Project Moscow

I am moving onto the first build after the prototype. This build will expand on the prototype to incorporate the following:

• Address usability concerns by adding help text wherever possible.
• Multiple units allowed on tiles
• Multiple units allowed in the combat screen.
• Support for additional land units including artillery and armour.

The units will have their respective attacker and defend powers reflected in the combat screen, but every unit will still have a movement power of 1. Adding sea units and far tile movements is a feature I will add in another build.

I’ve signed up Project Moscow onto SourceForge. I’ve done this in an attempt to get the project a little more attention, but I will still be using this site as the main development base for the time being.

Project Moscow at SourceForge.net

Now that the prototype is finished, I am looking for any volunteers who may be willing to help with the further development of the game. A lot of additional work needs to be done, but now that the “skeleton” has been completed it should be possible for two or more people to work on it.

Specifically, I think people with the following skill sets would be capable of working on the project:

• Vector Image Graphic Designers (Adobe Flash if possible)
• Actionscript 2.0 (Adobe Flash) developers

If you don’t have these skillsets but want to help anyway, the project will still need testers and maybe other bits that need to done down the line.

If you are interested, you drop me an e-mail at rory_devane@hotmail.com and let me know that you are interested. I would love assistance with any part of the project.

It has taken a long time, but the prototype has been finished. You can access the swf here: click here

This is only the prototype and is far from being a completed version of the game, but it does succes in demonstrating proof of concept. I was afraid the game might slow down a little as you are running it in a browser, but I have not been able to notice any issues with it.

The prototype supports the following features:

• 1 unit type supported (infantry)
• 2 nations supported (Germany and Soviet Union)
• Scrollable map (drag the dark square in the minimap to get it to work)
• Capital capture victory conditions

In order to move a unit, you must first open the Action Sequence Panel (in the bottom right corner of the screen), and then select next Sequence to select “2. Combat Movement”.  When you want to resolve combat, repeat the same steps to set the action sequence to “3. Combat”.  None of the other options in the Action Sequence Panel work as of yet.

Note that you cannot move into all the tile on the main map.  Most of the tiles between Germany and Moscow do work however, but nothing south of Austria, west of Germany, or do any of the water tiles currently work.

I’ve had a few goes going through it myself, and I have not been able to break it thus far.  But if anyone else has been able to, please let me know.

I’ve completed two stills previewing how the final application should look.

The first one is a sample image of how the game might look to an Player playing as America on the first turn before any units have moved.

The second screenshot shows Germany making their first combat move. When units are attacking another territory, they appear on arrows pointing to that territory. This, I think, makes is better then simply placing them on the territory as it gives a better sense of where they have come from and it looks more like the old WWII Battlefield documentaries I used to watch on the Discovery Channel.

Any feedback on these would be very appreciated.

At current, the project is in the Design phase, and no actual coding has taken place. The project will be divided into 3 phases:

1) Design: The look and feel of the application will be established. The purpose of this stage is to establish concept images and Graphic files which will give an example of how the end project will look, as well as be used to by the prototype stage.

2) Prototype: In order to deomostate proof of concept in the project, a simplified version of the game needs to be established. The following features must be provided at a minimum: one type of unit, two player support and a scrollable map.

3) Production: If the prototype phase is successful, the application will be released in incremental builds adding new features in each build, and fixing bugs in previous ones.

Project Moscow will be a freeware computer game built primarily using Adobe Flash in Actionscript 2.0.

The final product will be a turn based strategy game similar to Avalon Hills
Axis and Allies series. It should be web based, supporting multiple players online, as well as artificial intelligence.

For a similar idea with with Java, see the very good Triple A.

Use of Adobe Flash as a technology allows for more sophisticated graphics then standard web based games, but it’s memory heavy nature will present challenges as well. Additional languages will undoubtedly be needed to play the game online.