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Author Topic: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?  (Read 20583 times)

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Offline Alpha

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Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« on: February 6, 2005, 08:37:13 AM »
Greetings everyone,

Since this is my first post here and all I suppose I should say something about myself, the most important thing being that I don't actually play Warhammer 40,000 followed by the fact that I tend to write quite a bit when I'm in the mood and that English is not my native language.

I bought the 3rd edition boxed set years and years back and I'm sorry to say I only painted one and a half Space Marine models from it. I also gave a try at painting a skimmer - the origins of which I'm not sure of (if it didn't come with the box, a friend of mine must've given it to me) - but never finished it. I'm also in the possession of a Space Marine attack bike model and a Whirlwind model, neither one of which I have painted or even glued together. The attack bike I received in recognition of art I provided for an online Dark Templar codex (which has since been revised with new art) some years back; I think someone bought me the Whirlwind as payment for a bit of freelance graphics work. To top things off, I also have the 4th edition rule book and I've put together a few pieces of unfinished, home-made terrain in my time.

So why do I have "all this stuff" if I don't play WH40k, and why am I posting here?

To answer the first question, I doubt it comes as any surprise that I have this stuff because I've been and am intriqued by the Warhammer 40,000 concept. I like the fluff and the setting, although I'm pretty sure most of you guys know ten or a hundred times more about it than I do - not to mention the rules. I got started on this road by the early Space Hulk computer game(s?) and my interest only grew when I got to try the board game (there's just something about fondling those models..). Since then it's been an on-off relationship between myself and the game. At one point I seriously thought about starting the hobby and bought the boxed set, but my interest soon dwindled since I only knew one other WH40k gamer. Not only that, but despite my history of graphical talent I just didn't manage to work my paint magic on models.

This latest wave of interest I blame on Dawn of War. I bought the game a while back because I'm into computer games and couldn't pass an opportunity to trample aliens under my virtual foot. Playing the game got me once again thinking about actually starting the hobby, but fortunately (?) the voice of reason put me back in my place.

No cash (extra, anyway), no gamers (to play with), no Warhammer 40,000.

I needed some other outlet for the WH40k fever, which brings me to my reason for posting here.

Three weeks ago, when the WH40k fever was at its peak again after years of dormancy, I started looking for a way to play WH40k online. Dawn of War was not an option, because I'm not a fan of RTS multiplayer gaming. I've never been good at it and I hate losing so I avoid it like the plague. I checked out OpenRPG and WebRPG which I had come by a couple of years back when I moved my roleplaying hobby from the tabletop to the web, but at first glance they didn't seem suitable for WH40k gaming (they hadn't fit my storytelling style of roleplaying, either). I found several discussion boards, such as this one, but didn't find any indication that such a tool even existed.

Having delusions of grandeur I got the bright idea of creating that tool myself. Keep in mind that what talents I have are in graphics and drawing, not programming. That should give you some idea of my state of mind at the time. Considering the online nature of the tool and the fact that the only programming languages I know to any usable degree are PHP and ActionScript, Flash was the obvious platform for me to work on.

Fast-forward three weeks to present time. The tool is not ready, but it's in a state in which the biggest hurdles I foresaw have been conquered. I'm sure I haven't foreseen them all, but even if the project crashes and burns right now I can say that it's been an interesting experience.

There's still a lot of stuff to get sorted before I can even consider demonstrating the tool and I remind everyone that it might never get to that point. Possible reasons for abandoning the project are numerous: there are legal concerns (which I have done my best to avoid in advance), essential features which have yet to be coded or even planned for and, of course, the community's attitude towards and acceptance of an online tool for playing WH40k. Since WH40k is more than just the game mechanics, a tool to allow the recreation of that mechanical part of the hobby might have very little success. And, of course, since the tool is programmed by a non-programmer it might trip and fall on purely code-related issues. If my tool was put together by a race from WH40k, it'd be an Ork contraption (no offense, boyz).

Since I can't demonstrate the tool I'll do my best to describe what it does right now and what I have planned for it to do and not to do. The working title for the tool is simply 'Battleboard' or 'BB'.
« Last Edit: February 6, 2005, 08:41:19 AM by Alpha »

Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #1 on: February 6, 2005, 08:37:46 AM »
First and foremost; legal concerns. I've been reading posts on these forums for a while now and I'm well aware of your stance on posting or using material from the rulebooks. Since Battleboard is not an official Games Workshop product I can't make use of the official WH40k rules, fluff or product-specific imagery within the tool. This is not a problem - and in fact, in some ways it's a blessing. Since I can't simulate the rules of WH40k within the tool, I don't have to write a complex "rule engine" to make sure that the players follow the rules. In this sense Battleboard follows the real way of playing WH40k - the board does not magically stop a player from doing something; other players do. Battleboard simply provides the tools to follow whatever rules are being played by, not the rules themselves.

