New release: VICtoria Gold Edition for VIC +16K

[Ghislain]

Today I organized many Denial forum members' games into a couple of D64 files and transferred them to actual floppy disks. I mostly played Victoria afterwards, which was a lot of fun.

A few observations:

Raetia and Thracia, even though they are seperated on the map, one can move troops to and from these areas. Perhaps this was intentional -- I just assume that the armies are able to find a quick path through the barbarian lands and get themselves ferried by ship through the Black Sea.

Gallia and Italia are obviously connected together but you can't move troops to and from these areas. Perhaps this was also intentional -- I presume that the Swiss alps provide too much of an obstacle?

The preceding minor glitches are not show-stoppers. In fact, they add a certain amount of character to the game.

The things I really liked:

-hires graphics are a very nice added touch
-the appearance of the Huns and the way they appeared was pretty cool
-as time progresses, other "empires" make their appearance.
-at the beginning, the Romans can defeat larger armies but near the end of the time limit, your armies become so weak that you need a 3:1 ratio at least to beat your enemies.

This is a _great_ game for the VIC-20. Kudos to orion70 and Mike!

[orion70]

Today I organized many Denial forum members' games into a couple of D64 files and transferred them to actual floppy disks. I mostly played Victoria afterwards, which was a lot of fun.

It's great to hear this from the best game programmer around... My project was a simple BASIC translation of an old dream, having played a lot with Annals of Rome in the early 90s. It was originally intended to be text-only, but I soon discovered the additional graphic commands of Commodore carts, and eventually the wonderful world of Minigrafik, thanks to Mike's help. VICtoria was then followed by VICtoria Deluxe, and VICtoria Gold, with that stunning intro screen, the map display, and the final/credits screens programmed by Mike himself.

Raetia and Thracia, even though they are seperated on the map, one can move troops to and from these areas. Perhaps this was intentional -- I just assume that the armies are able to find a quick path through the barbarian lands and get themselves ferried by ship through the Black Sea.

It's a bug, plain and simple. Too bad I never noticed it. I will correct this as soon as possible.

Gallia and Italia are obviously connected together but you can't move troops to and from these areas. Perhaps this was also intentional -- I presume that the Swiss alps provide too much of an obstacle?

Yep, this is not a bug, it was intentional:
1- According to the De Bello Gallico, Caesar found his way through th Alps West of Switzerland (roughly from Susa, westward through the Alpes Cottidae until Gergovia (Clermont-Ferrand), where he fought the first battle against the Gauls. Having won this, he left part of his army to colonize the South (Narbonensis), and headed towards the inner Gallia. So, one can say that he invaded the Gauls in the Narbonensis/Gallia border, and conquered both roughly in the same years.
2- Nevertheless, I found that the game tends to be confused if Italia can be invaded from too many places, so I chose to exclude that the Empire could loose Italia before its stronghold Narbonensis (which was in fact the last transalpine possession of Rome after the Barbarian invasions, called Provincia par excellence i.e. Provence also after the Fall). So, no direct invasion from the central Alps.
3- The map should have been designed better in the Alps region: Raetia should be Austria + Switzerland, as seen HERE. In this way, Gallia does not even border with Italia!

The things I really liked:

-hires graphics are a very nice added touch

Thanks to Mike .

-the appearance of the Huns and the way they appeared was pretty cool
-as time progresses, other "empires" make their appearance.
-at the beginning, the Romans can defeat larger armies but near the end of the time limit, your armies become so weak that you need a 3:1 ratio at least to beat your enemies.

These are all features copied from Annals of Rome, with some modifications, in that changes are not too drastic and tend to evolve slowly through the decades. Elaborating the corresponding formulas was quite time consuming!

This is a _great_ game for the VIC-20. Kudos to orion70 and Mike!

Thanks Ghislain. Hope you won't get bored soon (every game should present random events and play differently from the other).

