Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Discuss the development of other free/open-source games, as well as other games in general.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

User avatar
Kalajel
Posts: 213
Joined: March 18th, 2009, 10:42 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Kalajel »

Well, I tried Winebottler, but so far no sexy graphics… :(
zephar
Posts: 1
Joined: October 8th, 2011, 3:43 pm

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by zephar »

Malvoisin wrote:as someone on our german boards pointed out, using winetricks (http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks) and installing native gdiplus libraries in console (sh winetricks gdiplus) solves GUI issues with the galaxy map. We haven't tried it out ourselves but if someone wants to do it on his mac or linux distribution and post feedback, it'd be welcome.
Not sure if this thread is being followed anymore, but add gdiplus Dlls through winetricks to wine works. The game works flawless now and the map loads up and everything looks like your snapshot.
User avatar
Midnight_Carnival
Posts: 836
Joined: September 6th, 2008, 11:08 am
Location: On the beach at sunset, gathering coral

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

This game looks great, I'm forcing my brother to download it (he was always threatening to make a game like this).
Thanks.
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

you're welcome. btw. if your brother wants to participate he knows where to call me ;). Source code in that case is here: http://bote.codeplex.com.
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

Not sure if people are still interested but we released a newer version of the game in the meantime, which can be downloaded here: http://www.heise.de/download/birth-of-the-empires.html .
Despite the download page being german the game is in english. We lack an english download mirror site after the old one has been gone.

Major improvements over the last version are:
- start-screen
- Alien entities
- random events
- all six races playable
- different galaxy sizes and options like minor race density, star density etc.
- new troop types

Already implemented in our latest beta test version is a system governor which greatly reduces the amount of micromanagement while allocating your labor units. For those with a MS Visual Studio (2008) compiler, everything's here on github: https://github.com/bote-team/bote . The codeplex repository mentioned in the post above isn't updated anymore.

Below some screenshots from the german version:
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

jfi, BotE Android port is now also on google play or amazon app store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... te.android
http://www.amazon.de/Blotunga-Birth-of- ... B011477JBA
User avatar
pyndragon
Posts: 89
Joined: February 20th, 2013, 10:10 pm
Location: Midwestern United States

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by pyndragon »

Very nice!
AKA pydsigner
Current maintainer of The North Wind and author of Heroics Mode.
User avatar
johndh
Posts: 591
Joined: June 6th, 2010, 4:03 am
Location: Music City

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by johndh »

I've been playing this on my phone today and I'm finding it enjoyable so far. I like the colorful cast of different aliens, and the details on the different planet types (like saying this type is like Pluto, for example) make exploration more interesting.

I only have two negative criticisms:
1: The pace is very slow, like most 4X games. It's like turn 100 by the time anything interesting happens. This is made worse by the limited range you can travel and colonize, which stays very small for a long time.
2: A tutorial or guide would be really helpful! Most things are easy enough to figure out with a little trial and error, but some aren't entirely intuitive (like terraforming and colonizing)... and I'm almost on turn 300 and still haven't figured out how to actually use espionage (or if I'm using it correctly, why nothing is happening).

I'd like to get it working on my laptop, so I tried installing it on WINE but the botea7finalsetup.exe gives me an error "ERROR-13-0x80004002". :hmm: Since you got it working on Android, is there any chance of a native Linux client, even if I have to build from source?
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

Hi,

well like with many games once you get a little acquainted with deeper gameplay and all the controls you get earlier action. Here it is the same. In a usual PC Version game, I start to have enemy contact in turn 50-60 and first larger combats in turn 90-100.

In order to get people quicker to this stage I programmed myself a tutorial for the PC Version which is currently only in the dev version release, not in the A7final version. A little instruction on how to download, install and compile the dev version from github is here: http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... ode#GitHub

Essentially you need MS Visual Studio 2008 with MFC 9 (or 8 I don't know exactly). It even should work with the now free Visual Studio latest version from Microsoft which has the MFC included as separate free download but I didn't use that one myself yet so I can't say anything about it except that for some minors compiling warnings everything should work.

With this tutorial mode, which only takes about 5 minutes and gives you a lot of helpful hints getting a good game going on is largely possible. Of course it always depends a little on how good your start systems around your home system are but even the best player can't win if there's just rubbish around him.

Nevertheless, pace will get quicker, definitely, after following the tutorial's hints!

This Wine error is very common, just google for it: https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-11 ... owind.html

Seems to be either a graphics card problem, a 32 Bit problem, not using Winetricks or a font problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-299965.html . Maybe some other people who got it already working under WINE like mentioned in older posts above can help.

