Status of the development

Battle for Mandicor is a free real-time strategy (RTS) game.
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Mikko Merikivi
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Status of the development

Post by Mikko Merikivi »

The development is and has been for five years nearly at a halt. Now as the only remaining developer I can say the 0.0.7 branch came very close to being release-worthy but it's still plagued by bugs so it was never actually released. Also, modifications to the AI broke probably half of the single-player maps. Anyway, the never officially released version can be downloaded using this command. It comes with a really old and slightly modified version of Stratagus:

Code: Select all

svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/battle4mandicor/code/branches/bfm-0.0/bfm battle4mandicor-code
Battle for Mandicor keeps micro-management to a minimum and focuses on the strategy elements. The units rarely have special abilities (which is realistic considering the medieval fantasy setting) but there are lots of upgrades. A successful army requires a good mixture of units. The armies can be huge (up to 500), selection of a huge number of units is possible and you can train up to 15 units at once in any training establishment.

A wiki for the project exists but is not currently hosted anywhere.

Possible development includes:
* Formations
* Selecting wounded units with a hotkey
* A better AI:
- Defending and attacking forces would be one and the same, the AI would just use them strategically
- Doing things would depend on resources, not just a static build order
- Reinforcing the attacking units
- Less exploits, for example sending someone as a bait and the AI will just stop at that point
* An advanced damage calculation. For example, damage types could be introduced.
* And there's always room for more and better written lore.

Of course, most of these would require me to become a better programmer.

Also, it's possible I'll port it to the newest version of Stratagus. Even that isn't easy since the game is so old.
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Kyran
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Re: Status of the development

Post by Kyran »

Timberdragon did some of the graphics for this game. Perhaps he still has some that weren't used.
04:27 jim4 why haven't you added wc1 support? this project sucks. i'm only going to use freecraft
05:06 jim4 finished wc1 support yet? i've been waiting for 6 years
05:10 jim4 new things scare me
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Andrettin
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Re: Status of the development

Post by Andrettin »

I can't seem to be able to open the maps in any way. The WC2 editor crashes when opening the puds, and pudconvert crashes when converting them to the modern Stratagus format.
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Kyran
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Re: Status of the development

Post by Kyran »

Andrettin wrote:I can't seem to be able to open the maps in any way. The WC2 editor crashes when opening the puds, and pudconvert crashes when converting them to the modern Stratagus format.
I'd assume BoM would insert custom units into the PUD format, causing the old WC2 stuff to crash when trying to use it.
04:27 jim4 why haven't you added wc1 support? this project sucks. i'm only going to use freecraft
05:06 jim4 finished wc1 support yet? i've been waiting for 6 years
05:10 jim4 new things scare me
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Andrettin
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Re: Status of the development

Post by Andrettin »

Kyran wrote:
Andrettin wrote:I can't seem to be able to open the maps in any way. The WC2 editor crashes when opening the puds, and pudconvert crashes when converting them to the modern Stratagus format.
I'd assume BoM would insert custom units into the PUD format, causing the old WC2 stuff to crash when trying to use it.
It seems that the problem are not special units (pudconvert gives me an option to skip them), but rather with something particular to that map: I managed to actually load it now with the WC2 pud editor, but it still crashes when selecting the lower-left area (which appears as blue on the minimap in the editor), and pudconvert still crashes when converting the scenario. I imagine that this is being caused because there are new tiles being used in that area of the map.
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Kyran
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Re: Status of the development

Post by Kyran »

Try saving them with PUDDraft.
04:27 jim4 why haven't you added wc1 support? this project sucks. i'm only going to use freecraft
05:06 jim4 finished wc1 support yet? i've been waiting for 6 years
05:10 jim4 new things scare me
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