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  1. #11
    I would certainly help as needed. I don't have any programing knowledge but do have a degree in Writing. I am sure there are things you could have me help and work on like proof reading.

    -BB

  2. #12
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    What I laid out is either a program or a website. These posts aren't short, I posted in the top half of the msg that it was one or the other - upto the group of people who will be working on it.

    The bottom half should have a "or" there & I'll fix that.

  3. #13
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
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    Vicente + Arjan:

    If the map is ready - it's literally the easiest part of the program - we figure the hooks & design the functions. That gives us the distance too. Saves us the time of coming up with arbitrary values without visualization on distance.

    Either way we'll know who's helping us next week.

    bbeau22:

    Coolies mate - We're just holding till next week to see who else signs on board to see if we will make an offical a go of this thing

  4. #14

    Some technical modification

    I would not consider PHP as your main programming language, I would suggest some JSP-Struts or JSF because of the advantages of Java and all its components. You can easily integrate AJAX to that solution.

    What's would be hard is the put the birthright map clickable and dynamicaly change the country border. Once this done, it's easy to be done with everything

    I can help with some part but there's a couple of thing that will have to change from the basic birthright stuff.

    Altcar

  5. #15
    Senior Member The Swordgaunt's Avatar
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    There's so much geek-speak in here I can hardly discern what you're all talking about... Since it appears like it could be fun, if brought to fruition, I'll contribute with moral support.

    "GO TEAM!"
    -Harald

    Today, we were kidnapped by hill folk never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.

    Blog

  6. #16
    Moo! Are you happy now? Arjan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Altcar View Post
    I would not consider PHP as your main programming language, I would suggest some JSP-Struts or JSF because of the advantages of Java and all its components. You can easily integrate AJAX to that solution.
    well i have thought about jsp/jsf but it has also some downsides.

    * the need of an application server.
    PHP can run on the current BRnet webserver, otherwise we will need to have to find another server which runs apache tomcat (or similar)..which means extra costs.

    * jsp/jsf vs php knowledge.
    more people know PHP, meaning more can contribute in a way. (and easier maintenance not having to deploy everything)

    * PHP has grown in capatebility.
    things i came up with are now easy to accomplish in PHP

    so my suggestion is to go for PHP to keep things central here on BRnet. also Subversion is available on this server.
    Te audire non possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.

  7. #17
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    For language, I would go with the one people know best. Any web solution (LAMP, Java/Tomcat, ASP.NET/IIS,...) is capable of doing perfectly what you have in mind, so choose the one the people feel more comfortable with.

    Also, for hosting the code and things like that, you could check SourceForge, GoogleCode or Codeplex. The three of them work pretty well and will give you a lot of tools without the team having to "waste" work preparing the environment.

    As for development itself, I wouldn't use too much time on design either. I must admit that I have been pretty absorved by "agile" metodologies lately, but in this kind of free projects I think they work pretty well (people need to see results to keep the morale high).

    Regards

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Swordgaunt View Post
    There's so much geek-speak in here I can hardly discern what you're all talking about... Since it appears like it could be fun, if brought to fruition, I'll contribute with moral support.

    "GO TEAM!"
    seconded!!!

  9. #19
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    Suggestions and thoughts

    Hi all,

    I (Jason) worked on the BirMail program a few years ago, with Mark, but to be honest I've lost touch with BR since I went back to uni (due to time pressures).

    Maybe I can throw in some comments about the difficulties we experienced though. Feel free to ignore them.

    Firstly, you need to decide whether a DM is needed or not.
    Either you need a DM or you need a very tightly formatted/restricted turn input system.
    I'm guessing that you want it all automated like Gorgon's Alliance rather than with a DM like the PBEM systems, however, I personally think that one of the beauties of BR was the flexibility from having a DM present, so that you could do unusual things that maybe the designers hadn't thought about.

    Edit: Hmmmm... in re-reading you were probably looking at human DMs afterall I guess. That'd remove a lot of the coding issues (no AI needed). I'd suggest getting info from current DMs asking what they find tedious or time consuming.

    --

    With a DM you need:

    1) A simple way to allow data modification to cope with unexpected changes.
    In hindsight I think we should have linked to a database with a GUI editor so that changes could be made outside of the tool and you don't spend ages coding up screens for each data type.
    (Anyone who's used BirMail will realise that a lot of the data screens could have been implemented as, for example, MS Access forms, or using one of the form front-ends for MySQL. This would have saved us a lot of development time, and a smaller app is a more easily maintained app.)

    2) A fast method for processing PC actions and for generating response text. These can takes ages to manually process!

    3) A quick way to prompt for NPC actions (make suggestions maybe?)
    Otherwise it's easy for the DM to forget some NPCs acting. This isn't really a problem if they are a long way from the PCs but it's nice to see other things happening in the world anyway, and actions can sometimes have interesting side-effects for NPCs.

    4) Some way for specifying how to bid RP against (for?) actions of other characters. This was a little complicated to handle without feedback from players.

    --

    Without a DM you need:
    1) Automation of NPCs - an AI. (Not as easy as it may seem.)
    2) Turns to be entered by players in a way which is unambiguous.
    3) Support by the automated DM for all actions that PCs may come up with.
    4) Some method for resolving bidding of RP to counter actions, and an unambiguous way for PCs to specify what they wish to do.

    --

    Also, note that data entry from the books can take ages. My thanks to all who did this for us as I'd never have had either the patience or time to do it.

    Aside: I did at one point consider going back to re-visit BR campaigns for smaller groups. My thoughts were:
    1) Central database in MySQL or similar, with forms for any manual changes required by DM.
    2) Turn entry program for players, with GUI map to see where things (units, holdings etc) are, like the BRView program, for those who know it.
    3) Turn processing program for DM - to read turn entry and help DM to process actions.
    4) Use NeverwinterNights for adventures and explorations. (Better than NWN2 for multiplayer and much quicker to knock together simple adventures.)
    5) Use Medieval 2 Total War for battles, with appropriate unit stats modified. (Requires players to have decent speed PC though and to be in similar timezones for real-time battles.)
    Edit: I was actually thinking MedTW1 at the time of planning cos it was a few years ago, but Med2TW is prettier. Obviously I only meant the battle part not the campaign part.
    I was planning an 'export data from br and create battle scenario file for MTW' then play the battle between the player(s)/DM and then manually enter results. Obviously there's be issues with non-human troops looking wrong unless someone was prepared to do the models/animations but I was happy to live with that.

    The plans came to nothing due to time pressures, but I thought I'd throw it in as food for thought anyway. Why think this way? Mainly because of the development time needed to implement these things. So I do wish you all the best with the development.

    ---

    Final comment: Regarding PC vs Mac (and I'd throw in Linux): Even if you make stand-alone applications which just communicate with a server/web site, you can still make them platform independent. One obvious language is Java, but there are others, and there are many platform independent libraries which could be used to create multi-platform from the same source code.

    Jason

    P.S. Paul: I replied to your email but the reply bounced. Obviously, I came to read this because of your email.
    Last edited by Fransys; 04-17-2008 at 01:30 PM.

  10. #20
    Hi!

    I must admit some friend of mine and myself were interested in seeing if we could try and make a modern/upgraded version of Gorgon's Alliance. Hearing that you are thinking of doing a modified game style i would love to offer my help.

    Unfortuantely, i have only just started my Game Engineering course (Polytechnic in Japan) so I dont know that much about coding and such (we are starting to use Java and learning how C++ works).

    If in a year or so's time you might be in need of some help, i would like to offer my help for then. Its not very helpful, but i wanted to say this before i waited too long and lost my chance to.

    Thanks for reading and best of luck

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