Buildings Design

Here we can discuss what the buildings in our game shall do. I've done a brief outline of what I belive the buildings data should include

Name,
Building_Group: What group does the building belong to, ie all stables will have a Building Group number of 5 for example whilst all the wood cutter levels will have a Building Group number of 7.

Level: how advanced or built up that particualr industry is withing the city.
Wood Cost
Stone Cost
Metal Cost
Gold Cost

Graphics Icon: when building selected
Graphics_Overview: when on sector overviews.
Graphics_Ingame: ingame Combat simulation

Function: What dose the building do. Does it extract resources, train troops or conduct research.
amount_income: This will be an positive number. for example a unit of knights may cost 60 build_points say our building had an amount_income score of 12 this would mean the unit of Knights would take 5 turns to complete.

build_points: How may build points required for construction, build points for buildings will be added according to the Town Hall's level. The town hall in effect "Trains" buildings

48

Name	Group	Lvl	Wood	Stone	Metal	Gold	Function	Amount	Build pts	Requ
Stables	7	1	200	100	50	25	'T'	+12	80	level 3 Town Hall, level 2 Barracks
Stables	7	1	240	180	85	55	'T'	+15	120

Territories will have to store the data of the buildings the have in them like this Howeer this could be a vector? as different maps will have a different amount of territories.

Code:

const int BUILDING_TOTAL = 20; // We have 20 different building groups.
const int NUMBER_OF_TERRITORIES =  12; //
// we'll probably read this into an array from an external file so we would not have to write
//data for all sectors even if they are not being used

Sector_Array[NUMBER_OF_TERRITORIES][BUILDINGS_TOTAL + 2] = {
// The 1st number is the sector_number, whilst the second number is the player who owns
// the land
1, 1
2, 1
3, 1
4, 1
5, 2
6, 2
7, 2
8, 2
9, 2
10, 3
11, 3
12, 3
 
say we wanted to know the level of our stables in sector one, as the stables is group 7 this would place the stables data in column 9 or;

Sector_array[0][8];

Arrays would make things a lot easier, plus they are a lot faster then say linked lists as far as memory access anddata retrieval.

May I make the following suggestions on some "rules"

If each territory is allowed only one of each building type then we can just "turn on" the building when it comes into existance.

If instead of a 2-d array, for territory and building list, possibly using a 3-d array where the third dimension is the level data for the buildings

thats what I initaly thought but if we put 0 as the level then it dosn't "exist" but to build it we just have to increase this number by 1 to bring it into existance. This means we can do it with a 2d array. rather than a 3d array which will save a hell of a lot of space

Not so sure about the vector idea was what someone else said. I myself think a 2d array would better

That does simplify it, basically instead of keeping track of the building classes themselves we model it with int's and then just care about level. The territory itself does not care what the building does, that's the building's job, it just wants to keep track of the level.

Excelent. Then we should make a quick list of all the buildings we wish to include so we don't miss anything when making the classes/ functions etc.

So when it comes to the buildings are we doing things like Warcraft and building on the battle field or building in the strategy map like Total War?

building in the strategy map as in Total War

I am not sure, I am almost seeing it as a hybrid of the two where on the strategy map you see the troops and then once you actually look into the territory then you see the buildings.

I am thinking, however, that beside the base building class that I am working on, perhaps we should table coding until we actually get more of a design and "Game Rules" fleshed out so that every one is on the same page. We have something great here, don't want to kill it because we rushed in.

What's everyone's opinion on that ?

sorry posted at the same time as admin...guess the first part is answered.

I agree we need to do more planing still before be go in and start coding all guns blazing

Buildings start at level 0: at which they don't physically exist

Buildings can only upgrade if the player
--has enough resources
--has the pre-required buildings

buildings are labled as groups
-i.e. all barracks fall under group 6
-- 3-0: base barracks
-- 3-1: Level one barrack
-- 3-2: Level two barrack
-- 3-n: Level N barrack

Building group 0 is town hall:
-all buildings need to have a town hall(implied)
-town halls "train" buildings
-town halls require no buildings to build, but do require resources.
-the first main territory is a "gimme" town hall (player starts the game with one built)
-town hall generates resources at a constant low rate (ie. 10wood, 10stone, 10metal, 10 gold/per turn)

Each territory is like its own city-state
-it can only have one of each building
-a -1 value at a buildings index means that territory cannot build that type of building

There are four types of resources
Group 1: Stone (Rock Quaries)
Group 2: Wood (saw mills)
Group 3: Metal (appropriate ore mine)
Group 4: Gold (Gold mine)

Each territory has a finite level of each raw resource, different buildings might generate resources as well.

sweet!, keep going with that then from what you've done so far we could have this part covered pretty soon.

p.s Where you store the data for the buildings in each territory we'll also need who 'Currently' owns the territory, which we would also need an Id for. Doubt you've forgot but just a reminder

Just a quick suggestion. I was thinking that we should change stone and metal to marble and bronze.

stone to Marble
&
metal to bronze?

hum . . . . . good point yes this would reflect the period more I think, good suggestion.

Everyone take Note

updated the files with those small text changes, but not uploading until after next actual modification or request.