter data dir: chdir: No such file or directory


Ah dang, I think I forgot to mention in the readme...
You have to either "make install" or run "./harris --localdat"
(There's also '--localsav', which just makes the load/savegame filepickers start in '.' instead of ~/.local/share/harris; and '--local' as a shorthand for '--localdat --localsav'.)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Akien » 19 Jul 2014, 12:03

ec429 {l Wrote}:
charlie {l Wrote}:Problem with the 64bit Linux download:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
~/Games/harris-0.2.2 $ ./harris
Loading data files...
Failed to enter data dir: chdir: No such file or directory


Ah dang, I think I forgot to mention in the readme...
You have to either "make install" or run "./harris --localdat"
(There's also '--localsav', which just makes the load/savegame filepickers start in '.' instead of ~/.local/share/harris; and '--local' as a shorthand for '--localdat --localsav'.)


I think you should add a compilation option to choose whether you want a system-wide installation or "run in place". You could then compile the binary tarball with the run in place parameter, and let people who want to compile the game themselves set the required parameter to build the system-wide version.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby beoran » 20 Jul 2014, 09:51

What I do in my game Eruta is that I blindly try to open my config files in 7 or 8 different locations starting from ./data over /usr/local/share/erura, /usr/share/eruta , c:/program FIles/eruta/data, etc, etc until I find the data. Like that I don't need any compile time or run time switches, it just finds the data in any probable location it could be, with the bonus that data in the CWD gets priority over that in a well-known path, so it all cascades and it will make modding much easier.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Akien » 20 Jul 2014, 12:08

beoran {l Wrote}:What I do in my game Eruta is that I blindly try to open my config files in 7 or 8 different locations starting from ./data over /usr/local/share/erura, /usr/share/eruta , c:/program FIles/eruta/data, etc, etc until I find the data. Like that I don't need any compile time or run time switches, it just finds the data in any probable location it could be, with the bonus that data in the CWD gets priority over that in a well-known path, so it all cascades and it will make modding much easier.

But that's bad pratice, because you can't foresee all possible paths that people might want to install your game to. It's good to have some search paths to look for the game data, but you *must* provide a way to override those default search paths with something else.
For example in some Linux distributions (Mageia, Debian, Fedora), game data is installed in /usr/share/games/erura and the game binary in /usr/games, so if you did not hardcode this search paths, packagers would have to patch your code to add them. It's not a big work, but it's cleaner when there is a compilation option to do so.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby beoran » 20 Jul 2014, 16:59

Nothing bad about this, I can alsways include one more path to the list. I have to check it but I do think there is also an environment variable to override this as well at run time. But yes, it does seem like a good idea to also add a compile time determined path to the search list as well. But now you mention it, /usr/share/games/eruta will go into my search list as well by default. :)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 03 Oct 2014, 01:06

Harris 0.2.3 is now out. Download for Linux x86_64 or for Windows, or pull from github and compile.
(Remember to read INSTALL for instructions on how to install/run whichever variant you've downloaded!)

New in this release:
  • 'xbombers' - cancelled bomber projects like the Supermarine Type 317 and the Shorts' "Super Stirling".
    • You can enable them with a new screen in Set Up New Game.
    • Be aware that they may significantly affect game balance.
    • Some of the xbomber side-art isn't very good. Sorry about that.
  • Various little fixes

Savegames from 0.2.1 or 0.2.2 can be updated with the included 'upconvert.py' utility; just run "./upconvert.py old.sav > new.sav". (Windows users will probably need to install python.)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 26 Oct 2014, 02:42

Harris 0.2.4 is now out. Download for Linux x86_64 or for Windows, or pull from github and compile.
(Remember to read INSTALL for instructions on how to install/run whichever variant you've downloaded!)

New in this release:
  • Ability to manually choose the route the bomber stream will take (post-GEE only)
    • This enables you to avoid flak concentrations better than the auto-generated route does.
    • It's also useful for diversionary raids.
  • Ability to change the Zero Hour of a raid. Again, handy for timing diversionary raids for maximum effect.
  • Whenever an aircraft (whether friendly bomber or enemy fighter) is killed, display a description of the kill. (Also log it to stderr.)
    • Type of aircraft killed.
    • Location - generally relative e.g. "9mi NE of Oldenburg" or "at Skegness".
    • Killer - e.g. "flak at Düsseldorf" or "Messerschmitt Bf110".
  • Added new stats graph "totalraidgraph.py", shows the total number of bombers operating per night.
  • Fixed bug in install.py - some resources were missing from the manifest so weren't being installed.
  • Various other bugfixes and tweaks.

