SFR, Inc.

[KilljoyKing]

Warning! The following concerns a program still under development! If you try to point out something that could be improved instead of something that is a flat-out error, you will be berated to the full extent of the forum rules! It isn't complete; of course there will be room for improvement!


Originally, I made this thing because it looked like I could make it to GenCon! Problem is, I still haven't played Dragon Dice in over a decade! Well, this event and all the dice I've bought over the last year -- doubling my collection -- really mean it is about time I commit myself more to DD.
So, I was going to come out of retirement! (Of course, no one ever fought me, so it seemed sort of worthless to go to GenCon and job-out horribly.
Since no DDicers were interested, I began programming the Chaos Progenitus extension in such a way that it completely devoured any Dragon capability. Apparently, there isn't any loss. At least my bro plays CP. Had some good goes with it.

The rest of this message appears intact from its pre-non-Con, pre-CP days.)


Unfortunately, no other dicers live in Northern Ohio. And on-line battles suck.


So, I programmed this solution. Well, more of a proof-of-concept than an actual solution, right now. Before I invest any more time into this, I want to make sure it is a good idea. I know it "works" to most extents. Will it be a viable alternative to these forum battles?

The ultimate goal is to have it roll the dice. That is actually surprisingly easy to code given the rest of the program. It is time consuming to enter all of those dice, granted, but still easy to code.

The goal isn't to simulate Dragon Dice; it is to simulate a table top. Pretty much, I want to be able to do Chaos Progenitus with this thing, too. People still have to say what they want to do and when they are doing it; this program just organizes everything. The way I see it, no matter what, this should be easier than making those enormous tables with every move. An actual message board will have to be used to describe actions as players take this, but this does help visualize the battlefield much better and organizes it much more quickly.

And yes, I am well aware that it is ugly. No sense in prettying-up the layout if something is just going to change or get scrapped entirely! If people dig it, then I can make things un-eye-damaging and user-friendly.

Enough jibba-jabba -- who wants to take me on? I now have every single die in the game from all races and expansions programmed in, including ones that don't even technically exist, such as the non-death Ivory Hybrid Dragons!
Prolly will want this thing over as soon as humanly possible, so I'm going with twenty-four or thirty-six health. Full Magestorm!, why not, just to make sure all of that is in proper order.

You can challenge me up at rexranarum24 or rexranarum36. I am also leaving a "game" going at all times just so you non-signer-uppers can see what it looks like.

Recent changes:
* You can edit armies after creating them.
* Better handling for sucky Internet Explorer.
* Log out function was added.
* Selected dice groups appear on top.
* Players can now select a color for their army groups.
* Can quit/end games.
* You can see a log of actions taken now, although "actions" only involve the movement of dice between armies and stepping terrains.
* If both players are online at the same time, they can see the opponent's actions as they are made.
* Added in Minor Terrain faces.

Known deals -- they aren't problems, they are just lazinesses!
* Ugly
* Rules are in no way enforced. Army sizes and regulations should be agreed upon before hand.
* The above is also why there is no list of "waiting for battle" users. I only expect this to be used when people know they want to fight.
* No summoning pool. Keep it uncluttered and old school by doubling up your D/BUA.
* Images will be used -- just as soon as I not only find an easy icon source, but rename them all in a fashion usable to this script.
* Although multi-player battles do exist, right now, I have the ability to invite more to a game turned off.
* Probably more I am not remembering.

Wow, there aren't a whole lotta those issues left. The ones that are left could be handled pretty quickly, too, if, y'know, I had any reason to believe this program was worth the effort. But seeing as how no one is willing to give it a whirl -- or even a chance, for that matter -- I guess no one wants that brass ring of automatic internet Dragon Dice play after all, huh?

And before anyone else says it...
* Yes, a player can move his opponent's dice. Sometimes, there is no reason to wait for kills. It is all about speed! You can also step opponent's terrains.
* No, spectators cannot modify the table top. They can modify the table-top they view, but this has no permanent effect.
* No, you cannot move an enemy's units into your own armies
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Dragon Dice Musing and Such @ Reality's End

[Deeghter]

Well, first of, when creating sth like this, you should stick with what there IS AVAILABLE! Tropics City is something you can add later.

Second: Mint vs. Rex game
Watching the game means in this case sitting in front of the PC, re-loading the page every few minutes (for maybe days until the next move??) or will the moves happen in real time on this page??

