My Programming Dynasty

[Cap Ologist]

Well, as many of you know (or at least seen my Visual Basic question threads) I have been trying to learn Visual Basic. I've decided to record my progress here. Hopefully this will help keep me focused and making progress as well as provide opportunities for feedback, advice and instruction from more knowledgeable people.

I've been working with Visual Basic for several months now, and while I'm definitely nowhere near being an expert, I have learned quite a bit and am somewhat confident that I can at least solve most of my problems, just not always in the most efficient manner.

I've decided to program a pretty big project, and it is kind of intimidating right now. I want to program a text-sim game comparable to Super Power. I know it has many problems, but I'm really intrigued by the idea. I've always wanted to make a game of some sort based on the American political system and I've decided to incorporate some of the elements I've thought about into this.

My basic premise of the game:
Control a country and lead your people to a greater way of life. All options will be available from appeasement to nuclear war to trade agreements.

Progress so far:
So far, I've constructed a basic gui. It's functional right now, but it's nowhere near as 'pretty' as Super Power's gui. I'm not too worried about the gui as far as aesthetics go right now, I'm focusing on developing the game engine.

My next step:
Begin researching countries.

I've found several websites that have some of the information I think I'll need such as population, literacy, military strength, form of government etc. This will be a time consuming part, but I definitely need to lay a solid foundation. Plus, not only do I need to research this, but I need to find a way to model it.

Ok, that's all for now, please let me know what you think.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Wow! Looks like a fun project! I'll be reading with great interest.

Good luck!

FWIW, you really are motivating me to get going on mine, too. I bet it would be fun to have a small group of people working on text-sims at the same time. Probably helpful as well, to bounce questions off of each other and get support.

*Makes note in day planner for Friday to "Get back to Libertas Morte"*

[Cap Ologist]

*Makes note in day planner for Friday to "Get back to Libertas Morte"*
You had me at *Makes note in day planner for Friday to "Get back to Libertas Morte"*;)

[Cap Ologist]

It would be great to have several people working on text sims together. I know there have been several times I've been staring at some code and can't figure out just what I did wrong, then I post here and voila someone sees the obvious. I hope you start back up with Libertas Morte.

[GoldenEagle]

I wanted to do something like this. Good luck with your project. If you pull it off it will be gold. I am not a big fan of VB but its doable.

I was hoping for a high school football sim. :)

[Cap Ologist]

I wanted to do something like this. Good luck with your project. If you pull it off it will be gold. I am not a big fan of VB but its doable.

I was hoping for a high school football sim. :)
I've actually been toying with a high school football sim. In fact, I'm farther along with that than I am with this project. I kind of like working on two projects at a time, it helps keep me focused and fresh. I work on one for awhile, then switch. I'm guessing you'll volunteer to be a beta tester?

[GoldenEagle]

Sure.

[hoosierdude]

Will follow this with interest. Thanks for allowing us a peek at what you are working on.

[Cap Ologist]

Spent today researching basic demographic statistics for countries. I found a couple of good web sites that have the information I need. I started inputting the data into a .csv file to eventually load into the program. I also wrote a test routine to check and make sure I knew what I was doing before I spent too much time on it. It worked, so I'm happy.

I realized that I need to find out how to code the program to know what directory it is installed in so that it knows where to find this file. I don't think I've come across that anywhere yet, and it's not an urgent need right now. Just something I need to be on the lookout for.

[GoldenEagle]

I realized that I need to find out how to code the program to know what directory it is installed in so that it knows where to find this file. I don't think I've come across that anywhere yet, and it's not an urgent need right now. Just something I need to be on the lookout for.
Speaking generally, I think you will write some sort of parameter for the file so the user will be abole to store the file wherever he wants to. You will then have a function that will load the file into the program.

Are you using .NET?

[Godzilla Blitz]

I realized that I need to find out how to code the program to know what directory it is installed in so that it knows where to find this file. I don't think I've come across that anywhere yet, and it's not an urgent need right now. Just something I need to be on the lookout for.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I remember having a bitch of a time figuring this out when I first started learning VB. I stumbled onto this method when I started Libertas Morte and have found it works great:

Open App.Path & "\folder\filename"

The App.Path code tells the program to look in its local folder. From there you nest down until you hit the file you're looking for.

This code doesn't address the situation that GE mentions about users moving files, but most text-sims that read data/text files tell you that the file must be in a specific folder in the program folder, so I don't think you have to worry about people putting the data files all over their computer.

[Cap Ologist]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I remember having a bitch of a time figuring this out when I first started learning VB. I stumbled onto this method when I started Libertas Morte and have found it works great:

Open App.Path & "\folder\filename"

The App.Path code tells the program to look in its local folder. From there you nest down until you hit the file you're looking for.