Savegames from 0.2.1 or later can be updated with the included 'upconvert.py' utility; just run "./upconvert.py old.sav > new.sav". (Windows users will probably need to install python.)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 08 May 2015, 23:55

I wanted to put out a new release for the anniversary of VE Day, but it's not really ready.
So here is a preview release, rushed out and completely lacking in polish: harris 0.3.0-pre. Download for Linux x86_64 or pull from github and compile.
There's no Windows build as I appear to have broken my cross-compilation infrastructure; hopefully I'll have it fixed in time for the 0.3.0 release proper. The big new feature (crewing) is completely unmentioned in the documentation, hasn't been properly balanced yet, and breaks the ABD and RUHR startpoints. Also it breaks save-compatibility from 0.2.x (hence the jump to 0.3 series).
With all that in mind, here's what's new in this release:
  • Crew and skill tracking.
    • Individual bomber aircrew are tracked, along with their level of skill.
    • After his tour of 30 ops a crewman is "rested" by spending 6 months as an instructor.
    • Instructors expand your training pool and thus increase the skill of newly minted aircrews.
    • Skills affect the various tasks a crewman might undertake, like navigating the bomber or shooting down an attacking fighter.
  • Regions, used in the kill-description text if no location is nearby. (This replaces the old "at (lon,lat)" form, which wasn't very immersive.)
    In the final 0.3.0, these will also be used to control the chance of shot-down aircrew escaping back to England if they safely bale out, but I haven't done that yet.
  • Some improvements to stats, like a new script profittarggraph.py and more readable value.py output.
  • Fixes for building on FreeBSD, supplied by Dmitry Marakasov.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Akien » 09 May 2015, 09:12

Awesome! Thanks for keeping us posted about your progress :)
I'll give it a try asap.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 18 May 2015, 21:37

Just a heads-up, the 0.3.0 release proper will break save-compat from the above preview release.

Gory details: I didn't think I needed to save a crewman's 'number of completed tours', only the number of ops completed this tour. Turns out I do need to keep track of completed tours, so that I can have a restriction whereby only experienced crews (say, with 15 completed ops) can join the Pathfinders, and only really experienced crews (like, already completed a tour) can fly the Mosquito.

Oh, also, there's an interesting bug in the preview release (already fixed in top-of-tree), whereby the 15 free planes you get each time a new type is introduced don't actually get crews assigned*, so they will be unmanned aerial drones ;) Workaround is to save the game and immediately load it (which always clears crew assignments).

*Strictly speaking that's not true; they are entirely crewed by clones of the zeroth crewman. This is because an index of -1 is used to indicate "no crew assigned", whereas an uninitialised integer field in a struct gets initialised to 0. Ah, the joys of C...
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 20 Mar 2016, 15:31

I'm back! It's been a while since I last worked on Harris, because I've spent a lot of time playing (and modding) a game that I won't name here, because it's not open source...
...but now I've found the time and energy to add a couple of features.

ashdnazg {l Wrote}:The main thing you wish to battle gameplay-wise is the repetition. Most nights I did more or less the same things over and over. I thought of more events, or changes in political priorities (i.e. this week/month you get more budget for doing x).

Changes in priorities have now been added to top-of-tree; the Air Ministry will randomly decide that it cares deeply about (say) minelaying and the steel industry, but isn't that interested in aircraft factories. Priorities (and dispriorities) add (resp. subtract) 20% to the budget payoff of a raid.

Also newly implemented: the game calculates the sun rise and set times, and bombers are much more vulnerable in daylight! So, you probably can't raid Berlin in the middle of summer ;)

And, enemy flak sites are only known to you after a bomber has flown past them (and lived to tell the tale).

Other things that have happened since I last posted:
  • Many of the stats reporters now use some C code for speed.
  • Modifications. At various dates, a bombertype gets a mod applied, changing some of its stats.
  • Shot-down crews may survive and possibly escape back to England.
  • Some minor UI additions/tweaks (including selectable map overlays).
  • Recent changes require an updated version of libatg; tag lv3.0.0.

So, in summary: this project isn't dead, and I will release a final version 0.3.0 eventually, honest!
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Imerion » 20 Mar 2016, 20:38

Cool! Will give 0.3 a try once your done! :)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Egg » 14 Apr 2016, 16:08

I read Albert Speer's biography, in which he expressed surprise that the Allied bombings of factories would have been much more successful if they had been followed up, which (according to him) didn't happen.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 17 Nov 2016, 08:32

I've finally got around to releasing Harris 0.3.0. Download for Linux x86_64 or pull from github and compile. (No Windows build I'm afraid, my cross-compile setup is still broken and I don't quite care enough to fix it.)

