Multiplayer Campaign

[TonkaToys]

Following the news that RTW will not have a multiplayer campaign, I was wondering if anyone had tried to make their own in the past? I did a few searches on the Guild but couldn't find anything.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif

I have knocked up a quick text only proof of concept demo (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.asp) in ASP using MS Access as the backend. It allows you to move troops from one province to another and ships from one sea to another.

If enough people were interested, we could form a team to produce something. Later I'll post some of the roles / skills needed on this thread, if enough people are interested.


EDIT: changed link to Graphic demo as text one is now defunct

[TonkaToys]

PS: I haven't put much error checking in on the example so forgive me if there are bugs.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

[TonkaToys]

Despite the underwhelming response here I am soldiering on... The Jousting Fields guys at least showed an interest.

Anyway, enough moaning... Here is a demo of the map interface. (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.html)

EDIT: changed link to Graphic demo as previous one is now defunct

[Duke John]

Never noticed this, but this is excellent work TonkaToys http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

I am currently making a Wars of the Roses mod. Your work could be perfect for it as the WotR were about backstabbing allies, 3vs3 field battles. Also it was only in England and that would make it far more easier to build the map, although it would need more regions than in your example.

Also fleets are of no importance which simplifies it even more.

I see that this could be interesting to give MP battles a background. Your tool lets the players move their armies and when armies meet you will see the army compositions. Then all the involved commanders go to the MP-lobby and there they select their armies based on the output of your tool

Recruitment of new units is not done with a techtree (unnessary complication and unrealistic) but based perhaps on chances of units appearing, with modifications based on influence (number of won battles/changing of sides) and number of provinces.

A seperate forum could be setup to allow players to make alliances and such.

I could provide you with new graphics and such if needed.


So yes, I am extremely interested in this tool of yours, and you will have my full support. In return I would ask you to tailor your tool to the WotR mod. If you have doubts wether my mod is worth the trouble then send me a PM and I will give you the download location of the WotR beta.

Cheers, Duke John

[TonkaToys]

Thanks for the kind words Duke John.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

Setting it in WotR sounds fine, as I dreaded trying to put too many provinces together... just think of all the maps

You are correct about the way I had thought the MP Campaign would function as a catalyst for MP Battles. Build up armies then move them to provinces to join battle. Each player gets an army composition list to take into MP Battles. Post-battle results could be read back into the MP Campaign engine to update the map - hopefully automatically. There would have to be a time limit as to how long people had to conclude a battle, otherwise other players would be kept waiting.

I'm interested to hear more about your ideas for techtree-less recruitment, and also whether buildings would make a difference to your Mod. I'm in the process of writing the techtree and building construction system.

[Duke John]

The following all applies to an adaptation for the WotR expansion.

Why there should be no techtree
- During the Wars of the Roses there were mostly field battles. There were some sieges, but they were of little importance compared to said battles. So no castles.
- The families needed the support from the population to get the throne and stay on it. They didn't want to conquer the population, so the locals suffered little from the campaigns. There was a little bit of looting but the days of pillaging have gone. So it's unlogical that buildings are ravaged by the army that conquers a province.
- Armies almost never tried to submit cities, armies moved through the countryside until they faced the opposition. Certain dukes did of course rule certain regions but there was little conquering. There were several campaigns during the WotR, but they were all short-lived. A small series of battles usually meant a change of the King after which the opposition strenghtened and then another series of battles.

Recruitment
I think it would be really nice to completely get away from those techtrees for once. It slows down the pace, only means waiting years for your favorite units and it has nothing to do with reality.

So I am proposing the following; if you read my last WotR armylist you notice that I divided the units in Men-at-arms, retinue troops, shire troops and mercenaries.

Each Dukedum starts with the following:

The Duke
Units Knights, there is only 1 unit.
Rules: all armies should be led by their Duke (with a few exceptions allowed).
Recruitment: Knights cannot be recruited. The players should be extremely carefull with them even withdrawing them from battle if things go awry. Withdrawing should have a penalty (for example on influence) to avoid abuse.
Lords
Lords are loyal to the Duke and can summon their retained men to help the Duke.
Units: (Mounted) Squires
Rules:
Recruitment: Each Duke standardly has 1 unit of Squires. Each point of the Duke's influence will give either
Retinue
Units Retinue Billmen and Longbows
Rules:
Recruitment: Each Lord will have 1 unit of Bills and Longbows. Each 2 point of the Duke's influence will give either Bills or Longbows.

Shire
Units: Shire Bills and Longbows
Rules:
Recruitment: Each province will give you 1 unit of Bills or Longbows per 2 points of influence, with a minimum of 1.

Mercenaries
Units: Pikemen and Handgunners
Rules:
Recruitment: some kind of wildcard.

[/list]
[/list]
[/list]

So while the Duke lives you will always have an army composed of: Knights (1), Squires(1), Retinue Bills(2), Retinue Longbows(2), Shire Bills(1), Shire Longbows(1) and no mercenaries.
While the Duke has a positive Influence value you can retrain troops.

