I usually just snap a quick photo of the board with my phone before packing up. It makes it easy to pick up where we left off.
Ideas for a Digital Game Manager
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As part of a school project this year, I’ve begun working on a program to assist players while playing Axis & Allies.
This version will be designed for Axis & Allies Global 1940 2nd edition and will take care of time consuming tasks such as calculating income and simulating battles.
The current features to be added are as follows:-
Calculate and manage player income
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Calculate cost of units, buildings, etc.
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Simulate dice rolling for combat and research
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Manage turn order
If anyone has any thoughts about this program, or can suggest any features, it would be great to hear from them.
I’ve also created a short survey that people can look at if interested:
://surveymonkey.com/r/9HNSH5L (add https) -
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That sure sounds like a fun school idea. I heard once that people in Israel play DnD with paid DM’s as part of a school club, uh, sign me up!
While there is certainly room for some play aides (though many have been created here), the big challenge here is that electronic aides tend to be too different than the experience of playing the game live, and no more functional than manual calculation or rolling. If people want to play a fully electronically-mediated game, they can play Triple A, or they can play dozens of other types of computer games. But triple A is in my opinion, too chunky and unwieldy to make it engaging to play. Even a much more polished version would need an AI, which have been notoriously bad in strategy games.
In short, people who want to play a live game tend to be attracted to AxA. People who can’t find space or players for a live game have to spend 12 hours at the keyboard playing a 1990 war simulation. To add some electronic aides to the TT wargame sounds fun, but even with a tablet, it would feel very “videogamey”.
I’ve tried to pass a tablet around containing an e version of a game I do not own (Shadows of Waterdeep). I think the game is excellent; it was $7 on the tablet and $60+$60 for the board game. Still, no one wanted to play with the tablet, or use it when there was an app available.
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There is an APP out there called 1940 Warchest which is very good. Some things you could add to it though would be a victory city tracker. Possibly a price reference for units and maybe even a battle tracker that would allow you to keep track of how many are in a battle. We use the board on big ones and sometimes that can be unwieldy. Maybe like a dice calculator you could just enter how many you start with and then say how many hits were scored by rolling and then the app would tell you to take off 10 infantry. Just a few ideas that we would definitely test out for you.
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No dice roller ever!! That is for me to decide my fate.
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Thanks for all the feedback so far.
I was also thinking of adding a feature to keep track of how many IPC’s players earn at the end of their turn. This would start at the amount earned on the first turn of the game (if no action was taken), and could be changed by small amounts as territories where captured or taken, and as national objectives where completed (could be tracked similar to Warchest). This would mean players wouldn’t have to add the income of each territory each turn.Another idea was to use a digital map to track who owned what territory, and calculate the IPC’s earned from that. This would also allow for national objectives to be automatically tracked. However, this seems to complex for what it’s worth, and won’t work very well on mobiles, so unless people really want this feature, or have reasons that make this worthwhile, I’ll probably stick to the first solution.
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Great idea, here is what we do:
I built a spreadsheet in Excel that calculates NPCs, adds IPCs and calculates national objective income. Has a filter on the list of territories so after each battle is announced they are entered and any power changes are made after the battle. Some national objectives have Yes/No questions fields (for at war, sea zone, etc. conditions).
We connect the computer to a tv. Keeps everyone on the same page for battles to be fought and income.
No dice calculator: use dice towers with different colored dice to represent each attack/defend values so we can roll for all units involved in the battle at once.
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Great idea, here is what we do:
I built a spreadsheet in Excel that calculates NPCs, adds IPCs and calculates national objective income. Has a filter on the list of territories so after each battle is announced they are entered and any power changes are made after the battle. Some national objectives have Yes/No questions fields (for at war, sea zone, etc. conditions).
We connect the computer to a tv. Keeps everyone on the same page for battles to be fought and income.
No dice calculator: use dice towers with different colored dice to represent each attack/defend values so we can roll for all units involved in the battle at once.
Thanks for the info, listing territories seems like a good idea, as it’s very straight forward and doesn’t require using a map.
For national objectives and victory cities, I was thinking of tracking them through checklists, with territory based conditions being affected by changes in territories.
There is an APP out there called 1940 Warchest which is very good. Some things you could add to it though would be a victory city tracker. Possibly a price reference for units and maybe even a battle tracker that would allow you to keep track of how many are in a battle. We use the board on big ones and sometimes that can be unwieldy. Maybe like a dice calculator you could just enter how many you start with and then say how many hits were scored by rolling and then the app would tell you to take off 10 infantry. Just a few ideas that we would definitely test out for you.
For references, I thought it could be really useful to include references for commonly used rules, such a combinations of units, etc, as well as info such as prices and movement values for units.
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To determine the performance level required for this software on PC, I was wondering what kind of systems people where using, such as operating systems, computer models, hardware component, or anything else performance related.
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For a Face2Face game some electronic aids would be usefull
Keeping track of income ( so you dont have to write it down )
Who does write it down? I would think those that didn’t get the paper money would either buy some off eBay, buy battle bucks, print their own, get the chips or use play money… pen and paper is for that other Wizards of the Coast game (something with a bunch of Ds in it).
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I write it down!
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@Private:
I write it down!
Much sadness… :cry:
If you don’t want to shell out any dough on some game money, would you want me to send you an image file so you can print some Axis and Allies money on your printer?
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Thanks for the offer Wolf. Please do send some REAL money and I’ll use that. :-D
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We use poker chips. They are beer proof and don’t tear easily. They are very resistant to pizza grease too.
It would be nice to have an app or program that lets you calculate your unit purchase.
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or coins
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Hey there,
I worked with a friend to created and release the warchest apps some time ago. We went down the same road you did but had to scale back the project as no one was interested in supporting the app and there was not enough interest in the concept to merit the hundreds of hours we put into it.
Not saying there isn’t an opportunity but it seems very few people that would actually use the app are playing AA.
One suggestions is to focus on Ios. We had thousands of downloads compared to less then 30 on Android.
If I can help provide any direction let me know.
Good luck!
Frank
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Thanks for the offer, however the design I created for this project has already been submitted so unfortunately I won’t be able to change much until the project is completed.
While I hope there will be some people who find this software useful, it is only meant to be a small scale project as part of my software class so I don’t mind if there isn’t great support for it.
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