PBEM - Hints, tips, and tools

ok, i’m trying to enter the modern era and have abattlemap downloaded but i cna’t see the entire map, it gets cut off south of rhodesia and west of china, what simple thing am i missing here?

You might try right-clicking the map and moving your mouse meanwhile to scroll the view of the map.

About the sz-labeling in Abattlemap, there is a fix for it that is downloadable on this site: http://www.dicey.net/nuke/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=1

It’s currently unavailable, but I guess it might be working any time soon.

duh, thanks :oops:

i think i am nearing being ready to try a game :mrgreen:

THANK YOU DARTH!

With all of the issues with ABattlemap and SZ numbering, having that image posted will help prevent a LOT of potential issues!

What do people normally use for a dice server when they play online games against someone? What one works the best, or is the most efficient? I’ve never played online so I just want to know which one will be or should be the one I use.  And what does ADS stand for again? how does it work versus low luck or no luck.  I usually prefer the real dice so… yeah.

The links in this thread don’t work for me.  Are they still good?

The download page for ABattleMap seems to be borked - are there alternate locations?

The link I found, http://www.flames-of-europe.de/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2, leads to a page with two PHP errors and nothing else.

one day we need a programmer type to make a new battlemap…preferably one that has bigger islands and fits on a standard screen. :P

Hmmm… I wonder if this would be a good project to learn Flash with. I have a pirated copy of Flash MX that I’ve yet to really do anything with. Just keeping track of units and movement etc. would be a lot simpler than the sim I’ve built, it would be more a matter of learning to program something other than PHP.

Can TripleA be adapted for this purpose? Does anyone know anyone on the TripleA dev team?

Another solution would be to use an SVG file, or a Photoshop file with layers, where you could move/add/delete units and send that file to each other. But it sounds like one nice feature is having the moves automatically ported into a window for copy/paste.

@frood:

Can TripleA be adapted for this purpose? Does anyone know anyone on the TripleA dev team?

My brother is currently doing some development for TripleA.  We are playing a game here to test the changes as we go http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8142.0

My limited understanding of TripleA is that it’s an entire game system that enforces all of the axis and allies rules on movement and combat etc.  Hacking it to remove the game system and just leave a “dumb” map is probably more effort than it is worth.  Then you’d also have to write the code to add/remove units since TripleA isn’t really a map editor in it’s current form.  If you wanted to make a new map, I’d suggest creating a new one for ABattlemap.  But you may want to wait and see how our experiment with TripleA goes first.

Rob

That looks very interesting. I saw that you’re wanting to add more dice servers - I’d be willing to host one.

Just one question - does TripleA e-mail  the dice to everyone? How does the other player enter the results? Oh wait, I guess you e-mail the game file back and forth. I tried tripleA PBEM just by myself and received dice rolls in my e-mail, but it was just a string of numbers - there was no indication of which ones were hits at which number. This was with the latest beta, not the stable version.

I’ve been playing the Easy AI just to get a feel for tactics and to scratch my itch until I can get into an actual game - is anyone working to improve the strength of that AI? The US usually has 23 transports parked off the African coast by the end of round 6.

Yeah, the dice email isn’t very pretty (just a string of numbers).  But remember that TripleA interprets the dice and automatically updates the board for you, so the dice email is just for your reference only.

Nobody is working on AI improvements that I know of, but if you are interested in contributing to the TripleA project and want to take a stab at the AI, then go to triplea.sourceforge.net for more info

I know nothing about AI programming (or Java).

But with the e-mails, it should as a bare minimum indicate what target value the dice were rolled at. That should be an easy fix, no? Or does the dice server only roll as many dice as TripleA requests, and then TripleA interprets the result by assigning the dice in the order rolled?

Sounds like TripleA might be the best option for PBEM out there. Does it allow bidding though?

IIRC, the subject line from the dicey email tells you how many units of each type it is rolling for.  eg. “Attacker rolling for 3 inf 4 arm” then the number string is in that order.  eg. “2 1 3 5 6 2 4” would be 1 inf and 1 arm hit.

TripleA does allow bidding, but as of yet does not allow unspent bid amounts to be rolled into starting cash for one of the axis powers (you have to spend the entire bid amount on units to place prior to R1).  We hope to fix that.  In my opinion, TripleA is the best option for PBEM, but is missing some handy features to make it even better.  Give us a bit more time and we’ll hopefully have something that works even better for PBEM than the current TripleA does.  Unfortunately, since TripleA is a game engine, all players must use TripleA (ie. one cannot use TripleA, one ABattlemap, and one a physical board, for example).  Some players are hesitant to use TripleA for various reasons including, but not limited to; their computer is too old, TripleA doesn’t have the features they need (ie. carry-over bid amounts, or edit map features, or turn summary unit listings, etc.), or some just prefer using a physical board.

What’s the point of end-of-turn summaries if you don’t need to enter the results on a board or abattlemap (which seems to be unavailable for download anyway).

And how big are the save files for e-mailing anyway? I’m guessing they’re small, since they are XML files. Actually, since they are XML-based, there should be no major obstacles to creating some web-based application to display results.

How long do you think before you can post a beta of what you’re working on now? I’d be interested in helping to test it if that’s needed.