I’m glad to see you’re adapting the Discord experience! It’s a great way to keep the board game vibe alive.
Axis & Allies XML
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I suggest we focus on defining the goals first.
Mot
Goals, as I see it:
1. Compatibility to make PBEM easier with any client of your choosing
2. Allow different levels of integration with the standard
Requirements
1. Be able to do what is already done by the software today, passing around a map file in forums or email.
2. Eventually, describe the actions performed during the turn.I’m trying to apply incremental development methodology here. Not everybody is going to be able to implement the full standard right away.
What is the first and most important thing? Pass around a map and manually describe your turn like MapView and ABattleMap today.
What is the best thing? Describe both the map and the actions performed during a turn.Maybe I’m taking the incremental idea too far and injecting too much complexity? Sometimes trying to make it easier can actually have the opposite affect.
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@froodster:
Yeah, if you’re not careful you’ll end up re-inventing tripleA, only with a different file format. Or would the idea be to have TripleA start using this file format?
A universal format would be cool. Some players say they can’t use TripleA for whatever reason so if you could save the file and have the other player use MapView to open it, change and save it and send it back - but that would mean a lot of work on Mapview.
I would like TripleA to start using the file format. At the very least be able to export your turn from TriplaA to this format. And yes, be able to import it into MapView or whatever program you prefer. For instance, I was thinking of writing one that was web-based using SVG and Javascript.
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Yes, it would mean work on Mapview, work on TripleA, and work on any other util that people wanted to use. But it would also mean that everything would be compatible. I think that’s the goal, that I could use TripleA and you could use a physical gameboard and just type in your moves (maybe using a text XML generator).
Yes, this exactly. Maybe a text based client too. (So that you don’t have to know XML).
Hmm, with that having been said maybe it should be required to have the FULL implementation from the start and not allow the partial implementation.
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As a triplea user, I can say that I would not bother “importing” an xml file from my opponent unless it included all state transitions. Instead, I would use my new “Edit mode” features to play out my opponents turn using the game engine. The advantage to doing the latter (other than that it is more fun) is that TripleA has a really nice visual history function that allows you to go back and replay an entire game or portion of a game.
However, I could still “export” an end-of-turn xml file for my opponent.So, I agree mostly with motdc. I think we want a single XML file, that optionally can contain state transition information for every phase of every turn.
Hmm, with that having been said maybe it should be required to have the FULL implementation from the start and not allow the partial implementation.
I think it’s wise to prototype the whole shebang as early as possible in the development effort. I also think its wise to keep the end-of-turn states separate from the state transitions in the XML file. If this is done properly, then we don’t have to make a decision to NOT support state-only clients. We should be able to support both, regardless of whether anyone cares to write a state-only client.
I might volunteer to do the tripleA integration (only for the whole shebang) if someone else volunteers to do integration for another “popular” client. That’s not a promise at this point though.
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That’s going to be a huge file. Personally, for this website, I’d like the files to be as small as possible.
Another goal should be:
- Small file sizes
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Could have a file specification that allows for either just a static state description, or additionally all the move info etc.
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That’s going to be a huge file. Personally, for this website, I’d like the files to be as small as possible.
Another goal should be:
- Small file sizes
One of the things that TripleA does is compress saved games (using gzip). xml files usually compress by over 90%.
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Yes, the files will be much bigger if they include state transitions, the price to pay for more data is larger files.
Reasonably terse XML could help with that.
Sean raises a good point that gzip should make quick work of these files.Perhaps a gzipped-xml format should also be supported by all tools that implement it.
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Likewise, MapView game files also store the entire game history and with compression (zlib) they come in under the size of a typical screenshot jpg.
Am I suggesting the XML file should always be compressed? Absolutely not. It defeats a lot of the reasons for using XML. But it could be an option for transport and storage of the files. It depends on where these files would “live”. If they are getting emailed between two players, then zip them up before attaching them. If there is roller server integration (which to me seems like a big potentional benefit of a standard game format is that you can then create standardization of rollers) where the master file is “owned” by the server then active games can be in XML format and completed games can be compressed.
In a roller-controlled situation, I see the roller actually able to inject the rolls into the XML file, which would have a well-defined URL. Players can then point their map programs or utilites at the XML file and import into their own format. This is probably pie-in-the-sky as compared to the original idea.
Mot
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I’d like to talk about this:
As a triplea user, I can say that I would not bother “importing” an xml file from my opponent unless it included all state transitions. Instead, I would use my new “Edit mode” features to play out my opponents turn using the game engine. The advantage to doing the latter (other than that it is more fun) is that TripleA has a really nice visual history function that allows you to go back and replay an entire game or portion of a game.