Here are some examples of the approach Battleboard takes:

1) The tool does not in any way limit movement of units to their "real" movement values. Any player can at any time move any one of their unit from one end of the virtual board to the other, completely ignoring impossible terrain or enemy units. It's up to the other players to cry foul if they see this.

2) The tool does not check who's turn it is, which phase of the turn it is and such.

3) The tool does not check if a unit REALLY has line-of-sight to another unit or if they are within range, this is left up to the players to decide (Battleboard does come with a LOS / distance tool, though).

The way I see it, Battleboard in no way infringes on GW's intellectual property. The fact that players might use it to play WH40k games and hence use names such as "Space Marines" or "Tyranids", taken from WH40k publications, is irrelevant because you already use those names on these boards, when writing fiction or when jotting down your army lists and such. BB is just another medium where you express your armies.

The symbols WH40k uses for distinguishing fast attack units, HQ, elites and such in the FOC are generic enough to be used in Battleboard aswell. You can't really copyright a skull, a "play" symbol, an explosion symbol, a lightning symbol or a stylished cross symbol.

If anyone can think of other legal issues rising from this tool, please bring them up. My intention is not to try to "outsmart" GW or anything. I really do want to keep things legal here for the sake of respecting GW's intellectual property.

Legal concerns aside, here's a rough outline of how Battleboard is supposed to work:

Battleboard is divided into three separate parts, of which I've only been working on one thus far. The three parts are army editor, terrain editor and the gaming board itself. The first two are still completely undone, while the gaming board portion is under work.

ARMY EDITOR

For now I've planned this to be a webpage with a form where you can add or remove units to your army. The back-end will be written in PHP and armies stored as XML files on the server. Currently the parameters I have planned for each army to have are faction (for example "Space Marines"), army name (for example "Ultramarines"), abbreviation (for example "UM", although I'm not sure if I'll have any use for this) and note (for example "Jack's 1000 point 4E CC army").

At this point the parameters for each unit are name ("Chaplain Jack"), role ("HQ"), squad ("1"), class ("IC"), description ("WS?, BS?, S?, T?, W?, I?, A?, Ld? Sv?" - replace the ? with your Chaplain's stats) and file ("troop_1x1.swf"). The "description" field is essentially a free text entry of your liking (could just as well be "Holy man"), but I envision it being used as means of storing the unit's stats and gear for quick reference (for your benefit as well as your opponent's). Stats are one of those things I can't build into Battleboard myself since they are GW's property. The "file" parameter tells Battleboard which graphical icon to use for representing this unit on the board. "troop_1x1.swf" would be a simple 1x1 inch (1 inch = 15 pixels in BB) marker. Presently I have only two markers made: the said 1x1 troop and a generic tank marker (which would size-wise cover Whirlwind, Razorback, etc, etc).

Once an army is created and saved, it's stored on the server for good. Right now I don't think I'm going to allow deleting or editing of saved armies to avoid any random schmuck from messing with other people's setups, but I might allow an army file to be loaded up through the army editor, changed and saved with another name. In this sense the armies you create aren't "yours" as such: they are merely lineups stored on the server, which anyone can use if they want to. The army editor is simply a way for people to store their favourite armies so that they don't have to manually enter them every single time they want to play a game.

Besides, since the army files are just plain XML anyone can view them with their web browser. All they need is the name of the file and the address. No big secrets there.

TERRAIN EDITOR

The terrain editor will likely have to be flash-based, because plotting scenery objects with raw X / Y coordinates is tedious in the long run. The amount of work required for creating the editor, however, is somewhat comparable to what I've done with the gaming board part thus far and a lot has changed along the way there, so I'm not sure how exactly it'll work in the end.

Theoretically it'll allow you to set a name for the map and select a base tile or image. For testing purposes I created a 60 x 60 pixel grass tile, but presently any tile size can be used as long as it tiles evenly within an area of 1080 x 720 pixels. The base "tile" can even be a hand-drawn 1080 x 720 picture right now, but I'm not sure if I'll allow that in the end because it would require file upload facilities for uploading user-created images onto the BB server. And when people can upload images to a server, you can BET there's going to be indecent stuff in there.. The server's administrators could, of course, add background images at their discretion. The maximum size of the gaming board in BB is, as noted above, 1080 x 720 pixels which translates into 6' by 4' (one inch = 15 pixels). I imagine the terrain editor would allow the user to "black out" parts of the board to make the gaming area smaller, or to shape it differently (for games which take place inside spaceship hulks or large building complexes, for example).