There's NO TERRAINS visible, except one minor and the Tropics City.

Third: Yes it's ugly, agreed, doesn't matter for testing purposes, but to me it would be important to at least have a layout resembling the actual layout on the table in front of me, which means my home in the middle at bottom of page!
(yes, I know, the tables in our online games don't do that exactly either, but they come VERY CLOSE!)

I understand that you don't want to take the time to make it look nice, but if you want to make people interested, you gotta finish it completely and THEN ask for opinions.
Nobody would for example test a video game if it consists of sprites only and with the developer promising that it will be a high res 3D game later!!!
As of now it looks soooo boring and uninteresting that I don't even want to try it!
Besides, I HATE TO REGISTER at every page I just want to take a look at!!! And the example game to be watched doesn't change at all! Maybe you should program a complete game run through which can be watched like a video (sort of)??

I'm afraid that at this stage of development you won't get ANYBODY interested. Sorry!

But the basic idea is good!
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Mr. Green Fan Club President

Forum Games Record: W 5 / L 10

www.dragondicer.com
SFR's German electro-punk-bluegrass artist Deeghter @@ My S&JW Memorial Space! Tanx, Steve!

[KilljoyKing]

Well, quite frankly, most assumptions you are making are way off base.

1) No, Tropics Cities and the like were not difficult to add. Nor were the non-existent Hybrids. Or fifth monsters. Pretty much, all I gotta do is say "Hey, this stuff exists!" and it is there. It helps that there aren't any images, either.

Things work on a script; Tropics and Wastelands were quite honestly a single letter to implement. Since the other four, existing terrains were already added, two more letters onto that heap yielded the missing two combinations.

This also allows play testing, which is the reason they were added.

2) The example game won't change because no one is playing it. What? You expected me to come by a game between myself and update it every couple of minutes for the last two months? I think not...

If two people were actually playing a game, it would look different with every visit/reload (considering that they actually did something in that time). You have to remember that as of now, these things are supposed to be played along with a forum, although the two actual players can get immediate results if they are online at the same time.

Because the casual observer's side menu is disabled, there is no way for them to see the tracked events. However, these really only chronicle what-moves-where at the moment, so it would be a very uninteresting read.

3) There are no terrains because I didn't put any in the dummy armies. That is why they are dummy armies. Same with the placements of said armies and their shapes. I just wanted to show how liquid it was, and to make sure I didn't break it after a coding change, I constantly just shift things around, finally resulting in its current and unfriendly shape.
For the default, all armies are lined up, side-by-side.

You have to remember that things can be moved anywhere in this program, just like a real table top. Everything is user-controlled, from the placement of armies to their sizes and even colors. To appease your German strictness, I'll actually make a nice gamely layout. Quite frankly, I had thought this effort quite abandoned, and I began recycling the code for another DD venture.

And before you try to say that it looks to cramped with a full army, try to realize that there is a lot you are not seeing without an account. For one, you can set the detail level. The default is a full description of the die, which is obviously quite verbose and space-taking. You can set it to be as low as the dice's simple name (Theurgist, for example) after you sign-up.

4) It is ugly for a reason. It doesn't look like Yahoo! or other sites with Dynamic content, but unlike them, it also doesn't break your browser. I dare you to try and find a major site that won't log errors in at least one popular browser. Heck, even this place isn't W3C compliant! That DD table top, however, doesn't give any guff to anything I've seen: IE, Firefox, Opera, or even Sea Monkey!

The boxes need thick borders for resizing and clear labels for dragging around. I'm sorry I don't have time-wasting gradient background images or anything else to crap the page up, but I only put in what was actually necessary for play. Y'know, that is the point of a beta.

And, again, considering what people currently place their armies on in online battles...

So yes, I recognize that it needs IDs images to be played seriously, but there are a whole lot of those which will take a whole lot of time to get organized. If had a day to waste on something no one cares about, I might do it, but considering how not a single bloke has signed-up thus far... I won't.
A strange li'l paradox we got going there: I won't make it look better until someone will actually prove the proof-of-concept, but no one will prove that until I make it look better.

Whatev. Apparently, everyone likes postin' those gigantic tables in their battle posts instead. I really don't care about improving online fights since I never even play 'em, anyway (which, of course, is whole reason I needed this thing to be play tested in the first place).
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Dragon Dice Musing and Such @ Reality's End

[Deeghter]

[KilljoyKing]

No, you were still pretty off.