Weatherlords

Welcome to weatherlords: a weather based resource development game. As the weatherlord, it is your task to employ capitalism to reach currency past the integer limit.

Try it out!

You can try out this project by cloning it and building it locally, or head over to the releases to download the .jar file.

$ git clone https://github.com/FireStreaker2/Weatherlords.git
$ cd Weatherlords
$ ./gradlew lwjgl3:run
# alternatively:
$ ./gradlew lwjgl3:dist

Inspiration

We wanted to make a game that aligned with the given prompt, which was weather/climate related. Out of all the possible game styles that we brainstormed, we felt like a civilization game was not only the fastest to complete and make high quality, but also the most representative of our ideas.

What it does

Weatherlords is a resource development game, using buildings (farms, mines, etc.) paired with the power of weather in order to get currency and beat the game.

How we built it

We initially decided on using Java as our primary language, as it was the most commonly known among us. Moving forward, we discovered the library libgdx, which was a popular " cross-platform Java game development framework based on OpenGL". Moreover, we also decided to use the well known IDE Android Studio for our main development, as it paired well with the library we were using.

Challenges we ran into

• Time constraints - since we had many plans for our game (ex. backend integration, session IDs, multiplayer, fancy graphics, etc.), it took a lot of time to properly choose the ideas we wanted, and then further implementing the ones we chose.
• Lack of experience - while we all had experience with Java itself (5 in APCSA), we were limited by not knowing the library at all; we had to completely learn (most of) the API within a couple of days, and then actually use it. Moreover, some of our team was not used to other technologies, such as Android Studio and Git.
• Sick member - part of our team was sick during this long break, leading to less productivity!
• Ambiguous error messages while working with libgdx within Android Studio

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• The fact that we actually made a game!
• Being able to learn a completely new library very fast
• Efficiently working together
• Good enough graphics to be appealing to the eye

What we learned

• How to use the new technologies in our tech stack (libgdx, Android Studio, git)
• Sort through feature as a team to meet the deadline
• How to work together more efficiently than everybody force pushing to master

What's next for Weatherlords

We plan on further developing Weatherlords; first with a backend implementation to support multiplayer; secondly polishing everything else. Below is a sample idea of what we were initially planning to add, but had to cut due to time constraints:

 - Add feature where people can invest any point in the game, but only continuous investment will allow for greater development of weather facilities which grants more information
 - Add other resources like power and minerals
 - Add workers which are people who work on the facilities to generate resources
      - Provide benefit where the player doesn't have to be on the farm
      - Also some food from farms are given to workers
 - Add research facilities which create technologies from resources like power and minerals to improve farming and weather conditions
 - Add make some specific weather conditions to islands

Backend implementation:
1) It is a multiplayer game?
2) player registers with the game (provide a way to register)
  - Can we do password-based?
3) After player completes, we show Top 'X' players and current position of the player. Players position should be highlighted.
4) Backend storage is database.
  - Store player details 
  - past game stats? at least top 'X' positions
  - current game stats
5) Backend Service:
   - A java program (can be another programming language) with database connectivity supports.
   - Acts like a service and has core logic. 
   - Java clients from users laptops connects to backend service and interacts.
   - Client send user names/password to get information from backend service to display current user details.
   - Client sends new game start info to backend to create java session for new game and returns back client for communication.
   - Client send game decision as activityinfo to backend with session id and backend service will map session id and takes appropriate action and send result back to client.
   - Clients refresh to interface based on session changes.
   - Finally clients send all activity completed status and backend service compares current result with previous best result of user and updates it if new result is better.
   - backend send top 10 results and include extra entry for users if the user is not in top 10 for displaying current standing.
   - Current standings can be displayed at any time by user.
   - Bonus: Retain in game java session id and resume game if user client interface on client laptop is closed, reopened the browser, gone through authentication and try retrieve previous current in-game to CONTINUE.
   - No backtrack of activities which were already done

Contributors

• FireStreaker2 - Lead Developer
• OPWinner - Lead Designer, Developer
• YeOldBeasts - Designer

License

MIT