[Mike]

Raetia and Thracia, even though they are seperated on the map, one can move troops to and from these areas. Perhaps this was intentional -- I just assume that the armies are able to find a quick path through the barbarian lands and get themselves ferried by ship through the Black Sea.

It's a bug, plain and simple. Too bad I never noticed it. I will correct this as soon as possible.

I *did* notice it.

It's a matter of the distance function devised to determine which countries are connected (rather than an adjacency matrix, which would cost too much space). IMO it's not sensible to add a single condition to just cure this bug.

The cohorts are just taking a shortcut on the Blue Danube. At night, so no one in Dacia notices.

Michael

[Ghislain]

It's great to hear this from the best game programmer around... My project was a simple BASIC translation of an old dream, having played a lot with Annals of Rome in the early 90s. It was originally intended to be text-only, but I soon discovered the additional graphic commands of Commodore carts, and eventually the wonderful world of Minigrafik, thanks to Mike's help. VICtoria was then followed by VICtoria Deluxe, and VICtoria Gold, with that stunning intro screen, the map display, and the final/credits screens programmed by Mike himself.

Well... thank you! Not sure about me being the best game programmer part.

The way VICtoria is designed has inspired me to make my own strategic computer board game. When I was a teenager, I designed multitudes if alternative AXIS & ALLIES game maps. But WW2 has been done to death, what I'd like to make one based on that other "forgotten" world war, WW1.

I think I'm going to print out VICtoria's source code and get started.

WW1 as a gaming concept has not been done many times. I think this is mostly because the alliances are somewhat complex (at least compared to WW2) and there was a lot of internal strife that affected the outcome.

I found this great website which simplifies WW1: http://www.worldology.com/Europe/world_war_1_imap.htm

If I get seriously started, I'll create a new thread.

[Mayhem]

If you can make a game in the same vein as Rebelstar/Laser Squad/X-Com for the Vic, that would be something

[Pedro Lambrini]

If you can make a game in the same vein as Rebelstar/Laser Squad/X-Com for the Vic, that would be something

It would indeed! I actually have a lot of source material for an old table-top wargaming system I created years ago. The source is of a sci-fi bent and, I think, it has quite an interesting premise... If anybody's interested in bringing this sci-fi world 'to life' on the Vic let me know.

[GreyGhost]

I like where this is headed. Turn based tile games should be easily done on the Vic.
Though my thoughts wonder to Mech Warrior and CarWars.

[Jeff-20]

I've been really wanting to make a turn based war game. I didn't think I had the memory to pull it off with damage stats, experience, etc. on an unexpanded VIC. I ended up with Improbable War. That was the most I could reduce the concept. Now I really want to pull off a 3.5k war game with serious stats. I don't think anything could stand up to VICtoria, but maybe something a little like Advance Wars.

[folkoh]

Hi,

yesterday I've played VICtoria Gold 16k for the first time on my real VIC (PAL). It was great fun, excellent work!

Two things happened, one of them must be a bug...

After I successfully conquered 3/4 of the other empires I mistyped the country number within the first selection of the "move troops" menu. Instead of "4" I typed "40", which makes no sense, but instead of ignoring this value I recieved a "bad subscript error in 1680". CONT doesn't work here, so my achievements were lost, sigh...

The bug can be reproduced at any time also in VICE. Of course it was my mistyping, but I think a program that relies on humans typing values should ignore any value that does not make any sense. A patch would be highly appreciated.

Now a strange thing: The very same program that runs fine in VICE rejects to paint the empire colours in the map on my real VIC.

One ergonomically thought: In the menu the programm uses F1/F7 for Up/Down, within the selection for "how many troops" + and - are used. I think both are "up/down"-functions and should use the same keys.

Again: Thanks for the great program and keep on your awsome work!

Cheers,

Folko

[Mike]

Hi, Folko,

yesterday I've played VICtoria Gold 16k for the first time on my real VIC (PAL). It was great fun, excellent work!