Once the base tile was selected and the gaming area defined, plotting of objects would commence. Through some kind of a selector the user could drag and drop scenery objects such as rocks, trees, walls, parts of ruins and whatnot onto the battlefield. On a theoretical level I know how this might work, but it's still an utter mystery to me how I'd handle creation of different heights within the map (riverbeds, hills, etc). Most likely it would be usable, but not very pretty. I'm almost certain I won't even try to simulate "floors" (that is, allow units to enter closed buildings or two units to exist on two different levels of height at the same location). Fortunately, to my understanding anyway, multiple floors are not very common in WH40k games.

Once a suitable terrain was created with the editor, it would be saved onto the server and become available for games.
« Last Edit: February 6, 2005, 08:42:35 AM by Alpha »

Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #2 on: February 6, 2005, 08:38:11 AM »
GAMING BOARD

The gaming board portion of BB - the part I've been working on thus far - works something like this:

1) Players open a webpage containing the BB flash with their web browser.

2) They are given a list of games currently available on that server, with relevant information (map being played, player slots and their status, password requirement, etc).

NOTE: Presently BB does not care about passwords one way or another

3) The player either joins an existing game by clicking on a free slot or creates a new game.

NOTE: Presently there are no game creation facilities, but I imagine it will be very straightforward. You click on "Create new game", enter the game's name, description and password if you want one, how many slots (2-4) will be available, what color each slot will be represented by, the name of each slot and the map you want to play. You then publish the game and wait for people to join.

4) After joining a game BB loads up the terrain file for that game and the player can browse a list of armies available on the server. He can view the unit list of each army file and choose the one he likes. He can also view what armies other players have chosen (if any). Presently when an army is selected, the units belonging to it are stacked into an area titled "Reserves" next to the gaming area. Since they get loaded on top of eachother it might look like there's only one or two units there, but it could easily be 20. At this point the player can not move their units.

Once the player's ready, he clicks on a "Ready" button and waits for the others to do the same. There's a very, VERY basic chat facility in the client (held together by tape and sticky bitz) for communicating with the other players while waiting for everyone to set themselves up, but quite frankly I think the best way to communicate is via voice software such as TeamSpeak2, Roger Wilco and the like. The chat facility features a public channel, and in games with 3 or 4 players private channels aswell.

Just keep in mind that this thing will likely fall apart if you look at it funny.

5) Once everyone's ready, unit movement is unlocked. It is assumed that by now the players have decided on mission type, who deploys where (there is a grid overlay and a coordinate overlay available) and in which order units are deployed. The "Reserves" area is quite small due to limited space, but the players can arrange their units within it as they like to find those they want to deploy first. Moving units within the Reserves area does not register to other players and the order in which players get to deploy their units can be decided with the built-in dice roller tool if necessary. The dice roller offers two modes: public and private. Private rolls are only shown to the person who rolls them so they serve no other purpose than that of recreation while public rolls are shown to everyone. Use of the built-in dice roller is not mandatory, of course - you can also use other dice roller facilities if you want / can.

When the player finds a unit they want to deploy, they drag it from the Reserves area onto the gaming board, to a location where they want the unit to be deployed. Once this is done, with a 0-2 second delay (client communications happen at preset intervals), the other players see the unit appear at that location. From there unit deployment happens just like it would in a regular tabletop game.

If a player has any invisible units (such as the Tyranid Lictors?), they can use an "Alteration" tool to make their unit invisible before deploying it. A "hidden" unit shows up as semi-transparent on their map, but does not register with other players. When the time comes, they can once again use the alteration tool to make that unit visible (at which point it appears on other players' screens). Any units the player wants to deploy at a later time can be kept in the "Reserves" area.

NOTE: I'm planning for the alteration tool to also allow a player to remove one of their units from the board (when it dies), change the "description" field of a unit (to keep track of wounds, etc) and to change their squad number (for example when ICs attach / detach themselves from squads). Right now none of these work.

6) When everyone has deployed their units, the game can begin. As I mentioned before, Battleboard itself does not maintain any turn information and it is solely up to the players to keep track of who's turn it is to do what - just like in a tabletop game, I imagine.