When the Duke has died during battle, there is a 50% chance that has been captured. The opposing Duke may decide to either release the Duke (perhaps hoping that he will change sides)

Influence
Influence is affected by actions of the Duke. The Influence value will get the following modifiers:

Became King: +4 Influence
Declared independency: +2 Influence
Won a battle: +1 Influence

Captured: -4 Influence
Withdrawn from battle: -2 Influence
Change sides: -2
Lost a battle: -1

Army movement
The Duke doesn't need to be moved, he will automatically be present at the largest battle (have my doubts about this).


At the moment still mostly a cannonade of loose thoughts, but I am getting really excited about this. There is need of more rules, a website (I can make that one) etc. but this can give MTW a real interest twist.

Hmmm.. after some more thoughts, I am beginning to doubt that my view of the usage of your tool gets the most out of it. I'm mostly interested in realistic army movement/recruitment and of course the battles. I think that you can make techtrees and such and that will probably be interesting to more people. We will see, I will just keep on brainstorming.

Cheers, Duke John

[TonkaToys]

I don't see any reason why I cannot develop the MP Campaign system to work both with and without techtrees.
In fact it is better for me to do partial releases that gradually improve gameplay and can be live tested, rather than trying to release a fully featured "complete" project in one hit.
We would probably have Nuclear: Total War before I get the whole thing complete

[Nigel]

Glad to see your project is moving ahead here, Tonka.

I gotta come here more often now and watch what happens.
Good thing to get together with the WotR mod, too. From what I have so far seen about it, it is very nice and has a much reduced but well balanced number of units only. That will be ideal for a MP campaign.

Good Luck with it, guys http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif
Nigel

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Duke John @ May 12 2004,19:33)]The following all applies to an adaptation for the WotR expansion.
DJ,

we were talking about using my multi-player campaign system for your WotR mod...

I've modified my map demo (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/WotR_map.html)
to the map you posted earlier in the Engineers Guild / WotR thread, and the army counter now registers which province it is in, which will make it easier to link to the backend database.

Let me know what you think.

PS: there is no reason why we can't develop some sort of rules improving diplomacy as we will not be limited by AI.

[TonkaToys]

Have added a feature that allows the army to move only one province at a time.

(Also using Duke John's beautiful WotR Squire as the army marker)

[Duke John]

Looking better and better I admire your webskills http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

I was thinking abit more on this after reading about how armies moved until they clashed. During the WotR there was generally armymovement in a few weeks top.

Lords/Dukes/Earls only had a single army to command, so no multiple armies. Also most armies also merged together to present a bigger force. The larger army was then subdivided in vanguard, main battle and rearguard (left, center, right) with a Duke/Lord/Earl as commander of a single subdivision.

Thus an army can compromise multiple lords, but only 3 can command.

I don't know how this can be translated to your campaign map, but I thought it might be interesting to make as realistic as possible.

Cheers, Duke John

[TonkaToys]

Hmmm... well in SP campaign is it possible to have multiple allied armies in one province?
In the MP campaign, we could allow allied forces to occupy the same province without having a battle. Each commander would have to synchronise their movement into the next province.

This would be quite interesting as someone could form an alliance with another force, move their troops into the same province as them then double cross their ally and attack them unexpectedly. Heh... dirty.

[Duke John]

Quote[/b] ]This would be quite interesting as someone could form an alliance with another force, move their troops into the same province as them then double cross their ally and attack them unexpectedly. Heh... dirty.
That is exactly the kind of stuff that we want in the WotR campaign. Lords did switch sides and that also one of the reasons why so many nobles were executed as opposed to the common ransoming of the centuries before. When a Lord was an ally to you once (or even your own brother) and is now on the opposing side, then you won't be that forgiving when you capture him.


By the way, how did you plan to save the movements of the armies? Is it possible on your website, or do I need to try to talk to Tosa about hosting?

[Nigel]

Very nice, Tonka http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

Just a thought on army movement now.
At the moment you can move into 1 neighbouring county and drop the army there. The army is then marked as "dropped" and I assume it is easy to disallow a player from selecting a dropped army again. When the turn ends, the "dropped" falg is removed from all armies.


For the players it would be nicer if they could play around with moving their armies a bit more. Move them here, pick them up again and move them there (but all within 1 county of the original starting county of that army). Then, when they like the final picture, they hit the END TURN key and all army position are fixed until the next turn starts.

Just makes it nicer for the players to tweak their movements on screen, rather than having to plan it all out in advance and just execute it on the screen.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-clown.gif

edit : typos

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Duke John @ May 24 2004,17:01)]By the way, how did you plan to save the movements of the armies? Is it possible on your website, or do I need to try to talk to Tosa about hosting?
I might be able to host it for a bit, providing it doesn't get too busy as bandwidth might be limited.

Here is what I see as the sequence of events...
(weekdays shown are just examples to show game play)

Monday - Wednesday
1) Each player logs on and only sees their own army units and those in neighbouring provinces... as in SP Campaign. (No agents as yet.)
2) Each player moves their armies without seeing anyone else's moves.
3) Each player presses "End Year"

Wednesday 00:00 GMT
4) The year is ended automatically for anyone that has not yet pressed "End Year".
5) Battle messages are sent out for MP battles to commence.

