The Alisa Engine is the stuff behind this game that'll make it work. The engine is written in C++, with SDL, some SDL_* libraries, and Xenon. The engine supports the 4 major platforms: OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows. The game data and the engine are seperated, so there is no game specific data in the engine. It will be noted in the document as necessary. This seperation makes mods easier. The engine has two primary components, the globe and tactical, which will be described in the rest of this section.
The Globe is just the name of the EDF equivalent of a geoscape. It has 4 major parts, described below.
Similar to the geoscape in X-Com, the world view combines: A globe against a background, A menu to access other parts of the interface, a quake-ish console for minor event/status messages/multiplayer chat/gui navigation, a chronometer :), and some way of changing planets(no decision yet). There will be no menu bar at the top unless someone gets a compelling reason to put one in. I think it'd be quite useless.
How the globe is rendered. [Kry will do this]
The interception screen will use a 3D radar. Important messages will not require a response during an interception, but will clearly be visible.
3D radar rendering. [needs to be done.]
We're doing multilevel bases with potential to expand the base by making agreements (x money = y land) with the country the base is in. (maybe you can even use some land without permission and see what happens) There is no set limit on the number of bases you can have on a planet. There should be a tactical preview of your base so you know how things will be if you have to defend it. (This section will be cleaned up later)
Note: There's an unlimited number of bases, but resource/political issues will restrict you to a sane amount.
The rest of this section is on what functions/screens are available in base management.
This is the same idea X-Com used - a top down view of all your base facilities, but much better. We will use a X-Comish viewing mode, and an isometric viewing mode. The isometric viewing mode shows essentially what the base will look like if aliens tried to raid it. Because EDF bases are so much more complicated then simple 2D X-Com bases, this screen will have controls to move the view up/down/north/south/east/west, change viewing modes, add/remove base facilities, and sell/buy/rent base land.
The last feature of the base view is base features. Some functions/information specific to a given base facilities can be accessed by clicking on the facility in the base view, or on a list of base facilities. There are features specific to base facilities that can only be accessed by it's screen, i.e., government radar contracts. You'd click on the radar facility, and it'll let you set up contracts with various governments near the base who will share their radar info with you at a price. There are many other things you can do with this, and it's particularly useful for contracts.
This allows you to choose a location for your base. A window will show if you can get that location (political/resource issues), the price of the location, the type of location, the size of the location (and the option to increase it), and the usual ok/cancel buttons.
Just a thing to transfer resources between bases, and to other organizations. Different transfer techniques are available. (ups ground, express, carrier pigeon, teleportals, etc.) This screen also shows you various things you may have agreed to, let you set/unset shipping schedules/contracts, show current transfers, and transfer history.
This is like the soldiers screen in X-Com, but better. Only soldiers on the current base are listed, but you can change this to show all personnel on all bases, soldiers assigned to a specific ship, or anything else.
The research screen is a bit different in EDF. It is simplified into two sections:
Unlike X-Com, each base will not have it's own research screen and set of projects. Instead, you just have one, unified list (more of an table/tree, actually), which shows:
Completed projects
Proposed projects
Current projects
Stalled projects
Interrogation projects(interrogation projects disappear once the alien they were assigned to disappears)
Next to each project will be important pieces of information about the project, which are user selectable. The project names may also be color coded by project status (if the player wants it), for obvious reasons. The list will have many preset sorting options so you don't get overwhelmed by the number of projects, and so you can find exactly what you're looking for.
The project details screen/window/section will have:
The name of the research/interrogation project
The history of the project
Type of project
Estimated project efficiency
Estimated project speed/ETA
Estimated project progress
A list/tree of bases qualified to participate in the project
Each base (in the list/tree) will contain information like:
Things used in/assigned to(add more grey carcasses for faster research) the base to use on the project
The people on the base assigned to the project
Base facilities assigned to/used by the project
Estimated efficiency of the project at the base
Estimated (percent) work produced compared to other bases
I haven't figured what would be the most intuitive way of editing/showing this information, but a tree may work.
The pedia will emulate a minimal web browser, which accesses multiple databases for it's information. Different databases have different looks, just like how x-com had different looking backgrounds for every class of information. The information in the pedia make use of links to crossreference other pieces of information in any database. The pedia, of course, will allow sequential viewing of information, too. We might use html for this.
Note: This will be a relatively independant section of the game, allowing it to also be accessed in tactical, if it will be useful.