Changes since the last post include:
  • Some new targets have been added, including the cities of Bielefeld and Saarbrücken.
  • Reworked the budget and Confidence effects of raids. Tactical raids are now worth triple (because they tend to involve small weights of bombs on target). Also, confidence 'decays' continuously if not launching raids.
  • Certain events can change the Air Ministry priorities; also, Berlin raids are only worth double after event LONDON.
  • Added new side-art for the Supermarine Southampton xbomber (originally drawn for my in-progress alternate-history story about the aircraft).

I wish I could promise a shorter wait until the next release, but the feature at the top of my list now is an overhaul of the 'dropping-bombs-on-cities' part which will also impact navigation (during the bombing run) and damage handling, and possibly also need some weather-model bits as well; it's likely to take a long time (and certain to break save-compat again).
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 10 Sep 2019, 23:09

ec429 {l Wrote}:I wish I could promise a shorter wait until the next release, but the feature at the top of my list now is an overhaul of the 'dropping-bombs-on-cities' part which will also impact navigation (during the bombing run) and damage handling, and possibly also need some weather-model bits as well; it's likely to take a long time (and certain to break save-compat again).

After doing part of this on a branch and spending about a year playtesting and tweaking it, calamity struck: a hard drive failure. After which I realised that, like an idiot, I hadn't ever pushed that branch to github. This rather put me off working on harris for a while, but development is now rolling again; the beginnings of the next release can be seen on the tpipe branch of the repo. The first major feature for 0.4 is an expansion of the training system: now, green aircrews go through a pipeline of OTU, HCU and LFS, and as well as instructors they now also need aircraft, which you can assign from your forces.

Another, smaller, feature is 'marks', which are like mods but not retrospectively applied. It's a set of stat upgrades that apply to newly-built aircraft of a type; there are filters available to let you control which marks you send on a raid. Marks are used for small changes, whereas bigger changes (like the Halifax III or Lancaster X) still get their own Type.

These two features (marks and training units) interact nicely, as older marks can be assigned to training units to live out their days circuit-bashing in the hands of sprogs, while the latest and best version is used on the front-line operational squadrons.

I'm currently in mid-1940 of my first test playthrough after these changes, so I'm not sure what the balance is like (probably hard).

(Oh, and the hard drive with those navigation changes trapped on it? It's sat in my drawer waiting to be taken to a data recovery firm. I'm fairly sure the platters aren't damaged, so it should be possible to get the data off them if I can just get a round tuit one of these days. So hopefully those patches will eventually find their way into 0.4.x as well.)
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Jastiv » 19 Sep 2019, 17:42

That is a good reminder for people to commit to an off-site repository often. I try to make commits at least once a week, In some cases I even make them a couple time in one day depending on what I am working on. We shouldn't be so afraid of branches. That is what the branching feature is for.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 02 Dec 2019, 07:59

Freshly released: Harris 0.4.0.

There's a Windows binary build, but not a static Linux binary as something seems to have gone wrong with my toolchain there (it's picking up a bunch of libraries from my system that don't match the ones I'm shipping. I'll fix it later). Fortunately, Linux users are smart enough to build it themselves ;)

This version's new features are basically those I described in my last post — the training system overhaul and the Mark system — but now with (hopefully) all the bugs shaken out.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 03 Dec 2019, 10:35

No idea if it works on anyone's system but mine, but there's now a Linux build of 0.4.0 up on the release page.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby Ntech » 03 Dec 2019, 22:11

A screenshot would be lovely.
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 04 Dec 2019, 08:28

Ntech {l Wrote}:A screenshot would be lovely.


The main screen looks fairly similar to how it did in the OP:
harris_ctrl_040.png
Harris 0.4.0 'control' screen


The training pipeline UI, which is the main new thing:
harris_crew_040.png
Harris 0.4.0 'Crews & Training' screen
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Re: Harris, strategy game

Postby ec429 » 06 Dec 2019, 21:11

After a kind and trusting soul tested the Windows port, it turned out there were some fairly major it-crashes-if-you-click-on-anything bugs.
More embarrassingly, these actually reproduced under WINE, demonstrating that I'd really not been testing the Windows port beyond "it compiles — ship it!".

Hence, Harris 0.4.1 is now available, with builds for both Linux and Windows, and unlike 0.4.0 should actually work on the latter.
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