Ok, I have a new triplea.jar file based on 0.8.2.1 stable. It should work on top of 0.8.2.2 stable without problems (and without the bug fixes in 0.8.2.2), but I haven’t tried that.
If you are interested in beta-testing my TripleA changes, this is your chance. I have just joined the triplea project as a developer at sourceforge, so my changes will soon also be available in the unstable stream, although I won’t promise a timeline.
The jar file is 1.5 MB, so I’m not sure it’s cool to post it here.
If you want to try it, email the address below and ask. I’ll send instructions on how to install it (and back-up your original).
Here’s my address in quotes (replace at with @, space with ‘o’)
“t ny-triplea_at_clayt n.ca”
Here’s an overview of all my changes that are included:
General changes (non-PBEM specific):
don’t show unit chooser when moving units unless absolutely required
show default selections when loading/unloading transports, based on common-sense
new Save Screenshot feature in Game menu
new right-click context menu for Show History tree, with save screenshot and game summary options
PBEM changes:
new options on PBEM Startup panel for configuring turn summary posting
new EndTurn panel in PBEM games for viewing/posting turn summary
Please feel free to log any comments or suggestions here.
Wow, that sucked. I just worked a 16 hour day.
Anyway, froodster inquired on another thread about how he could make his dice server TripleA-friendly.
I’m going to answer in this thread. Basically, a simple dice server with email capability is all that TripleA wants and needs.
Here’s a sample request to the old tripleawarclub server that worked great:
/MARTI.php?numdice=5&numsides=6&modroll=No&numroll=1&subject=blah&roller=player1@domain&gm=player2@domain&send=true
The html output that TripleA parses looks like this:
Dice serveryour dice are: 6 3 1 5 6
Nice and simple.
Any variation will do as long as it is generic like this.
A low-luck option is cool too, as long as it is just a flag. TripleA doesn’t support Low Luck PBEM yet, but perhaps someday soon.
Is the request customizable for different servers in TripleA? I would want my dice server to indicate in the e-mail which dice hit and missed, and to do that you’d need to know the kinds of units attacking.
Frood,
The TripleA interface to the dice roller doesn’t allow the this info to be sent. Allowing this might not be a bad idea. I wonder about coming up with a simple parsable format for specifying roll groups and ranges. So 7 inf, 3 arm, 1 ftr, 1bmr attacking could be specified in the query string as: &rollgroups=inf:7@1;arm:3@1-3;ftr:1@1-3;bmr:1@1-4;total
The outcome could be displayed as:
I just thought this up now. If you already have a generic format that doesn’t require the dice server to know anything about TripleA, then let me know.
As an alternative, I currently have a verbose version of the Turn Summary that is accessible in the history panel via left-click context menu. I’ve posted sample output below.
I used to have the actual dice rolls in the output as well, but it was really verbose and rjclayton didn’t think it was necessary. I could re-add that option, but they still aren’t grouped. The total hits would be displayed, at least.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to add an
include dice rolls in summary
GUI option for the end-of-turn post. At least that way you’d get dice rolls posted to the forum if you wanted them. It seems that dicey emails might be the best place for the verbose info though.
Here’s what the current verbose version of the battle summary looks like (the " <player>roll dice …" lines are added):
Round :8
Combat
Battle in East Europe
Americans attack with 5 fighters and 2 infantry
Germans defend with 1 infantry
Americans roll dice for 5 fighters and 2 infantry in East Europe, round 1 : 5/7 hits
Germans roll dice for 1 infantry in East Europe, round 1 : 0/1 hits
1 infantry owned by the Germans lost in East Europe
Americans win, taking East Europe from Germans with 5 fighters and 2 infantry remaining. Battle score for attacker is 3
Casualties for Germans: 1 infantry</player>
I’d keep it a little simpler, just instead of numdice and numsides (numsides seems redundant), send a string like: “13-4-2-1-0”
The dicey would parse this into : 13 dice at 1, 4 dice at 2, 2 dice at 3, 1 dice at 4, 0 dice at 5"
It would then return to tripleA the same format as now, just with the actual dice rolled and TripleA figuring out what hit what, but for the e-mail sent out it could indicate separately the dice rolled for each number and highlight the ones that hit.