This code doesn't address the situation that GE mentions about users moving files, but most text-sims that read data/text files tell you that the file must be in a specific folder in the program folder, so I don't think you have to worry about people putting the data files all over their computer.
Thanks, I think that will work. I think I saw something like that before, but I wasn't sure. I'll try it out later. Right now, I'm trying to update my draft generator utility to fix a couple of things that always bothered me.

[Cap Ologist]

I didn't get much accomplished with this project today. I spent some time working on a utility that I wrote a couple of months ago. Here is some info (http://http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/showthread.php?t=33437) on what I'm hoping to accomplish with that.

GoldenEagle - I'm using VB 6.0. I got it for free so that makes it appealing. Plus, I can buy reference books for it pretty cheaply at Half Price Books.

[Cap Ologist]

I haven't accomplished much programming wise for this project in the last couple of days because of the holidays. I'm inputting some information about countries into a csv file right now. I'm also trying to learn the ins and outs of the opening and saving files. I haven't spent too much time on it in the past, but it's definitely something I have to learn.

[Franklinnoble]

Awesome. Sign me up as a beta tester.

[Buccaneer]

I would suggest bringing in basic Windows APIs to do file handling chores. Otherwise you would have go the OOTP route and put in the full pathname to any type of custom csv file.

As long-time application developer, esp. in VB, you must not code anything right now. Get the design worked out so you then know how to construct your project in code. As you get into coding, keep everything modular (i.e., have a function/sub for everything), you would surprise how much code resuse you will have.

[Cap Ologist]

Franklin: You were the first one on the list of beta testers from before.

Bucc: Thanks for the advice. That's kind of how I'm approaching this project to reuse as much code as possible. I have a notebook that I'm writing down ideas. I usually have it written down on paper before I even begin to think about coding anything. I started brainstorming and designing in June or so. As I've learned more about VB, I've gone back and changed how I approach things when I'm designing.

I started out just trying to figure out how to represent things in code, now I try to find as many ways as possible to reuse existing code.

Right now, my days are spent mainly in data entry. I need to get the foundation laid and see what kind of data I can find. I want it to be as realistic as possible.

Hope everybody has a great holiday season! I'm going to be out of town for a couple of days, so I'm not sure how much work I'll get done on this while I'm gone.

[Cap Ologist]

Inspired by Godzilla Blitz, I'm back to work on this today.

My goal is to have a game that is similar to the SuperPower, hopefully without all the bugs! The basic premise will be to run the operations of a country with the goal of improving it's stature in the world and quality of life for its citizens. Each country will offer different challenges based as much as possible upon the real world standings.

Basic Design:
This game will be played on probably two forms or windows. The first window will load at run time and provide these options: New, Load, and Options. The first two are pretty self explanatory. The "Options" option will allow the user to customize game play such as aggressiveness by the computer, allowing natural disasters to happen, etc. I'm not sure what all will be included here.

The second form is where the user will spend the majority of his/her time. This form will allow the user to navigate through several frames that handle different areas of gameplay.

Advisors: Provide advice on decisionmaking with more realistic feedback than the original SuperPower. Some ideas for these are Secretary of State, Defense, Education, etc. There will be one advisor for each area.

Budget: Allow the user to set percentages for different areas of government, with the option of allowing advisors to distribute budgeted funds or do it yourself.

Diplomacy: The state department, here is where you will interact with other nations to create treaties, trade agreements, etc.

Economy: Provides information about how your country is doing economically - tax rates, inflation, unemployment, etc.

Education: Provides information about literacy, quality of education, etc.

Environment: Provides information about natural resources, pollution, conservation, etc.

Health Care: Provides information about citizen wellness, expected length of life, infant mortality, access to health care, etc.

Intelligence: Provides information about covert ops, allow all sorts of tricks to be played on other countries, while protecting your country from the plans of others.

Maps: Provide several different kinds of maps to find some of these countries you've probably never heard of. Probably continent, region and country options.

Military: Provide information about weapon and unit development, military bases, planning attacks and defenses, etc.

Polls: Provide feedback on how your citizens view you. If your approval drops too low, you might find yourself out of a job or overthrown.

Rankings: See how your country stacks up to the rest of the world. Rankings for each of the main categories.

Regions: Will probably be renamed at some point, the various administrative districts your country is divided into.

International Community: Basically the U.N., here is where resolutions are passed against other countries. Do you defy them and go on your own if they don't pass?

E-Mail: Receive information about various stages in the game, warnings if your policies aren't working, etc.

Weekly Reports: See what you and other countries have done in the past week, different options will be available such as which countries are shown or what kind of activities are shown.

Create Web Reports: For dynasties. Generates report of your country and the world you live in.

That's it for now.