The update from the other day is hopefully the final patch to Wargames. That's right, final.

* Fix: Attempted Moon bug fix, works fine in my game so haven't been able to recreate it but coded in something else for extra measure, just in case.
* Fix: Terrible find/replace Error in which I managed to crap up the attack command in the last patch, fixed.
* Fix: Minor fault in the new system meant you could attack yourself, why you'd want to?
* Change: Changed the My Island! Medal to include a requirement of the defender to have at least one sea tile.

Oh, ok, ok. Its not the end of Wargames, but rather the end of this form of Wargames. When making a game like it, one that is updated regularly with patches, new features welded on top of the old; it does start to grind and takes me longer to go through things and even longer to update/replace it when necessary. At these points, it gets to the level where it is much easier just to start from almost scratch: total restart. With this in mind, new features, some long promised and updated systems for old ones become an immediate reality as its being redrawn anyway. I'm also going to use this chance to up the dimensions of the graphics slightly.

I have played around with +32x32 before and I have to admit the larger it is the less luck I have. I did play around with 48x48 for a little while to see if I could get a feel for it; but then decided to tone it down to 40x40 a level which I'm comfortable with. On top of this, there will be a greater reliance on windows to play the game to the point that you can happily close (and reopen) sections at will. For example, your map will be on one while the game text will be on another. Resources too, in its own and building, research and unit commands in their respective windows too. I hope to present a screenshot, perhaps tomorrow of this new system soon.

In terms of features, this is a rough guide that I'm playing on:

Alliances will now be divided: One economic and one military. Trade Blocs will represent free market economies between member nations while Military Coalitions will form what alliances have largely been in the current system. I will likely allow people to be members of more than one Trade Bloc at a time, and pondering whether military alliances will apply too. The benefit of this being true would be notable in which 20 countries may choose to be allied in a group; but individual players may have their own loose ties to other, non-alliance players which they intend to defend. Alliance conflicts could effectively get messier to the point of real world wars.

In regards to attacking, changes are being made here too. Units so far are divided into types which effect how effective they are against others. This time, this will still exist in terms of death rates, but battle plans will be created based on super groups. Infantry, Shock troops, Heavy support, Mechanised etc will have customisable orders of where they start and what order they attack in. Due to the complexity of this system, battles will no longer take the place of "1, automatically done per turn", but rather a delayed conflict perhaps spanning several turns in which you can see to a greater detail what goes on and how they are fighting. Spoils too will be greater to represent this delayed and longer detailed fighting, hopefully giving the name "Wargames" a stronger meaning.

Declarations of War, a feature I hoped to put in earlier will become a reality. Attacks without this will be considered "Border conflicts" but at a cost of attack strength for the attacker and less spoils making DoW's more favourable. Wars will have a seeable end; either in treaty (with a forced number of turns peace) or by total destruction; by which point some fancy generic name will be created for all to see (such as the 1,200 Turn War or War of Scotland's Aggression against England, etc) and a public record of little details to be viewed at players pleasure.

Spying will have some extra flavour, Spying on a nation will be one thing, but infiltrating one is another. With this, you will be able to read messages created under alliance and direct chatter to other players by the nation you've infiltrated, along with seeing what they are doing at that exact time and details on their economy or armed forces.

Buildings and economy too, will see a notable change. No longer will you see unbelievable amounts of money going into your coffers just by having billions of people and farms to feed them; having work for them will be key as well as striking a decent balance of labour, manufacturing and services. Services in themselves will cost money too.

Which brings me onto my final piece; Era's. I'm thinking of spreading out a bit, which means more Age/Eras in the game. I'm thinking 20, with the host having the option to cutting it to 10, or even 5 by jumping over some. This allows a more steady progression of units, buildings and hopefully a more complex research system. Of course hosts will always have the option of skipping them by setting the starting era later. The new eras are largely either planned future ones, or spreading out earlier ones; so the traditional 20th century eras will continue to exist.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or questions then simply drop a line here and I'll answer them next time I blog (possibly tomorrow). I'm also interested whether anyone can answer me a query: in an interface for objects be they buttons, labels or whatever; we can set icons yes but what if we're using dmi files? Is there a way of setting icon_states too?