But your way would work too, just sounds like it would take a lot more adjustment at the TripleA side, and a little more work for me.
BTW, I am now PBEMing with Mapview. It’s not bad, but everything is manual - it takes me a lot longer to post a turn than I would like, just because I have to do everything, make sure everythings legal, and recorded on the map and in the forum post, and I have to visualize a lot of the move in my head because I can’t just make moves and undo them or the units would get all mixed up.
It’s taking me 2 hours to post a move. That’s a lot of time every day. I hope with TripleA that could be cut by 75%. Maybe I’ll get faster with practice though.
The new TripleA Beta is not backwards compatible with old TripleA savegame files. It might be good if we allow backwards compatibility, (but obviously not forwards compatibility). Basically I’m thinking something along the lines of a user prompt if they are trying to open an old save game file that tells them the file is based on an earlier version, and if they make changes and save the file it will no longer open in the old version. Then figure out a way of loading the old save game files, even though the file structure has changed.
You and I are in the unique positition that we’ve been testing various alphas. I have no plans to make the beta backwards-compatible with saved game files from these alphas.
My latest jar file is built against 0.8.2.1 and should be backwards-compatible with 0.8.2.1 saved game files.
I raised the compatibility issue before with Sean Bridges (triplea maintainer) and he said only iteration releases (ie: 8.0.2.x) need to be compatible, and others usually aren’t.
So, the compatibility issue is a non-issue as far as I’m concerned.
Now that we’re play-testing the auto-post feature, I thought of another enhancement that might be useful.
At the end-of-turn screen there are two buttons: “View Turn Summary” and “Post Turn Summary”. Viewing it pops up a new window with the text displayed in a text area. Currently this text is read-only, however, when you post, it just reads the text out of the text area and posts it. If I made the text writable in the popup window, then you could actually edit the post, and add commentary, etc, before it was posted. You wouldn’t have all the nice features of the forum editor but it would still be a useful option, I think. I could also add a “Post” button at the bottom of the Turn Summary window if it has not yet been posted, and a “Revert” button to undo all manual changes. Perhaps even a “Post” button for convenience, and a “Cancel” button to close the window without saving changes (ie: in case you screw up the text and want to start over). I also think instead of “View Turn Summary” it should be “Edit Turn Summary” if I make these changes.
I’ve never posted here before and have just been lurking in the shadows trying to figure out the best way to play my favorite game on-line. I love the TripleA interface and like the changes that have been recommended here.Â
Is there a way to play Axis and Allies Revised on TripleA? Some kind of map upgrade that I have not seen? (I see that you can select rules I recognize from revised - i.e., artillery, destroyers, one hit battleships etc…). If not, when is someone going to make that upgrade?
This works very well to either play live, or email the file back and forth. For Play-By-Forum, my brother is working on some changes to incorporate some additional features. Stay tuned.
Ok, I haven’t posted for a week or so… my apologies. Things were absolutely crazy at work last week, and then my laptop hard drive crashed this weekend with all my triplea source on it :(
I’m sending the drive in for professional data recovery, but in the meantime I’ve managed to extract my code changes from the latest jar file and merge them back into the source.
I’m going to be testing this new merged copy in my current game against rjclayton. I’m going to defer sending the jar file out to anyone else until I am sure it is ok (the merge was quite complicated). Sorry Frood… so close and yet so far.
My current thoughts on implementing the edit feature is that it might be easiest to implement each feature at the appropriate step.
So, in edit mode, you could:
- purchase units for any player at the purchase panel
- alter ipcs held at the purchase panel
- move any player’s units into combat during combat movement
- resolve all players’ combat during combat phase
- choose to fix the dice and/or casualties during combat phase
- move any player’s units during non-combat movement
- place all players’ units at the place panel
The reason to do things this way is that it likely won’t require changes to the underlying game engine. I think it makes sense anyway for the movement/combat edits.
