Armoured Commander: WW2 Tank Commander Roguelike

[akeley]

Great to hear you`re planning a sequel - think this should happen more in roguelike world, instead of people endlessly tweaking one game which sometimes is counterproductive.

Bit off topic, but if anybody fancy watching a rather exciting "live" tank battle, there`s one going on at battlefront.com community (devs responsible for uber-realistic Command Mission series). Stumbled upon it kind of accidentally but now I`m hooked  - it`s two experienced "grogs" duking it out in play-by-mail mode for the new CM beta - sounds dour, yet is anything but :P

[Rev_Sudasana]

Just compiled a preview version of Beta 3.0 for the intrepid and patient. As will all preview versions, there's likely to be bugs and crashes, so please do report these either here or via email and I'll do my best to fix them for the official release version.

Download here: [removed - see official release]

[Rev_Sudasana]

Beta 3.0 is now the default download on the ArmCom download page. Caught two serious crashes in the preview release thanks to player feedback!

Note that the online manual still needs to be updated to reflect new and changed features in the game.

Edit: Fixed a crash that occurred when replacing tank crew, current version is now 3.01. If you started a campaign you can update, savegame is compatible.

[Rev_Sudasana]

I've made a couple updates and the current Beta 3.04 version appears fairly stable! If you'd experienced crashes earlier, now might be a good time to give ArmCom another try. At present I'm working on adding a campaign map for the Canada's Best campaign:

[Legend]

wow. this is incredibly awesome and in depth. I am encountering a bit of a bug. Even if I set the game to fullscreen, it will not start in full screen. And I cannot switch to full screen mode within the game if the setting starts as on. Meaning the only way I can play in fullscreen is if I turn fullscreen option off, quit the game, then restart the game, and switch fullscreen back on. If I quit and restart after that, the game starts in a window and I must do the whole thing over again. Also, the resolution settings seem to have no effect.

Using winxp sp 3 32 bit.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Thanks!

I do happen to have a WinXP machine handy so I will see if I can replicate this problem. Unfortunately, everything to do with window/screen resolution and fullscreen mode is handled by SDL via the libtcod library, so if there's an incompatibility between either of these and WinXP, then there's little I'll be able to do about it. Normally, fullscreen and resolution settings should persist between savedgames, but I will look into that as well.

[Rev_Sudasana]

So I tried it out on a Win XP machine and changing the full screen and resolution settings for me has absolutely no effect. Seems to be that the version of SDL that I'm using can't normally instruct Win XP to change these. I don't think I can do anything about this incompatibility, unfortunately, until and unless I upgrade to a newer version of the libtcod library that runs on SDL2, and if SDL2 is able to handle these things better on Win XP.

[Kyzrati]

This isn't an issue with SDL. The problem would be with libtcod itself. That is, if it's really a problem--you might be able to circumvent it, but only with C/C++? Not sure about the libtcod side of things (esp. Python), but I use the same old version of SDL that libtcod does (tens of thousands of games use this version of SDL ) and there are no issues with fullscreen. With SDL you have complete control and can even change the desktop resolution if you want to, irrespective of Windows version.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Hm - ok I'll give it a shot. Python should be able to pass commands to SDL without going through libtcod.

[Kyzrati]

Sorry, this wasn't meant to put you on the spot . Just trying to clear up where the problem might lie, but it may very well be problematic for libtcod to handle this.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Perhaps a feature request for the next update? Better control over resolution and fullscreen, plus multiple window support if /r/roguelikedev is anything to go by!

[Kyzrati]

Heh, multi-window support would probably be a pretty big can of worms, but better fullscreen/resolution control should be fairly easy, yeah.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Haven't been able to address the resolution and full screen issues under WinXP yet, but I have made some minor changes and bugfixes for the Beta 3.07 version. Also uploaded a short Let's Play video featuring the Firefly here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-lpD3KcYF8

[Rev_Sudasana]

Just uploaded Beta 3.08 to the website. This is the final content update, only bugfixes remain before it moves to a stable release.

[Rev_Sudasana]

Made a couple small changes, and just uploaded preview 1 of the stable 1.0 final release version. Interested players can download it here:

http://www.armouredcommander.com/download/armcom_1_0.zip

This version is compatible with saved games created under the Beta 3 branch, so feel free to update if you are in the middle of a campaign. I'll leave this up for a bit while I finish updating the online manual to see if any further bugs shake out.