Posts made by tonez

@froodster:

One problem is that the engine sometimes doesn’t always pick correct waypoints (or recognize that a route exists). I’ve tried to declare combat moves and been told “You can’t move there”, but I can do it moving one territory at a  time. So sometimes you need non-combat moves to successfully make your combat moves.

Hey Frood, have you tried holding down CTRL when you left-click a territory while moving a unit?  It allows you to choose your own waypoints, one territory at a time.  It is also mentioned in the Help section under Movement Help.
I agree that the automatic waypoint selection algorithm seems to choose the wrong path sometimes.  Perhaps this could be fixed.

However, given the availability of manual waypoints, it should be possible to completely eliminate support for non-combat movement during combat movement phase, I think, by fixing the other issues first.

@froodster:

So when you say “fix the battle outcome” I imagine a screen similar to the “purchase units” or “move units” dialogs where you can simply adjust the units of each side, maybe with one master button for each side that would set all units to 0 for that side.

Actually, it could be accomplished simply by skipping the dice, and then removing the limitation in the casualty screen that you have to match the number of casualties (or by allowing the player to specify the total number of casualties) and then you just take as many casualties from each side as necessary to reach the final outcome indicated by the dicey. Then you end the battle as normal.

Hey Frood, this is exactly what I’ve done now, and it works great.

Ok, Sean Bridges, the TripleA maintainer, has kindly pointed me to this FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/axis+allies/

The question is answered in this FAQ item:

*How do fighters fight on an ally’s carrier?

If a carrier attacks while carrying an ally’s fighter(s), the
    fighters cannot fight, but can be taken as losses, provided the
    owner of the non-fighting fighter consents to the loss. 
    Source:  Communication with Milton Bradley (dated July 27, 1995).

So, although it may seem odd, I guess the official ruling is that when a carrier attacks, allied fighters on that carrier can still be taken as losses, although they do not join in the attack.

Case Closed!

Ok, I’m digging up an old one here… hopefully it will get another look.

This is from the second edition rules, page 16:

Carriers attack only at “1”; but they defend at “3” or less.  Any time a carrier is attacked, its fighter planes are considered to be defending in the air; so if a hit is scored, the carrier owner could choose to eliminate one of his or her planes as a casualty rather than losing a carrier.

However, given the context, the statement “any time a carrier is attacked”  still seems ambiguous to me.  Does it mean “any time an attacking or defending carrier is attacked”, or does it mean “any time a defending carrier is attacked” ??

I looked at the rule clarifications here: http://www.aamc.net/bunker/aaruleclrfd.htm
and found the following under the Carriers and Fighters section:

2. If you have a fighter on one of your own carriers and it is flying out to attack, you must launch it before your carrier moves! Otherwise, if the carrier moved first with fighter on board and then the fighter moved, the plane’s range would be extended illegally; the same rule applies during the non combat phase. A carrier cannot move after a plane has landed on it, for it would extend a plane’s range illegally.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help clarify this example.

The replies in this thread seem to indicate that the ability to be selected as a casualty applies to both attacking and defending fighters.  I think during an attack the allied fighters would technically still be landed on the carrier, as I believe that the intent of the rules is that they can only take off on the allied player’s turn.  Hence, I wonder if they really should be able to be selected as casualties, or if they just “go down with the ship”, like transport cargo.

Thoughts?

rjclayton just posted in our current game (http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8331.120) that he’d like triplea to prevent non-combat movement during the combat movement phase.

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.

I took a quick look through the AARHE rules and I think this will be quite difficult to implement in triplea, unfortunately.  The current triplea engine allows only one player to take their turn at a time, and turn sequences are strictly layed out in the game configuration file.

To lift these restrictions will require quite a bit of work, and even more testing.  You’ll need to find someone who is willing to do both.

Many maps were made for variant rules. The makers probably felt pointless to play their new maps with OOB (out of box) rules.

It is possible to add new house rules to triplea, but it is a programming effort to do so as it involves changes to the game logic.  Currently, rule variants can be selected via the Game Options button when creating a game.

