I don't think you are ready for this game to be reviewed. Mainly because I could not make the game do anything except tell me NULL:2:2 in an alert popup.
The alert messages have been removed and instructions added. It's not a full fledged game, only a demonstration of UI ideas to solicit feedback. Should have been more clear about that.
For someone like me that has never played this kind of game, I have no clue what to do. I don't even know which color is my team. The only thing I can get is NULL messages. I clicked a lot of times on "I am done" to see what happens, nothing moved and then game was over. I expected maybe my ennemy to do some movements. You should really include some help or instructions at start. At this point people will try just a few minutes and won't come back to your game again.
Some instructions (there's plenty of chrome on the RHS to put them in) would be handy. The game would be improved immensely by having some sound effects too. The objective wasn't at all clear nor how to improve the chances of defeating the opponent - I did notice a "woods modifier" mentioned on one turn.
I'd do single left-click to select the troops, have a cursor move then with the mouse movement highlighting the cell that is active, then single left-click to reposition them or to fire. That would remove the need to click a button to end your turn at the possible expense of people making a mistake occassionally (though I couldn't move troops back once I'd moved them anyway).
That said, I don't really care for games like this.
Ideally, the game board should be small enough that you can see everything without having to scroll. That probably isn't possible in this case without sacrificing too much clarity, but reducing it would be worthwhile.
Have you tried putting the board on its side? It looks like if you did that and put the sidebar on top, it would fit (maybe with a little shrinking) in a horizontal browser window 1000px across, and players wouldn't need as much vertical space.
I've always loved these games. You have a nice start and I'd love to see more. Email me if you feel like it, maybe I can help somehow (I'm pretty busy with work though, so no promises)
The original squad leader is long out of print. I suspect Hasbro owns the rights to it, since they acquired AH. Advanced Squad Leader instead is alive and well, being republished and expanded by MultiManPublishing.
http://www.multimanpublishing.com/ASL/asl.php
I was more of a panzer general fan. Is that all there was to squad leader's gameplay? I just moved them into cover and then fired back and forth turn after turn hoping for a hit which very rarely came.
First of all there are no leaders, no machine guns, no morale checks or broken units. Once those are added you can call it Squad Leader.
In the original rules, it is very rare that you get a KIA when firing. It's more likely that you'll get a "Morale Check" where you roll the die against the unit's morale number. If you have an unfortunate morale check roll, then your units are "broken" and are required to run for cover away from enemy units. Leaders stacked with units help with the morale checks, and can "rally" troops to get them unbroken.
Machine guns are used to create devastating fire lanes with their long range and penetration effects.
That's just the introductory rules. Successive modules added such things as panzerfausts, smoke, tanks, americans, minefields.... until we have "Advanced Squad Leader" which is an incredibly detailed and complex game system.
I love the concept, I played Squad Leader a few times and enjoyed it quite a bit. I think that PanzerBlitz would also be great to see online like this. Too bad I don't have enough time to check it out today.