Alternatively since the Android port is reprogrammed in JAVA, there are native versions for either Windows and Linux (don't know if they are the latest release versions but they work):

Linux 64 bit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4EHyH ... view?pli=1
Windows: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4EHyH ... view?pli=1
Source code is here: https://bitbucket.org/sarkanyi/bote-libgdx
User avatar
Yomar
Posts: 394
Joined: October 27th, 2011, 5:14 am
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Yomar »

I like space strategy games, so I gave it a try, so far I just played a bit, the things I liked are the detailed descriptions, the talking sounds and the alien portraits.
The things I liked less, going from one screen to the next and passing turns have some delays and feels slow for some reason (and my laptop is not a low end one).
The battles will be always automatically resolved, or you plan to ad the option to play out the battle in a sort of tactical screen, where you can issue battle orders to your starships, were you can actually move ships around. If not its ok anyway, just asking.
Beholded Wesnoth's Origins.
Max G on WIF
Rank 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

The UI is a bit improvable as far as clicking through windows to get things done is concerned, that's right. The UI of the Android version would be a little better as some people say.

Turn ends should not be slow, that is a new thing/bug I'd say. How long does a turn take? Does it get worse when getting to later turns in-game?

A tactical combat view in-game is currently not planned. There is already a 3D combat simulator running in the background of the game whenever a combat occurs. It looks like this: Image
The simulator for testing purposes of our balancing team is described here: http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... tSimulator
User avatar
Yomar
Posts: 394
Joined: October 27th, 2011, 5:14 am
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Yomar »

Thx for the quick answer-

As for the turns it don't takes so long, just some seconds (so passing a lot of turns take some time, an automatic turn pass system till something happens, would be a nice feature), but changing between screens causes small delays, not a big problem, but a but bothering, I played another games like this, but they were much smoother.
And is there any way to disable the event screen, for example if I order to bombard an enemy planet, every turn a screen pops up that tells me how many ppl died, after some time this becomes stressing, It would be better to have a screen just at the end when everyone is dead or in case something breaks the orders, because of defense or event.
It would also be nice to have a battle simulator included in the game (even a 2D one would be nice or at least a stand.alone one), so you can test your new customized starships vs the ones that you have already met in the game.

P.S.
Is there only a German manual available in the game ?
No problem for me, because I can read German, but it can be a problem for other players.
Last edited by Yomar on August 11th, 2015, 12:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
Beholded Wesnoth's Origins.
Max G on WIF
Rank 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
User avatar
johndh
Posts: 591
Joined: June 6th, 2010, 4:03 am
Location: Music City

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by johndh »

Thanks for the reply.
Malvoisin wrote: Alternatively since the Android port is reprogrammed in JAVA, there are native versions for either Windows and Linux (don't know if they are the latest release versions but they work):

Linux 64 bit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4EHyH ... view?pli=1
Yep, that one worked! Now I only need to find out how to change the window size. I can't see the bottom row of buttons at all, or some of the text on the right side.
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
User avatar
Malvoisin
Posts: 22
Joined: February 27th, 2010, 1:43 pm
Contact:

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by Malvoisin »

Auto-turn feature is already implemented (though I never used it myself): http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... ne_options (command line option like "Bote.exe --autoturn=500" for example)

helping with changing resolution is maybe something for the coder of the Android port. I informed him about this discussion here, hopefully he will get in here and gives you the necessary information.

disabling event screen is afaik not possible with in-game options but I could be wrong, I never tried to do so. Of course there is the source code open for everyone to change on github so if you want that feature that badly there is at least a way to do so.

Including the battle simulator which already exists as a stand-alone test program (link with download link in my post above) would be nice I know but the same holds for this as holds for what I wrote just 3 lines above, there's the source, it just needs to be woven-in and merged codewise ;).
blotunga
Posts: 1
Joined: August 11th, 2015, 8:27 am

Re: Birth of the Empires space TBS game (open source)

Post by blotunga »

johndh wrote:Thanks for the reply.
Yep, that one worked! Now I only need to find out how to change the window size. I can't see the bottom row of buttons at all, or some of the text on the right side.
The PC version is kinda work in progress and not really ready for release as I've been focusing on the Android Version. An in-game option to change the resolution is on the TODO list. Also keep in mind that it's more efficient to play yourself than Autoturn because the AI sometimes is less efficient than a human.
So there is a new version for Linux and Windows. You can now pass command line options (so far 3 types are supported: resolution: for example: --res=1280x720, autoturns: --autoturns=100 and --see-all). Autoturns and see-all are more or less debug options, and shouldn't necessarily be used normally.
Post Reply