So I made a third prototype. It’s still very much a work in progress but have a look at it anyway – it’s pretty neat. It’s an implementation of the Master of Orion 1 Starmap. I basically tried to copy it’s look and feel. What you can do (and that’s really the only thing you can do right now) is move around by clicking the map.
Go ahead and start the prototype.
So how does it work? There are three layers on top of each other – the top layer contains the colorful stars, the second layer contains the small dim stars and the third layer in the back holds a couple of very bright stars. As you scroll the map the layers are all moved differently hopefully giving you a sense of depth. The 2nd and 3rd layers are only static tiles. The colorful stars are the stars the player may actually colonize and fight over. They are stored in a database table and requested by the map script via an asynchronous call. The stars are returned as an array in JSON format. The client side is homebrew javascript goodness with the help of Prototype and the backend consists of a few PHP classes. Here’s a screenshot:
A couple of things about the graphics: I find it difficult to produce random yet still visually pleasing star patterns. When I draw them myself I tend to distribute them very equally which looks kind of strange and not very random. You may notice this in the 3rd layer containing the few bright stars. The stars in the database are generated with the help of a self written map generator script that is supposed to distribute them randomly but not too close together. It doesn’t work very well yet as the stars are still distributed very equally.
So where I am going with this? Well the plan is to create a Master of Orion clone that you can play online with simultaneous turns and up to 16 players. Let’s see how that works out.