Panzer SOLO: Latest Development Update

Today we'll cover a number of areas that I've been focusing on lately, including suppression recovery, ammunition availability, ammunition limits, the new battle map, a more useful spotted units area, the short halt command, as well as the implementation of the solo rule for identifying the most dangerous enemy unit.

Firing Attached AP Ammunition - Leg Unit to Combat Vehicle

 

Today we'll look at a small test of leg unit vs combat vehicle action for the purposes of demonstrating an AP (armour piercing) attached crew served weapon attack. We'll assign a fire command to the leg unit and fire the M1 Bazooka on an unsuspecting Panzer IVG.

Firing General Purpose Ammunition - Leg Unit to Leg Unit

 

I've been working on assigning targets and firing AP (armour piercing) and GP (general purpose) fire ammunition types. There are a lot of details to consider and the code is getting much more complicated. Let's setup a simple scenario for testing purposes.

Command Phase and New Features Video

I've put together a short video of the new features and command phase implementation discussed in the previous blog post. Enjoy!

Panzer SOLO Digital Wargame Progress Update

It's been a while, but the work (and progress) continues. There are a number of items to cover, so let's get to it!

If you any questions, just let me know in the comments below.

Time to Refactor

I've been spending most of my time rewriting major portions of the code to accommodate weapon systems and their ammunition. Each unit now has weapons that can have multiple ammunition types. Weapons can be a "main" weapon. Although each unit has one or more main weapons, most units only have one.

GMT Panzer SOLO AP Fire Command Process

Fire commands assigned.

I've been working on the user interface for performing armour piercing fire commands, which has been a bit of a challenge. It's not difficult to code, but there is a lot going on under the hood. Testing has been quite a challenge and takes significant time to verify numerous possible outcomes.

Unit Weapon Range and Hexes in Line of Sight

This is pretty cool :) I've added a mechanism to display a unit's range for it's longest weapon. You can select the range you would like to display, and the map will show you all of the hexes that are within that range and line of sight (LOS) for that unit. It takes a lot of the "guesswork" out of play and provides a lot of invaluable info for the player.

Panzer SOLO Line of Sight Tool

Just a short note today...

I've added a "Line of Sight" (LOS) tool that allows the player to view whether or not there is line of sight between two hexes. Just select a hex, click the LOS button, then roll the cursor over any hex on the map. If you have line of sight to the hex under the cursor, the hex turns green. Red if there is no line of sight.

I think I'm going to expand the functionality of the tool to include the reason why no line of sight is possible. I'll also add an area to indicate range to the selected hex. The more info the better... right?


You can see the LOS Tool in action in a video I posted...

Heat Maps for Hot Zones

I've been working on developing "Heat Maps" for the AI opponent to better manage situational awareness. The areas in "red" indicate the extended range of a particular unit and the hexes it can target with it's longest range direct fire ammunition.

GMT Panzer SOLO Class Structure

Originally, I began my GMT Panzer SOLO project as a non-graphics AI system that would be used in conjunction with the paper map, counters and data cards.

Bresenham and Line of Sight in Panzer

So you say you want to calculate line of site on a hex based digital map...

Lines are made up of individual pixels. But which pixels?

Map

The base game comes with a single paper hexagonal map. It contains a variety of terrain features, hills, gullies, cover as well as a number of paths, roads and crossings. Villages are represented as wood, stone and brick buildings, some with alleyways. Hedgerows and walls are sparsely located, but add a level of complexity to the project.

Units

Tiger I counter represents

a single unit on the map.

Each tank (or unit) is represented by a counter. Players have a number of counters that they command. Each counter contains various pieces of important information, including whether the vehicle has tracks, halftracks or wheels, as well as the speed of the unit across roads, paths and open country.

Let's get rolling!

GTM Panzer basic game. There
are a number of expansions that
are available as well.

I want to convert the GMT Panzer series war game to a desktop computer game.

I'm going to add an intelligent system that provides an artificial enemy. 

And then I will play this game solo.