Armoured Commander: WW2 Tank Commander Roguelike

[Rev_Sudasana]

AC does allow you to change from RR to general stores while you still have RoF. I think what the article is referring to is: you have one remaining shell in the RR, you make your RoF roll, thus reloading the RR shell; after that, can you then switch to general stores? AC definitely lets you do this.

Otherwise it doesn't makes sense, since using the Ready Rack directly impacts the RoF roll result. You can switch between reloading from the Ready Rack and general stores in the middle of an attack, and you should do so if your RR stock for the selected shell type reaches zero. But I think you should have to make this choice before you fire, and thus before the RoF roll is calculated. Otherwise, you could always reload from ready rack and gain the bonus to the RoF, and then just grab a general stores shell after you make your roll.

What I might do is after a successful reload from the RR and maintaining RoF, automatically switch to General Stores reload if there's no more of the selected shell type in the Ready Rack. This way the player doesn't have to stay on top of this and can keep firing, albeit with a lower chance of maintaining RoF.

[monkie]

I totally missed the fact that you could change the loaders order in between the shots if you maintain ROF.

I like your idea of having it automatically switch to general stores if the RR is empty for that shell type. I think it gets pretty exciting when you have hit a dangerous unit and maintained ROF and want to keep mashing that ENTER button. In the spirit of the game I don't think the player should be penalized by having to stop firing but of course will incur the ROF penalty and SHOULD be thinking of having the Assistant driver start passing the ammo.

[PleasingFungus]

Could the source be made available, or a mac release (with py2app)? It's possible to pull the source out of py2exe releases, but it's a pain, and I'd really like to play the game on OS X.

Thanks either way!

[Rev_Sudasana]

I'll make the source available for the next release, I just wanted to get it a bit more organized first.

[PleasingFungus]

I'll make the source available for the next release, I just wanted to get it a bit more organized first.

Thanks!

I see now that the game has dependencies that mean it might not be trivial to run it on OS X, but I appreciate it anyway.

[Rev_Sudasana]

The main one is libtcod, there's a project to provide OSX support here: https://bitbucket.org/KillerX/libtcod_osx/wiki/Home, no idea if it's been kept current or if it works at all.

[akeley]

This is shaping to be a great game - and it`s a nice change from the usual cramped-and-dark dungeon fare (though tank interiors are not much different really ;) And yes, extra bonus in bringing back the style & atmosphere of board games and SSI classics - only now in RL flavour.

Progress from the first alpha is already huge and rather impressive. I`ve never played PB so can`t comment on mechanics - in fact still figuring it all out slowly, but that`s the fun part too. One term I`m still unsure of is "hull down" - what does that mean?

Also, any chance for more flexible resolutions/fullscreen? At the moment on my 1366x768 laptop screen the bottom text line or two disappear which is quite annoying.

[monkie]

Basically Hull Down means that the tank is positioned such that only the turret is visible to the enemy, usually accomplished by driving the tank behind some type of cover such as a wall, or the crest of a hill. This lets the tank fire on the enemy while exposing only a small portion of the tank to return fire. In Patton's Best it's very important to try to get the tank into a Hull Down position since any shots that would normally hit your hull (and almost always penetrate) are now considered misses.

 Also note that there is no guarantee that the driver can get the tank into a hull down position, it's only an attempt since maybe the available cover is just not present at that point in time. You can increase the chances of the driver finding hull down cover by giving the commander the order to direct movement, and also it helps if both the commander or the driver have they're hatches open.

[monkie]

Question:  I noticed that one of the enemy units shifted position yet they only moved to another one of the hexes that remained in the same zone and range. I thought that enemy units can only shift distance to our tank or to another zone? Also, is the facing of the unit taken into account at this time?

Really got frustrated engaging a Jgdpnzer 4 the other day, hit it several times only to watch the AP rounds bounce off. You can only imagine the frustration of Allied tankers as they find out that they're 75 just didn't have the power to deal with some of the German armor. Usually just a better idea to find hull down or full cover and let the 76 armed Shermans do they're job, or better yet the Firefly.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Also, any chance for more flexible resolutions/fullscreen? At the moment on my 1366x768 laptop screen the bottom text line or two disappear which is quite annoying.

Should be possible, if it's only one or two lines, to bring the window height down to 768.

Question:  I noticed that one of the enemy units shifted position yet they only moved to another one of the hexes that remained in the same zone and range. I thought that enemy units can only shift distance to our tank or to another zone? Also, is the facing of the unit taken into account at this time?

This is one of the changes that I'm starting to implement from the board game. In the future units will have more flexible move distances. At present their facing is not taken into consideration when they move, but it is re-rolled after the move, so they may end up with a different facing than before.

[Rev_Sudasana]

A screenshot of part of what I've been working on:

[akeley]

The window size seems fixed, I can`t do nothing to it. A workaround is to put my task bar into auto-hide mode, that frees up enough space to see nearly the whole window. 

I think the gfx in the game is actually awesome - you capture the  "blocky late 70s " style very well and in my opinion it suits the game just right - hope it won`t change eventually.

As for the main window text & hexes are also completely sufficient - as one of the posters nicely put it earlier it`s the "theater of the mind" that provides the best visuals and atmosphere. And so, reading a terse message that my driver "burned to death" is much more hard hitting than any fancy graphics would be.

[monkie]

M4A3E2(76)W       NICE!   

[monkie]

Is the .50 AAMG going to be fitted to the M4's in the future? I didn't see an option for the commander to fire it, or did I miss something?

[Rev_Sudasana]

There's still a ton of stuff to be added to this game, and the AAMGs are one of them. You'll also have the option of firing SMGs from open hatches at infantry too!

All of the Sherman variants from Patton's Best have now been added in. Lots of extra stuff that later sherman models have, like stabilizers and smoke mortars, haven't yet been added, but at least you can get the benefit of better armour, a loader hatch, and the 76mm main gun.

The original to-hit and to-kill tables from the board game are simply pre-calculated odds based on the core Advanced Squad Leader system, with some adaptations. If you've ever wondered why a roll of 1-3 is a critical hit, it's because the odds of rolling an unmodified 1,1 on a 2D6 are 2.8%. Most of the combat system for AC is now in a format where I can slot in new vehicles and units very easily. It was a lot of work, most of which is not visible to the player, but it does means that in the future, adding new player tanks and enemy units will be very straight forward.

I also just brought the window height down to 744px so it should fit onto a 1366x768 screen.