Units are moved by dragging and dropping; while being dragged, the player can create a "waypoint" at the unit's current location with the "W" key to allow movement around obstacles. A small distance counter also hovers next to the unit while it's dragged, showing the total distance (in inches) it has travelled if the player drops it at its current location. Once the unit is dropped, the player sets its heading by moving the mouse (the unit "aims" towards the mouse cursor) and clicking when the desired heading is found.

NOTE: Once the unit has moved and rotated, its movement data is sent to the other players. Presently only its final location and rotation are sent, but I'm trying to come up with a method that would somehow visualize the unit's route aswell (either by moving the unit through its waypoints or by simply showing the waypoint dots). I also plan to send both total distance and displacement between the unit's original location and end location along with the waypoint data (displacement is, to my understanding, used for certain vehicle rules instead of distance travelled). And, once again, since Battleboard does not keep check of rules, it's up to the players to make sure that unit coherency is maintained.

7) For this and other purposes, there's the "LOS tool". The LOS tool is a simple line with dots at each end; you drag the CENTER of the dots to represent the beginning and the end of the LOS or distance check you want to make. Once you've set the LOS line up the way you want, you submit the LOS and it becomes available for others to see. The distance between the two points is shown ONLY when you submit the LOS, so the LOS tool can't be used for covertly measuring distances between units (for artillery and other such indirect weapons). This naturally doesn't stop someone from measuring the distance through other means, such as with a ruler.

LOS tool results, just like dice roller results and movement, are noted in a "game log" window. Every public action that takes place is recorded here and in the case of LOS checks a small link is provided. Clicking the link shows that particular LOS check on your screen, along with the distance readout. With the LOS tool players can confirm line of sight and ranges and keep things fair.

So what's still missing?

Apart from what I've noted above (and the complete lack of reliability on my code's part), I know of a few features that are still missing and I'm sure there are many I haven't even thought of. Most notably I need to add those firing cone things (to be honest I don't even remember off the top of my head if they are still used in 4th Edition!) and blast markers. Some sort of mission markers (important points, etc) might also come in handy. Scatter dice won't be implemented since they are obviously GW property, but they can be simulated with D6 dice rolls as described in the rulebook.

The biggest problem I face is that I have only played ONE game of 3rd Edition WH40k in my life and can't possibly think of all the things that go on in a game. This is one of the reasons why I'm posting here - you guys play WH40k. A lot. You should know what goes on in your games and if you've had the time and patience to read this whole post, know what's still needed.

For example, I will need to limit the maximum number of units per army file to something sensible - would 50 units (models) per side be enough for most games? 100 units? I don't even know what the client will do if it tries to load 400 units onto the board (4x100) but my gut feeling says it'll do something bad, so keeping the numbers reasonable is key. Think of your regular pickup games with your friends - how many models do you field? (especially if you're a Tyranid or Imperial Guard player)

Or if you would write down the "description" line for your HQ with their attributes and loads of gear (abbreviated names), how long would the line be? I need to make the status line in the game long enough to hold extensive stat / gear lists.

Perhaps most importantly of all.. Could you actually imagine using something like Battleboard? I mean, you've invested a lot of money into your army. A lot of time has gone into converting and painting it and you get an enormous kick out of seeing that army duke it out with someone else's army on a gaming table.

Is there any sense in doing it online with simple unit markers and text for communication (if you can't do voice com)?

If you haven't invested a lot of time and money into your army then this might sound like a very appealing alternative. In which case I must, yet again, point out that the project is incomplete and there is absolutely no deadline for completing it.
« Last Edit: February 6, 2005, 08:51:39 AM by Alpha »

Offline Rasmus

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #3 on: February 6, 2005, 01:33:52 PM »
Welcome to 40konline!

A slight problem
Quote
description ("WS?, BS?, S?, T?, W?, I?, A?, Ld? Sv?" - replace the ? with your Chaplain's stats)
breaches GW copyright in the most serious way, along with wargear-effects, point-cost and such. This will get you sued, and we cannot link to it from here, as it would endanger our legal existence as well.

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Offline Eon Kull

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #4 on: February 6, 2005, 01:53:31 PM »
Welcome to 40konline!

A slight problem
Quote
description ("WS?, BS?, S?, T?, W?, I?, A?, Ld? Sv?" - replace the ? with your Chaplain's stats)
breaches GW copyright in the most serious way, along with wargear-effects, point-cost and such. This will get you sued, and we cannot link to it from here, as it would endanger our legal existence as well.