Making a new map/scenario in triplea is straight forward if it doesn’t involve house rules.  It is all XML driven with no programming required.  If there is a specific scenario you think is popular enough or interesting enough to warrant adding it to triplea, then I suggest you start a thread here:  http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?board=53.0

Hello, I’m the main developer of TripleA.  I guess I have a bit of an ego, but tonez is also a developer, and he seems quite reasonable.

My ego resents that comment!  lol

There is certainly some stuff in the TripleA xml that is specific to triplea, but maybe not as much as you might think.  All of the javaClass=“…” attributes could simply be removed.
The only remaining section that has TripleA-specific information is the <gameplay>section.  This section could probably be removed in its entirety, as much of this information is implicit to all A&A games, as far as I can tell, with the exception of the players and player turn-order.  The player turn order could instead be captured in the existing PlayerList section, like so:
<playerlist><player name=“Russians” optional=“false” turnnumber=“1”><player name=“Germans” optional=“false” turnnumber=“2”>…

Notice that the revised.xml file defined map layout, the initial state of the game, any game options, and the gameplay sequence.
I think these are all good things for an open format to describe (except perhaps the last one, for reasons stated above), so it can support all different flavours of A&A.

However, you’ll also want new sections for the current state of the game.  Or, perhaps you’ll want to keep that as a separate XML file.
This is where you’ll need to make tough decisions, like whether it will reflect the current state only, or enumerate all state transitions (ie: unitA moved from terrA to terrB on r3…, etc) that occur in a turn. 
Also, will it track only one turn (or Round) at a time or will it track the progress of an entire game?
TripleA does the latter in its saveGame file, and it is extremely useful, and one of the many reasons that I find the tripleA interface far superior to any other I’ve seen.  If you take the easy route and only support the current board state in your open format, you will likely not win over many TripleA users.

I am currently working on features to TripleA that make it easy to play against a non-triplea player, by enabling the TripleA player to play out the opponents turn in a special “Edit” mode that allows for fixed outcomes of battles, etc.  I think this will be more user-friendly than an open format that loses turn history.

I think a good place to start is a more in-depth discussion on the revised.xml format I posted from tripleA, and how it does or doesn’t meet general requirements.  I guess I’ve just started that discussion ;)</player></player></playerlist></gameplay>

Pardon my ignorance, but what are NAs?

rjclayton, I don’t remember that conversation… maybe it was before I started really hacking triplea.

I posted this to the general development thread in response to a reference to this thread:

Hey djensen,
Before you endeavor to create Yet Another Data Format, you should check out the underbelly of TripleA.  It uses xml files already to specify map layouts and starting unit locations for all games (Classic, AAR, pacific, etc) in a very generic way.
I can post a sample AAR R1 xml file if you want so you can see what the format is like.  Currently, savegame files are saved as a gzipped serialized java object, but there is discussion on the dev list to also support the xml format for savegame files in TripleA (probably with some form of digital signature).
I’m also interested in hearing your plans for this data format.  Lots of forum users currently use ABattleMap, for instance.  Are you thinking of replacing that tool with a more modern, open version?  As far as I can tell ABattleMap is closed source and will probably never be interoperable with anything.

I’m attaching the sample AAR R1 xml file here as referenced in my comments above.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Hey djensen,
Before you endeavor to create Yet Another Data Format, you should check out the underbelly of TripleA.  It uses xml files already to specify map layouts and starting unit locations for all games (Classic, AAR, pacific, etc) in a very generic way.
I can post a sample AAR R1 xml file if you want so you can see what the format is like.  Currently, savegame files are saved as a gzipped serialized java object, but there is discussion on the dev list to also support the xml format for savegame files in TripleA (probably with some form of digital signature).
I’m also interested in hearing your plans for this data format.  Lots of forum users currently use ABattleMap, for instance.  Are you thinking of replacing that tool with a more modern, open version?  As far as I can tell ABattleMap is closed source and will probably never be interoperable with anything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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>

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.

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.

Hmm, ok, I just read the “1 on 1 help for play by email” thread for the first time.  I guess the daak roller is pretty popular around here.
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to integrate it with TripleA and allow you to enter username/password in triplea for it.  Argh, that PBEM Setup Panel in triplea is already getting pretty congested with my new features… this might warrant a reworking of the UI.  :-(
I would still prefer an A&A.org roller  :wink: