New Stellar Forces Client and new Forums

A new version of the Stellar Forces client has been uploaded (0.35), and I can also announce that we have some new forums, linked into the Stellar Forces website (so users don't need to log into a seperate website to be able to chat).

See the Stellar Forces blog for more details.

Sourceforge - At least someone agrees with me

I've just seen this comment on Slashdot about Sourceforge which echos my sentiments (and a post I wrote a couple of months ago):-

Have you ever tried to use Sourceforge? It's slow, ugly, constantly gives vague errors, image uploads constantly fail, terrible UI, forgets which page you were on before logging in, awful bug tracking with insultingly-named fields (canned response!)...

A better question is, "why would any project actually interested in user feedback use Sourceforge?"

New Stellar Forces Blog

Since I'm hoping that Stellar Forces is going to become my raison d'etre, I've created a whole new seperate blog for it. I've got loads of ideas and thoughts to discuss about it, and people who may be interested in it may not want to have to wade through all the other random blog entries that I produce.

Stellar Forces Released

I've just released the first alpha version of Stellar Forces, my 3D squad-level multi-player turn-based strategy game. You control units in the traditional turn-based way, and take turns with your opponent. There is also a website that acts as the control panel for games.

It is alpha, so although I've tested it there are bound to be bugs and the game balance may not be perfect. I would just like a few playtesters to start using it and provide me with constructive feedback about what can be changed and improved.

In "hallway testing" style, I'm keeping my details brief so that if there are any confusing or unexplained aspects to the game, people will let me know and I'll add more details to the instructions.

http://stellarforces.no-ip.org

Anyway, let me know what you think!

Stellar Forces: Almost ready!

I've been a bit busy lately, what with having a new baby son, but have somehow still found time between bottle feeds to write the final bits of code to Stellar Forces.

I've just got a bit more testing to make sure it's robust, and then I'll announce it formally and let people loose on it. I'm hoping that these beta-testers will be able to help me tweak the balance of the game. With a game as complex as this (it's like multiplayer stand-alone missions from X-Com) there are so many variables (unit stats, weapon stats, mission objectives, map layouts) that it will take several games to get it right.

The game also has it's own website which stores a history of everyone's games, so there will be league tables, stats pages, and I'll maybe even do proper competitions sometime. The options are endless.

Java: Forgetting to override .equals()

This one always catches me out. I have a bunch of icons in my program, all extending the Rectangle class (seems like common sense to me). However, I don't actually fill in the dimensions until I've got the full list of icons (stored in an ArrayList()) so they are all zero-sized rectangles.

Before I add each icon to this list, I check whether it's already there:-

public void addIcon(Icon icon) {
if (iconlist.contains(icon) == false) {
iconlist.add(icon);
}
}

Have you spotted the problem? Since the dimensions for the icons are all zero, and the contains() function uses the equals() method of the icon class, then once one icon is added to the list no others will be. This is because the Icon/Rectangle class' equals() method compares the dimensions, and thus all my icons are actually equal, so it thinks that the icon list already contains the said icon. (That all seems very verbose for what is quite a simple problem).

Note to self: Always override the equals() method.