Another silly flash game: 1917

[GJK]

Ok, at least this one has a "war" theme.

http://armorgames.com/play/2267/warfare-1917

Not sure how to tell what level # that you're on, but I'm about to play "Heavy Guns" - simple to win so far, hopefully the difficulty increases as I'm sure that it does.....

[GJK]

Ok, the "Land-Ships" level was a good bit more difficult, some definite strategy to use there. If you pick a tank of your own to show right away, you take a big morale hit when it finally blows up. If you don't build it right off the bat, you won't get to build it later because the build time is so long. Not bad.

[GJK]

Ok, finished the campaign game as the easier British. Not great, but final stats:

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Your loss rate is none to hot, if I may say so. You might want to think about building assault troops almost exclusively. To send over the top in a mass wave, they are the clear favourites by a country mile, and will do well enough defending trenches.

Also don't overlook the uses of snipers. Those buggers outrange every one else, so if used right can kill with impunity.

The German mission are much more difficult, especially later on when it churns out tanks at twice or three times the rate you an, all thew while flinging infantryat you too.

[mike_the_wino]

I don't see how to make my units advance or stay put. Only finished the second round but I built infantry to hold the trench, then bombarded the Huns, when their morale was low built only assault troops to go over the top.

Am I missing some of the controls?

[GJK]

I don't see how to make my units advance or stay put. Only finished the second round but I built infantry to hold the trench, then bombarded the Huns, when their morale was low built only assault troops to go over the top.

Am I missing some of the controls?

As you build your first units, they'll advance forward towards the first trench and enter it (or towards the enemy and take cover if there are no trenches).

To have them advance, there's a control at the opening of the trench that you can pop open to select the squad to advance (look at their symbols so that you know which squad it is; you may not want to advance your MG squad when you a stormtroop squad ready to go for example).

Note that each trench can only hold 3 squads, so if a trench is full and a squad moves up on it, they will jump in and then immediately jump out and advance.

If you don't want other squads to enter the trench, you can lock it by clicking on the "X" that is in the same pop-up that is at the foot of each trench.

[mike_the_wino]

Thanks, it's really dark for some reason so I have a hard time seeing the controls. Guess I gotta puck around with my contrast.

[GJK]

It was too on my computer at home - up at work here the brightness is much better.

Also, it's the "padlock" symbol that locks the trench (obviously) not the "X" which simply closes that little control panel for the trench (which doesn't show until you first approach the trench - it looks like a little 'toggle' switch).

As advanced as Flash has become, I wonder why there are no ports of classic board wargames using it? Something like VASSAL but in flash and with an AI? Or is flash really best suited for "side-scrollers"? I tried to learn flash once, could do some simple things (make a ball bounce); how hard is it to learn action-scripting and the more complex aspects of it? Might be worth investigating perhaps?

[Tero]

Ok, the "Land-Ships" level was a good bit more difficult, some definite strategy to use there. If you pick a tank of your own to show right away, you take a big morale hit when it finally blows up. If you don't build it right off the bat, you won't get to build it later because the build time is so long. Not bad.

In the British campaign I had to replay the final battle several times over. It turned out the best strategy was to buy only tanks and then nuke the German infantry with gas and HE and the tanks with AP until they surrendered.

As German I won with fewer own infantry casualties than in the British campaign. The trick as German was to keep the pressure up and time the arty strikes so that the British reinforcements were hit at the same time with the troops in the trenches.

The gas is a mixed bag. Ill-timed hit with it will take out both the defenders and the attackers.

Addictive little bugger this one.

[GJK]

I tend to forgo the tanks - seems that they get knocked out too easily (may be my luck) and then the morale hit is devestating. I keep the shock troops in plenty of supply and then hit their tanks with the AT barrage (which also does some heavy damage to the nearby infantry). I've gone through on both sides and then played a massive 5 trench, all goodies added user-battle that took a while (wave after wave after wave!) but finally pulled out the victory when a lone soldier made it across the lines.

This would be fun to multiplayer

[MeatEtr]

I'm getting poor performance with FireFox. But this is a fun and addictive little game. Damn you GJK for this time sucker.

[MeatEtr]

Anybody know what would cause Flash to behave so poorly? I also experienced slowdown for that fantastic contraption game we were playing awhile back.

[GJK]

I notice severe slow down with the Contraption game. 1917 runs fine unless several units are on the map at once. I shut down all other running apps (including email) while playing and that helps. Maybe this answers the reason why a game that would require lots of complex calculations isn't made in Flash?

[MeatEtr]

Maybe this answers the reason why a game that would require lots of complex calculations isn't made in Flash?

Very good point and I guess I'm not the only one with performance issues. Also tried it in IE with similar results. Oh well, it's still certainly playable though.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

have you updated the Flash Player plugin? there were some garbage collector issues that the couple most recent updates have partially fixed. without a working garbage collector Flash will keep eating up memory which will start freezing the computer (check memory for Flash in task manager if you are running Windows).

i guess it's also possible that both 1917 and the Contraption use the same physics library (note how the soldiers fly in 1917) which may have some nasty bugs.

regarding ASL and Flash, i guess the biggest prevention is that there is close to no money to be made with such a game. typically Flash games make money by showing those adds and i believe a typical Flash game generates only some 2000 USD. so to make it profitable you need to make craploads of games. a wargame would probably generate a lot less revenue (due to being a lot less popular) and take a lot longer to create.

there are some Flash games that generate revenue more like standard games do, by being sold with a one time fee or as some subsciption based model. like that Advance Wars clone (called "Battalion" IIRC).

if one doesn't want to make money (and still invest money in having a server for the game) there is nothing as such preventing one from making ASL in Flash. besides Flash you might want to consider Java (like VASSAL), JavaScript (with AJAX, like Vox Imperium), Silverlight or one of the numerous game oriented browser plugins (some of which allow making the game fully 3D).

EDIT: tho at that point one probably asks why not make it a real non-browser based game.

[GJK]

I've started tinkering with VB.Net and have probed into Java (that sounds nasty!) but everytime that I try to pick up a new programming language I get side-tracked or discouraged or my patience wears out; I just want to get to the end-goal of what I want to do without the learning curve.

Here's going to be my first VB.Net project (so says I): I'm currently working on that game assist tool for a boardgame. Browser based, hasen't proven too difficult to code thus far and so I think that it would be neat to do it in a self-contained little .exe file that could be windowed:

http://www.garykrockover.com/sample/RAM/

Note that there's no map, no counters to move around - and I want it that way. I want to roll the dice and move the counters - but have this program play the side of the (hidden) Japanese.

Thanks for the tip about the Flash player upgrade, haven't done that in some time so that may be the issue.

[MeatEtr]

have you updated the Flash Player plugin? there were some garbage collector issues that the couple most recent updates have partially fixed. without a working garbage collector Flash will keep eating up memory which will start freezing the computer (check memory for Flash in task manager if you are running Windows).

Yeah that was the first thing I did when getting bad performance. I didn't notice any difference after the update though. So I just assume it's the games fault.

Good luck with that GJK, sounds interesting.