Axis & Allies XML

[Motdc]

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

[Motdc]

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

[guildofblades]

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

[Motdc]

@guildofblades:

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 :)

[guildofblades]

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

[Motdc]

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

[guildofblades]

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

[frood]

I’m not sure you could compete with TripleA, which is free and not adware.

[Imperious Leader]

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.

[rjclayton]

Could you play PBEM with the original Hasbro CD-ROM game?  What about PBF?

[frood]

@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?