Thanks!

[...] I mistyped the country number within the first selection of the "move troops" menu. [...] A patch would be highly appreciated.

The check for invalid country numbers needs to be corrected. I'll put a patch online later this evening.

Now a strange thing: The very same program that runs fine in VICE rejects to paint the empire colours in the map on my real VIC.

Could you explain this in more detail?

At first one should select three empires to paint in red, yellow, and orange. Finally, pressing any key switches to the map display. The map is loaded, then the three empires are filled with colour. If you happen to select an empire, which already is extinct, then that colour won't appear in the map, of course.

Finally, a key press returns to the main menu.

At which stage does the behaviour divert from the expected one? Also, which RAM expansion, and drive do you use? Has the file "FILL DATA" (which is of SEQ type) probably been left out in case you used a file copy program to transfer the game to a 5 1/4 disk?

Michael

[folkoh]

The check for invalid country numbers needs to be corrected. I'll put a patch online later this evening.

Gasp! Now that is fast service!!! Thanks!

At which stage does the behaviour divert from the expected one? Also, which RAM expansion, and drive do you use? Has the file "FILL DATA" (which is of SEQ type) probably been left out in case you used a file copy program to transfer the game to a 5 1/4 disk?

Michael

I am using the map functions as described by you and within the manual, it works fine in VICE. The VIC draws the whole map correctly but doesn't fill the areas of the selected empires (existing ones, for sure). I use a standard Commodore 16k expansion and a C=1571 Disk Drive. I think I have copied the complete disk image, but I a may be wrong, I have to check if the file "FILL DATA" is missing.

Thanks again for lightspeed response!

Gtx,
Folko

[Mike]

Here's the corrected version for download.

I use a standard Commodore 16k expansion and a C=1571 Disk Drive. I think I have copied the complete disk image, but I a may be wrong, I have to check if the file "FILL DATA" is missing.

Regards real hardware, I played the game on my own VIC-20, with the Final Expansion cartridge. In that case, I could simply copy the *.d64 file onto a SD card, and run the game inside the selected image.

Since I don't have your hardware setup, I checked against VICE 2.2, with true drive emulation on, and a 1571 as drive #8, but also couldn't find a problem here.

[folkoh]

Here's the corrected version for download.

Thanks again!

And you were right, somehow I've skipped the file FILL DATA.SEQ during transfer to my C=1571 (I love my trusty all-commodores-purpose-drive ) More likely, I erased it later. I like to make my disk directories look neat and readable and I also fill the disk to the max, so there are a lot of other files and seperators on it, too. Probably I've erased the SEQ file, thinking it would be old "garbage". Human error, of course, it had to be.

Will now use the updated version with FILL DATA.SEQ on it.

Have a nice weekend!

Folko

[folkoh]

So, my setup is such, that it doesn't take me much more time to transfer D64-images to my C-1571 as transferring it to a SD-Card

I've checked the new version, and the program doesn't crash anymore after typing an invalid numeric value, great!

Still, if you type a letter by mistake, the program doesn't let you correct your input. Instead it closes your actual turn within the game. Since the program doesn't crash this is not so bad, but one turn can be important, so there is still room for improvement on that input handling.

But I can live with being punished for typing letters instead of numbers out of pure stupidity, since there is no time-pressure in the game. So I would deserve it!

Cheers,

Folko

[orion70]

Folko, Mike, thanks for having found and solved the input bug. As for Folko's suggestion to use the same F1/F7 input for both menu and units selection, yes, I've thought about it, but my conclusion was that + and - are more appropriate and intuitive when dealing with numbers. Well, I think it's a matter of personal taste!

VICtoria's BASIC listing is quite simple to understand even for beginners, and of course anyone should feel free to modify the input system or some of the parameters just for the fun of it - or to cheat, of course .

So, thanks again, and have fun with your legions!