That is true, but he also said that description is generic and can be entered as anything right below it and he has no way of checking it and I don't believe it's used in the engine, only as reference to the players.

description ("WS?, BS?, S?, T?, W?, I?, A?, Ld? Sv?" - replace the ? with your Chaplain's stats) and file ("troop_1x1.swf"). The "description" field is essentially a free text entry of your liking (could just as well be "Holy man"), but I envision it being used as means of storing the unit's stats and gear for quick reference (for your benefit as well as your opponent's). Stats are one of those things I can't build into Battleboard myself since they are GW's property.

Offline Rasmus

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #5 on: February 6, 2005, 01:55:15 PM »
I just wanted to make very sure nothing like "fighting skill, shooting skill, brawl, consitituion, hardiness, speed, strikes, command and armour" props up... :)

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Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #6 on: February 6, 2005, 03:16:32 PM »
Thanks for the welcome!

I realize the size of my post probably has a conversation-killing effect so it's good to see that it didn't drive everyone away.

I just wanted to make very sure nothing like "fighting skill, shooting skill, brawl, consitituion, hardiness, speed, strikes, command and armour" props up... :)

I did ask for any unforeseen legal problems to be pointed out, so nothing wrong with your angle. However, as Eon said I do NOT intent to implement any sort of "character sheet" system into Battleboard, with pre-set attribute fields for you to fill in (even with "made up" names that just "happen" to match WH40k attributes in a roundabout way). That's a very strict no-no and I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't however think GW would have a case against me if I called a "group of combatants" a "unit" like they do, because that's a VERY generic term (real armies have units and GW can't sue them either), but I'll rather play it safe and call a "group of combatants" a "squad" and an individual combatant a "unit".

As for the description line, as I mentioned in my first post it can be anything. You can write a joke into it if you want, or leave it blank. BUT.. it MIGHT be useful for storing information related to the unit in question and if so, you're free to do so. The way this text works is as follows:

The client screen has an area where two lines of text appear as you move your mouse over things: the first line shows a title such as "LOS tool" and the second line shows information related to the title ("The LOS tool can be used to check line-of-sight and measure distances"). In the case of units, hovering your mouse over one shows the unit's reference number, squad number and name followed by army name and faction. The second line shows the "description" text mentioned above. The reference number is unique for all units in your current army lineup, so you can use it if you want to jot down notes on paper instead of the "description" field.

And Rasmus, from reading these boards I've come to appreciate the fact that you run a very tight ship when it comes to legal stuff. I honestly don't mind your concern (mind as in "be offended by") - quite the opposite in fact. I welcome any thoughts you or anyone else might want to share on the matter, because no one person can know everything about everything. They don't necessarely have to be about the legal side, either, because even if BB is strictly legit it's no good if no one has any real use for it in the end.

Thanks again,
« Last Edit: February 6, 2005, 03:18:48 PM by Alpha »

Offline Rasmus

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #7 on: February 6, 2005, 03:58:06 PM »
I was thinking about this maximum number of models on board. Now, let's make an example. I can make a 1k-army of... 18-25 models I think (Iyanden), or another at 121. It is all too varied. Making a limit like that, unless ridiculously high, like 500, will get in someone's way sooner or later.

As for a descriptive line I am not sure. I mean "Ghosthelm, Rune of Witnessing, Witchblade, Shuriken pistol, Spiritstone, Guide and Fortune" is something like 90 characters long, whereas "Gh, RoW, Wb, SP, Ss (as oppsed to SS which is a Singing Spear by the way), Gui, Fort" is just under 30...

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Offline skyline

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #8 on: February 6, 2005, 09:24:47 PM »
Welcome!

I'm very intersted in giving you a hand developing this:

I am a software engineer.

I know php, html and Mysql very well. I started playing 40k in second edition, and began collection and playing again recently..

Storing the data in sql would be best, and you could use session variables in php for keeping track of who's turn it is etc...

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Offline Lazarus

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #9 on: February 6, 2005, 09:49:12 PM »
lol, i WISH i knew how to program as i would love to work on somethnig like this. if you need plain old playtesters im up for it!

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Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #10 on: February 7, 2005, 02:23:04 AM »
I was thinking about this maximum number of models on board. Now, let's make an example. I can make a 1k-army of... 18-25 models I think (Iyanden), or another at 121. It is all too varied. Making a limit like that, unless ridiculously high, like 500, will get in someone's way sooner or later.

