The GECCO Home Page

GECCO (Game Environment for Command and Control Operations) is a strategy game. It is built in Java and is very generic, meaning it is easy to add different types of scenarios without changing the game and also that the code itself is easy to expand for future improvements.

Why another strategy game? There are many commercial strategy war games available today that are very complex. However they are not well suited for research purposes. Mostly because there are no means of communication with the game except for mouse and keyboard input and it can't be corrected because the source code is not available.

The game uses a client/server solution. The server keeps track of the game in play and any number of clients can connect to the game. The client itself doesn't know anything about the currently playing game, it is just a graphical user interface. The game world is divided into two layers; One layer where units can move around and another layer representing the background. The unit layer is vector based, so the units can move in any direction, while the background layer consists of an automaton matrix. Each cell is a square block containing a color, representing forest, water, mountain etc. The automaton feature makes it very easy to simulate a fire sweeping through a forest.

Some of the pre-made scenarios included in GECCO are:

• Usual war strategy game. Blue team against the red team. Includes tanks, helicopters and radar stations.
• Fire fighting game. Control a number of super sonic fire trucks and try to extinguish fire spreading rapidly through Sweden.
• Rescue mission. The Öresund-bridge, connecting Denmark and Sweden has collapsed and you have to control a number of helicopters and boats and try to rescue the people in the water.
• D Day. Control either side in this big invasion of the World War II and try to change history.

Because GECCO should be easy to expand and improve, it is well documented. The documentation can be found on the documentation page.

GECCO is free and released under GPL.