However, I could still “export” an end-of-turn xml file for my opponent.This is a realistic situation. We know we can probably export at least a static borad state for any particular phase or turn from the three popular propgrams. But I think the technical hurdle is the importing. AAWinMap doesn’t capture all the information MapView does. MapView doesn’t capture all the information TripleA does. If someone improts from MapView to TripleA there will be information loss, right? Can this problem be overcome?
Mot
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Not to answer my own question, but couldn’t this be a feature of the dice roller?
If the XML spec was used by the dice roller to keep a consistant and universally readable (because of XML format) master copy of the game then the various utilities just need to be able to render that XML document.
Manual entry into a dice server as is done by most of the clubs just needs to modify the XML document in the correct way (including storing the actions). Automated entry from utilities can also be implemented as long as it conforms to the standard.
This seems like the right place to focus and refine the efforts towards.
Mot
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Hi Everyone,
Not sure any of you know me, but my company, the Guild of Blades Publishing Group has been one of the longest lasting A&A variant publishers, but for a variety of legal and strategic reasons we chose to stop promoting that connection much. But our games all remain variants.
This project you are talking about sound a great deal like what we have been trying to accomplish with our Empires of History Online Gaming Network. Currently we have games 1483 Online and Thermopylae Online, but based on their original A&A variant board games we published years ago. Anyway, these programs were made in visual basic and use XMLs in some fashion.
I’m not the programmer (other than stuff like PHP and HTML my last programming experience dates back to IBM Basic and Pascal. lol) so I can sort of follow some of your discussions, but not all of them.
I guess one real question is, what would you be trying to achieve that is not already achieved with the A&A computer game that Hasbro did a few years back?
I guess the reason is, there is the potential that once our own games get their legs under them a bit more we could seek to get an official license to render an online version for A&A. But I sort of thought that market was already serviced by the past software releases, more or less. So what new would you want brought to the table with regards to functionality?
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com -
I guess one real question is, what would you be trying to achieve that is not already achieved with the A&A computer game that Hasbro did a few years back?
Hi Ryan. To answer your question in a word…PBEM!!!
Mot :)
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Was the CD Rom game playable only in real time? Meaning it could not play a turn and let the players come back to it at a later time?
If you want to check out http://www.1483online.com I think we have a piece of software that is more or less structured already in the manner you guys have been talking about. Its a VB map application that uses database stored data and XMLs. Though I know our programmer is actually restructuring to move away from much database houses data at all and towards just using a database to store the XML files for parsing.
Seems to me it wouldn’t be a huge amount of work to just drap the A&A map and image map it and our code would handle the territories and unit population just fine. The more interesting part comes in the form of the combat script. Movement or turns would have to be handled in two phases to account for aircraft rebasing. Not sure how that would work.
The big kicker is, the software can be made. But without a license kinda of need to keep it relatively hush hush.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com -
Yeah, it was pretty much realtime or play VS the computer AI (which was not great).
I don’t think people are looking for another program to play A&A with (though that is really, really great for you to potentially offer up aid in that regard).
As it happens, A&A PBEM utilities have been around for years, with McD’s being a DOS based one I believe. There are probably three or four that are widely used, and this fragmentation of the leads to a lot of grief. Everyone has a favorite and resists using a different utility. It harms interoperability.
So the thought was to create a common XML format for the game data that the existing utilities can read and write.
Mot
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I don’t think people are looking for another program to play A&A with (though that is really, really great for you to potentially offer up aid in that regard).<<
Just saw that what you guys were talking about seemed a bit similar to what we’ve already done for our Empires of History Online games and was pondering the potential for a business opportunity there. Since now that we’ve got the core game engine its a great deal easier to just apply that code to a new graphical map and image map it. Like less than 10% of the work compared to starting from scratch.
But the real question is, how many players would play a turn based online A&A if it were free, but advertising supported? Not sure that would be enough to cover what Hasbro would want for the official license.
Of course, by adding it to our network of other games, it might have potential as a gateway to draw more players to those other games. I’ll have to ponder that.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com -
I’m not sure you could compete with TripleA, which is free and not adware.
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Cant somebody just crack the original CD-rom game and reconfigure it for revised?
I think somebody posted are made the source code availible a while back.
All it would take is a week with a decent programmer.
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Could you play PBEM with the original Hasbro CD-ROM game? What about PBF?
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@Imperious:
Cant somebody just crack the original CD-rom game and reconfigure it for revised?
I think somebody posted are made the source code availible a while back.
All it would take is a week with a decent programmer.
What would be the point when we have TripleA?
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