• 2007 AAR League

    @tonez:

    The overall goal is to make TripleA the easiest way to play PBEM games, even if your opponent chooses not to use TripleA.

    I’d like Tonez to expand on this point a little bit, if possible.  By making TripleA the easiest way to play PBEM, even if my opponent chooses to not use TripleA, there needs to be a really simple way to update the map each turn.  Was this going to be part of the free-form editor?  Or was the idea to play the turn out through TripleA and fix the battle outcomes?  Or something else?

    It might be difficult convincing people that TripleA is the easiest way to play versus an opponent playing say ABattlemap and willing to email you the map each turn.  If you used ABattlemap in that situation you would already have an updated map, but with TripleA you would have to update the map yourself.  How is TripleA easier than ABattlemap in that situation?

    Thoughts?


  • @DarthMaximus:

    , but in Classic, I’m a much better player and pending the bid, if my opponent has a bad roll (even slightly) early on it is game over so I like to offer a fairer solution to the early critical battles.

    I aint buying that a bit…So if I have a “slightly” bad roll in turn 1 against you, then all is lost? Baloney!!  BTW, you haven’t tried me out when I’m the allies have you? I happen to think that I’m a natural born allied genius!! :-D

  • 2007 AAR League

    As far as I can tell, ABattleMap uses a closed data format, so interoperability between ABattleMap and TripleA will likely never happen.
    If this is an incorrect assumption, or if anyone has insight into the ABattleMap map file data formats, let me know.

    If one player is using ABattleMap, and the other is using TripleA, then yes, it may be less convenient then if both players are playing with ABattleMap and emailing the map back and forth, and certainly less convenient than if both players are using TriipleA.
    I see your point.  I have not been on this forum long, and from looking at games in progress, it seemed that players were using different map tools already, but that may have been a misjudgement on my part.

    For the player using ABattleMap, they still would have access to the TripleA screenshot from the other player, so hopefully the inconvenience is relatively small.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Yeah, I’d agree that if one player is using ABattlemap and the other is using the new TripleA, then the players would probably want to choose one program that they both can use instead of having to keep both programs up to date.  However, I’d hazard a guess that once people try these changes to TripleA, they would prefer to both use TripleA vs. both use ABattlemap.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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:

    your dice are: 1 4 6 2 5 3 1 3 2 6 4 3

    inf:  1 4 6 2 5 3 1  [2/7]
    arm: 3 2 6 [2/3]
    ftr: 4 [0/1]
    bmr: 3 [1/1]
    total: [5/12]

    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>

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Backwards Compatibility.

    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.

    Thoughts?

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Compatibility = GOOD
    Turn Summary Editor = GOOD

  • 2007 AAR League

    sounds great guys. send me an archive anytime. rempel c/o gmail.com

  • 2007 AAR League

    Due to Tonez’s computer crashing, development is on hold temporarily  :-(


  • 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?

  • 2007 AAR League

    TripleA comes with everything needed to play AAR.  You should be able to Load New Game and select revised (the default is classic).

    Make sure you have the newest stable release from triplea.sourceforge.net

    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.


  • RJClayton - Thanks for the information.  I can’t believe that I had not found that option.  :)

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

  • 2007 AAR League

    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.

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