That's a whole lot more than I anticipated and after reading your post I promptly did a test with two 500-unit armies. The good news are that neither one of the clients crashed and I was able to move the units around. The bad news are that when I moved my mouse over the unit "stack" in the reserves area, things slowed down to a crawl - that's what happens when 500 flash movie clip objects try to react to a mouseover event at the same time. It took a couple of seconds for the top-most unit to become highlighted and dragging and dropping the unit was equally slow. Once the unit was on the battlefield, though, it reacted much the same way as before, with no visual lag. This is a promising result as it means 1000-unit games, at the very least, are possible. And to be fair, both test clients were running on the same computer, so the poor machine was essentially doing twice as much work as it normally would. Another positive thing to note is that if one player had a 500-unit army and the other had only four units, the player with the smaller unit count did not see any of this unit-stacking-induced graphical slow-down at his end (even though both clients load both armies).

In any case, the way I've designed the unit markers right now is not optimal as they contain code which makes updating them a pain and increases per-unit memory requirements. Initially when loading the client up (in Flash Player, not a web browser) it took about 22 megabytes of RAM, which shot up to 58 megabytes after loading 1000 units. I imagine my next short-term goal should be to move all code from the markers into a separate object within the client program which the markers query when needed. Once that is done performance might improve slightly (mostly on the memory side I reckon), but if it doesn't, I'll have to think of some other method of initial unit deployment instead of simply stacking X number of units in one spot.

On a related note, how common are four-way games with 100+ unit armies on all sides? Another issue rising from this is how the client program will handle crashes or sudden disconnections from the game. The more units there are in a game, the longer a game takes and the higher the risk of something going terribly wrong becomes. Right now all game events are stored on the server so it shouldn't be too hard to get a returning client up to speed, but obviously there's no way to tell for sure before some actual testing. Plus, if a game takes several hours it would be nice to know that you can "save" the game and come back to it later.

As for a descriptive line I am not sure. I mean "Ghosthelm, Rune of Witnessing, Witchblade, Shuriken pistol, Spiritstone, Guide and Fortune" is something like 90 characters long, whereas "Gh, RoW, Wb, SP, Ss (as oppsed to SS which is a Singing Spear by the way), Gui, Fort" is just under 30...

I tried that 90 character line and it fit within the client's description text field with a bit of space to spare, but not enough to fit the attribute string in aswell. The simple solution is to use abbreviations, but if I can somehow allocate a third line of text for the status area I'll do that. It's too early to say since not all GUI elements are in place yet and I can't be sure how much space will be left in the tool area once they're in. I'd rather not make the client any larger either, because even now it's 1100 x 850 pixels in size and thus fits barely within a browser window in 1280x960 desktop resolution.

Thanks for providing that description text!

Welcome!

I'm very intersted in giving you a hand developing this:

I am a software engineer.

I know php, html and Mysql very well. I started playing 40k in second edition, and began collection and playing again recently..

Storing the data in sql would be best, and you could use session variables in php for keeping track of who's turn it is etc...

- sk

Hi and thanks for your interest! At this stage I am mostly in need of gameplay related information such as the example unit counts and the gear description line Rasmus provided - things I have no real experience with. However, should the project not go down in flames for whatever reason I imagine MySQL knowledge will come in handy eventually (I personally know nothing about it). Right now the client stores armies and terrain in XML format, which is fine and does not need to be changed necessarely (they are very portable and anyone with the know-how can write a program to create and edit them if they want to). Chat messages, game status information and the log of game events, however, are stored as strings within text files which is far from optimal. Presently there's NO file locking in place in fact, so if two clients try update the same file at the same time bad things will happen.

Remember what I said about this being an Ork contraption? This part of the client would benefit from MySQL integration, I imagine, but until formats for each of these three items are final it's probably too early to start thinking about switching them to MySQL. Do you think it's a big job to change a PHP script which reads from and writes to a file to read from and write to a database instead?

As for PHP sessions, the client - server interaction works in a way where PHP sessions can't be used (I don't think they can, anyway - correct me if I'm wrong). The client is a Flash object embedded into a regular webpage - neither one of these are reloaded at any stage during game play, so implementing PHP sessions would not work. The web browser itself never, ever even sees the back-end PHP file - only the flash client interacts with the script stored on the web server, doing so when it wants to:

Ask for list of games
Store a new game onto the server
Change game information
Check if there are any new chat messages since last update
Get chat messages
Send chat messages
Check if there are any new game log events since last update
Get game log events
Send game log events

..plus possibly some others I can't remember right now. In any case, since I do not plan to implement any WH40k rules into the client to keep things legal, I don't think I'll need to keep track of turns; especially not the different phases of a turn, since those are rules created by GW and can't be used. We'll see.

lol, i WISH i knew how to program as i would love to work on somethnig like this. if you need plain old playtesters im up for it!