One thing that is not ideal is having to wait until the placement phase to add units to the board. This might be a significant enough drawback to warrant changes to the game engine. Not sure yet.
Also the need to remove units from the board/change territory ownership. I can see where you’re going with the need to be able to add/remove units at any time (and possibly change territory ownership). I think everything else would work fine as described. These edit options would somehow need to be prominently displayed when they are active, so that players are aware of what edit options they have at different phases in the game. Perhaps even giving them a button on their “action” panel when an edit option is available would be appropriate.
And of course, any edits would need to be highlighted as edits in the history panel. Prominently highlighted.
Wow, that sucked. I just worked a 16 hour day.
Anyway, froodster inquired on another thread about how he could make his dice server TripleA-friendly.
I’m going to answer in this thread. Basically, a simple dice server with email capability is all that TripleA wants and needs.
Here’s a sample request to the old tripleawarclub server that worked great:
/MARTI.php?numdice=5&numsides=6&modroll=No&numroll=1&subject=blah&roller=player1@domain&gm=player2@domain&send=true
The html output that TripleA parses looks like this:
Dice serveryour dice are: 6 3 1 5 6
Nice and simple.
Any variation will do as long as it is generic like this.
A low-luck option is cool too, as long as it is just a flag. TripleA doesn’t support Low Luck PBEM yet, but perhaps someday soon.
Try those parameters with a script I’ve just uploaded to http://frood.net/aacalc/triplea/index.php (index.php can be left off) The html output is identical to what you show above except that the head section also includes a title tag around “Dice Server”
The PBEM changes are still in progress, although a little slower than before. I’m working on some of the edit features currently. I have added an Enable Edit Mode option to the Game menu, and I now have the actual edit features about half done. Currently, you can do combat and non-combat with any units on the board (from any player), you can move units around the board without regular movement restrictions, and you can fix the outcome of a battle by choosing casualties without rolling the dice. I still need to add edit modes for purchase/placement steps, and I still need to figure out how to allow early placement of new units (for instance, in the purchase round), although I think I have an idea of how to do that.
So, it’s almost to the point where you can use triplea to play against a forum player, which is pretty cool.
I haven’t had a chance to try Frood’s new dice server yet, but if it behaves like the tripleawarclub server, then it should be easy to integrate.
I think the reason it allows it in the game engine currently is because you have to allow n/c for certain units, like carriers, and also it allows you to make intermediate moves territory-by-territory without using waypoints. I’ve added a post here:
To fix this, I think you’d first need to:
fix the carrier must-move-with logic to allow combat movements as long as a carrier could be in range (probably need new CarrierTracker.java object)
also ensure that carriers can’t be “over-booked” during combat movement phase (or is this allowed in the rules?)
disallow intermediate movements during combat movement phase… force the use of waypoints
Another option is to just have a validation function when you click the “Done” button for combat movement, that validates all the queued moves before moving to the combat phase.
I’m not sure how easy/difficult this would be.
@FMErwinRommel Good find! As in Global “UK Pacific units” simply do not exist.
By the rules “All combat moves, combat, and noncombat moves are made or conducted as any other power’s single, united force.”
So the TripleA battle calculator seems to somehow “sort” those units depending on whether they are on the European side of the map or on the Pacific side of the map.
Interestingly this does not occur with sea units. Those are correctly represented as being “British”, even on the Pacific side of the map.
In the attached savegame please use the BattleCalculator and look at SZ 37 and 39. The UK ships are correctly represented as “British”. The Infantry units in Malaya instead are incorrectly represented as “UK Pacific”, while they should be “British”, too. Switching to “British” sets everything to “Zero”. This is not exactly @FMErwinRommel 's scenario, but good enough to represent the issue.
In TripleA just use EDIT-Mode to assign the technologies you want to the nations you want.
You can do that for all nations when it comes to Germany’s very first “Buy Tech tokens”-Phase,
and of course at any time later.
manual dice = use edit mode while rolling them. for some things, like combat, i think it lets you pick the dice or pick whatever casualties you want. for other dice rolls, it won’t do anything.
ai speed = change the ‘ai pause duration’ to be really high. if you are using dynamix ai, you can pause the ai at any point in the special dynamix ai menu.
P@nther,
Actually the LHTR Heavy Bombers option only gives +1 to total SBR damage on maps where the xml is configured in a certain way.
In Global 1940, it does NOT give any bonus.
Therefore, it is fully rules compliant.
…
Ah, good to know, thanks for the update!
How is it in AA50-ww2v3?
I tested it myself and found out that it is wrong in ww2v3 (AA50) regarding SBR.
There “1” is added to the best die.
It should be “take the best die” only.
1. fixed japanese national objective so that if germany/italy takes india and/or the other power centers in asia, that japan gets her money
2. allowed rockets to gang up on infrastructure
3. Added some things to the game notes about what is NOT covered by the engine (and therefore, what you need to manually keep in mind):
Rules the engine does not do, but you must follow:
Do not allow blitzing or movement through Friendly Neutrals.
Air units may not land in or move through Friendly Neutrals, including the same turn they are captured.
Friendly Neutrals can not be ‘captured’ with an AA Gun, only by land units with an attack power.
Air units may not move through Unfriendly Neutrals unless they are attacking them.
Air units may not move through a Neutral territory IF that neutral territory had been attacked on some previous turn by some power (because technically that neutral stops being neutral at that point, and joins the other side).
If UK Pacific captures Japan, the money goes to UK Pacific, even if UK Pacific’s capital is occupied.
Do not allow USA movement to end in any Sea Zone that touches a Japanese owned territory (Sea Zones 6, 17, 19, 20, 22, 32, 33, 34, 36, and 37).
You must place all units you purchased if you are able to, or as many as you can. Any units not placed get refunded to you (triplea instead carries them over to the next turn).
The victory conditions must be held for a full continuous round after they are achieved (so for example if Italy takes Egypt as the 8th European VC, then the Axis must hold 8 VCs continuously until Italy’s next turn).
Lastly, I wish to introduce 2 things that everyone may not know already exist within the TripleA engine:
1. Edit Move Units
To “Edit Move”, you must first be in some movement phase.
Then turn on Edit Mode.
On the right side you see some tabs: “Action” tab, and “Edit” tab, and other tabs.
When you turn on edit mode, you switch automatically to the ‘edit tab’. However you can still perform ‘actions’ during edit mode, and edit mode changes those actions to reflect that you are in edit mode.
So now click on the “Action” tab, and then move the units just like you would normally.
Because you are in edit mode, the movement validation is turned off, so this allows you to basically move units where-ever you want, including moving enemy units, or even making an enemy attack, or loading transports, etc.
2. Game Comments (aka: a way to tell what fighter is on what carrier, among other things)
Click “View” menu, then select “Show Comment Log”
From there, you can type out and add comments to the game. The comments will go into the History Panel, and be permanently added to the game save.
Things you could possibly use this for: telling your opponent which fighter is on which carrier, when you have a mixed-nation fleet.
Global 1940 2nd Edition, version 3.8 is released
download it now!
changes from 3.7 to 3.8:
Moved Politics phase to be after Purchase phase and before Combat Move phase.
China can declare war on European Axis if they move into China’s allowed movement range.
ANZAC can now declare war on True Neutrals.
Added the 1942 scenario.
besides modifying the java bin, you will have to play by the rulebook + FAQ that is printed on the A&A website, or the LHTR rules
Ah, I now see what causes my confusion:
On the A&A/Wizards-Site there is an old FAQ (March, 20 2009) http://www.wizards.com/AvalonHill/rules/AxAl-AnEd_Errata.pdf
that does not contain any Heavy Bombers changes.
So Heavy Bombers’ rules are OOB rules.
My games usually are under OOB-rules with latest FAQ (February, 5 2010),
as to be found on Harris Game Design http://harrisgamedesign.com/pdf/A&A_Anniversary_FAQ.pdf
Here Heavy Bombers are changed to “roll both and choose best”
(but without +1 on SBR).
So the TripleA map does not reflect the latest rules but a status prior to these.
Got it now. Thank you! :)