69Lazarus.

Thanks for the offer, Lazarus. Right now there is nothing to test and I don't want to get people's hopes up unnecessarely. If nothing ever comes from this, I'd hate for people to lose their sleep and will to live (so to say). I didn't bring the client up sooner than I did for the reason that I didn't even know myself if I could do it. When it started to look like things worked the way they should (I was able to move units around, hide them, reveal them, send LOS data, use the chat, etc) I figured that it was time to get discussion underway and find out which things I had not even considered yet.

I don't like to make promises I can't keep, so I can't promise that anything will ever come of this project. At this point I simply needed to open a dialog with people who actually play the game and can point out things which the client HAS to be able to do for it to be useful for its intended purpose. IF, however, things go forward as planned playtesting WILL be required and at that point you're more than welcome to lend a hand.

Whatever happens to the project, I'll make sure to post about it in this thread.

Offline 'Mark'

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #11 on: February 7, 2005, 10:25:27 AM »
Well, I have absolutely no programming skills myself, but I just need to say that I really like the idea and that it would be just awesome if it works out.

As for the little help I can offer,

Quote
On a related note, how common are four-way games with 100+ unit armies on all sides?

Well, any army that isn't a small hard-bitten elite force can hit the 100 pretty easily in >1500pts games (which is a pretty standard size). Luckily for you the 40k universe is filled with small hard-bitten elite forces.

Offline skyline

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #12 on: February 7, 2005, 10:28:58 AM »
Sounds good!

As I am about to leave for work, I can't get to all the points I want to, but..

Yeah, xml will suite you fine for now, and switching to sql won't be a huge problem.
You can substitute those fopen, fwrite calls for msql_query($sql,$db), something like that, error check and go.

As far as building the tables and database in sql, that won't be tough either.

I don't know too much about flash, but I think your right about not being able to use sessions, as the page is never updated?

What are you developing on? Linux, windows?
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Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #13 on: February 7, 2005, 11:19:24 AM »
Quote
On a related note, how common are four-way games with 100+ unit armies on all sides?

Well, any army that isn't a small hard-bitten elite force can hit the 100 pretty easily in >1500pts games (which is a pretty standard size). Luckily for you the 40k universe is filled with small hard-bitten elite forces.

So, as Rasmus pointed out, 500 would be a "ridiculous" amount of units (models) per army in just about any standard game and should not pose a problem even when fielding fodder-heavy Tyranid or Imperial Guard armies? I will need to set some kind of limit on the number of units in any case; one that's balanced between freedom of unit deployment and client stability.

I don't know too much about flash, but I think your right about not being able to use sessions, as the page is never updated?

What are you developing on? Linux, windows?

Right - the page on which the flash is placed is never reloaded. In fact, if you reload the page by accident your client "disconnects" from the game you were in because the flash file gets reloaded and you're tossed back to the splash screen. Right now the client does nothing to inform other clients that it's still around, but I'll obviously need to implement some sort of "pinging" system so that the other clients will know when someone abruptly leaves the game. When no "pings" come through from one client, the others consider it linkdead and inform the players.

I'm developing on Windows with Flash MX Pro 2004 and I believe the server I do my testing on runs Linux.

Since yesterday I've managed to move the code contained in unit markers over to the client flash, but unfortunately this has not improved the "stacking lag" I described in my previous post. I'm currently looking into alternative deployment methods.

Offline 'Mark'

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #14 on: February 7, 2005, 11:39:08 AM »
Quote
On a related note, how common are four-way games with 100+ unit armies on all sides?

Well, any army that isn't a small hard-bitten elite force can hit the 100 pretty easily in >1500pts games (which is a pretty standard size). Luckily for you the 40k universe is filled with small hard-bitten elite forces.

So, as Rasmus pointed out, 500 would be a "ridiculous" amount of units (models) per army in just about any standard game and should not pose a problem even when fielding fodder-heavy Tyranid or Imperial Guard armies? I will need to set some kind of limit on the number of units in any case; one that's balanced between freedom of unit deployment and client stability.

Yeah, someone with a hundred models in a 1000pts list is already playing quite heavy infantry, so unless people play 5000pts IG vs 5000pts IG, both infantry heavy, there shouldn't be a real problem.

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #15 on: February 7, 2005, 01:29:12 PM »
Alright - for now we'll settle for a top limit of 500 units (models) per armyfile. The number will be finalized later when I get around to testing the client with better terrains (the one I use for testing purposes is rather barren to put it mildly). Who knows what happens when BB has to handle not only a thousand units, but a couple of hundred scenery objects aswell.

I've also found a way around the stacking problem, although I'm not sure if this will be the final method of deployment. Instead of stacking all of your units into the reserves area at the beginning of the game, the markers are loaded off-screen and moved to the reserves area only when you click on a link titled "Deploy" in your unit list. The deployed unit can then be moved onto the battlefield (or hid with the alteration tool before doing so). This also makes it easier to deploy your units in any order you want, instead of having to work through the stack to get to the units you want to deploy first.

Speaking of the alteration tool, I've now added the "Kill unit" functionality which allows you to remove a unit from the gaming board. This is a permanent operation and can't be undone, so if the player wants to remove a unit from the board temporarely they should drag it into the reserves area instead.

I've also refined the line of sight tool slightly to allow for better visualization of LOS. Below you can see two contrast-enhanced screenshots (to bring out the LOS lines better) of the LOS tool - the top picture is the old tool, the bottom picture is the new tool. Incidently this also shows you just how ghetto the basic 1x1 troop markers are. Try to visualize a small group of Orks hiding from a heroic Space Marine captain ...



The green dots connected by a green line are used to measure the distance between two points in both versions of the tool. In the original version of the LOS tool this line was also used to determine if one unit had line of sight to another.

In the updated version the red lines are used to determine fields of vision. In the above example you can see how the tree stops the red marker from seeing one of the green markers.

The question is: do you think these red lines serve a purpose or do they simply make the tool more confusing than it should be?

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #16 on: February 7, 2005, 01:36:38 PM »
I think they make perfect sense. I would vote for them. Perhaps you could make it a shaded area instead, though, to more aptly illustrate the "shadow" of lost LOS.

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Offline kblaes

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #17 on: February 7, 2005, 02:03:49 PM »
I'd love to see this come out, especially since I'll be going off to college soon, away from all my 40k buddies.  Are you currently working on it, or is it just in the idea phase?  Also, do you plan to release it as freeware or for pay?
As for the lines,I'd definatly go with them.  Perhaps just make them appear if a squad or model is selected, so the map isn't a cluttered mess?

Offline Alpha

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #18 on: February 7, 2005, 02:48:16 PM »
I think they make perfect sense. I would vote for them. Perhaps you could make it a shaded area instead, though, to more aptly illustrate the "shadow" of lost LOS.

I wish I knew how to do that - as it stands my skills with ActionScript are pretty limited so I don't have the faintest idea how to create those "shadows". It'd be VERY impressive to have a sort of "ray renderer" which traced lines outwards from a selected unit and cut those lines short when they hit a LOS blocking object.. Unfortunately I don't think I'll master something like that in time for this project.

Personally I'm all for keeping the red lines vs. going with just the green one. Besides, using the red lines is not mandatory - you can drag them off to the side of the board and never use them once in a game if you don't want to (they'll still show up off to the side on other players' screens when you submit LOS / distance checks, though).

Are you currently working on it, or is it just in the idea phase?  Also, do you plan to release it as freeware or for pay?
As for the lines,I'd definatly go with them.  Perhaps just make them appear if a squad or model is selected, so the map isn't a cluttered mess?

Yes, I'm currently working on it and have been doing so for the past 3 weeks. My first post(s) outlined the project's current status; what's done and what's still missing. There's a whole lot of stuff to do before I can release it even for play testing purposes but I'm hoping to get that far eventually. Currently you can join a manually created game with a manually created terrain, load up an army file, move your units around on the board as well as hide, reveal and remove them (all this is also visible to the other players, along with LOS checks, chat messages and dice rolls).

The tool, should it be released, will be freeware. At this point I'm not sure if I will continue developing it once it's "usable", though, as I'm not a software developer by trade. Time will tell.

The LOS lines can be toggled on and off via the "L" key or by clicking on a small button in the bottom part of the client screen. This way you can bring them up when you need to check LOS, and hide them again when you want to do other things. LOS checks performed by other players show up as clickable entries in a game log window. Clicking on an entry brings up the other player's LOS check (which I call "foreign LOS") so that you can confirm it yourself. This way you won't have to go by their word alone.

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Re: Warhammer 40,000 online; tabletop style?
« Reply #19 on: February 7, 2005, 03:00:29 PM »
Wow- I already excited by the screenshots. I would just like to know how much time you expect is left (just a rough estimate based on the pace you are going at) and whether or not you would feel it would be feasible to expand the project to get a team working on it.

 


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