Thursday - Sunday
6) Players engage in MP battles.
7) All players (thinking about 8 player MP battles and alliances in Campaign) in each MP battle log on and submit their results to the system.
8) If any player does not submit their result to the system in time or the results differ but there is a majority that are similar, the majority of matching results submitted by the other players are assumed to be correct. *** THIS COULD ALLOW CHEATING IF ONE MP SIDE IS BIGGER THAN ANOTHER AND THEY GET TOGETHER TO FAKE A RESULT ***
9) If no player submits a result or if no majority of matching results can be made, an autocalc is made for the result. *** WE'LL HAVE TO THINK ABOUT HOW TO AUTOCALC ***
10) If any player is discovered to have used an army that does not match that which they were supposed to use, it will be assumed that their side lost the battle with some sort of autocalc.

Sunday 00:00 GMT
11) Deadline for submitting MP battle results is reached.
12) Campaign Map Updated
13) Results emailed.

What do you think of this?

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ May 24 2004,18:32)]Just a thought on army movement now.
At the moment you can move into 1 neighbouring county and drop the army there. The army is then marked as "dropped" and I assume it is easy to disallow a player from selecting a dropped army again. When the turn ends, the "dropped" falg is removed from all armies.


For the players it would be nicer if they could play around with moving their armies a bit more. Move them here, pick them up again and move them there (but all within 1 county of the original starting county of that army). Then, when they like the final picture, they hit the END TURN key and all army position are fixed until the next turn starts.

Just makes it nicer for the players to tweak their movements on screen, rather than having to plan it all out in advance and just execute it on the screen.
Good point.

My plan was to allow people to move their armies around as much as they liked (subject to single province rule) before they pressed End Year...

Of course what you might want to do is move your guys around, save a temporary state, go have dinner, come back, mess around a bit more... then hit End Year.

YIKES What am I saying. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-stunned.gif

Anyway changed WotR demo to allow one move per year. Hmmm funny little script error appearing...

Oh well, must get home, feed the cat and grab some http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif

TT

[Nigel]

Tonka and I had some more discussuion about this on the e-mail. There is nothing secret about it and it just so happened to be e-mail rather than forum. But the project could benefit from making this known to all, so I am posting a copy of our discourse here, for all to read and comment if they like :

Nigel:
Hi Tonka,

saw your post at the forum. Looking good I have to say.

A few comments (or criticism if you dont mind) on game course :

In general, your timelines seem very tight. You probably know this and I realize that the days you give are only examples to illustrate things. So I dont think I am telling anything new here ;-)

Still, in your example you split a round in 2 Phases :
Mo-We for Strategy
Th-Su for Battles

I am not sure if this division is necessary (or helpful). It may be easier to say that, at the start of a turn, you announce all outstanding battles. Then players have a week (or 2) to resolve them and make their strategic move. They will probably want to make their strategic decision depending on the battle outcome anyway. So it may make sense to have them that way around. Players can also make their strategic move on the same evening after the battle, thus needing only one session per turn (which makes things easier wit RL and all that).


In points 8) to 10) you deal with how to autocalc in case of possible cheating.
I would give the players a bit more trust. Fighting a battle only to have it autocalced because something went technically wrong in the transmission of logfiles will be a very disappointing thing for all players. Instead you could leave it up to the players to check if their opponent cheated or not and just say that, as long as no suspicion is there, no investigation will take place. Makes things much easier for the gamemaster

Other than that, autocalc is good if players find it difficult to meet up.

Which brings up another point

Quote[/b] ] 7) All players (thinking about 8 player MP battles

Realistically I think, getting 8 ppl from different timezones to meet in a time-window of 3 days (even 1 week) is hardly ever going to happen. 4 is difficult enough, 6 already quite a challange. In my previous campaign we have often delayed a turn for another week to allow even 2 ppl to fight their battle. That's just how life is.


And another thing is holidays.
You want some sort of system to allow players to go on holidays without missing several turns. Otherwise they will just play up to theri holidays and then drop from the game. The way I did it was I said at the beginning of each round :"Deadline for submission is soandso, unless someone wants to ask for an extension". We had a few extension-requests and sometimes ppl would say "I am off, but if no one attacks me, you can just carry on with the rounds and I will get back in". That worked reasonably well.


Quite a few points, but I hope it helps :-)
Nigel



Tonka :

Hey Nigel

no problems, I welcome the feedback and that is why I published the information I have not run a campaign, and in fact have never tried an MP battle.

Re: timings: I guess there is no problem saying Mon-Sun battles or campaigns and submissions. Sunday evening = new year.

Holidays: tricky.
Do we pause the entire campaign because one person has gone on holiday? - could lead to the entire campaign grinding to a halt.
Do we allow other players to play on, but autocalc any battles that involve the player on holiday? - could leave the player open to being picked on as an easy target.
Do we allow other players to play on, but protect the holiday maker? - some sort of magic barrier would seem weird.

Autocalc: yes it would be most useful if an MP battle doesnt take place.
I take your point about trusting players... my idea was to try to build in a system that would read a battle results file and reflect that in the MP campaign interface automatically. So we would need to have some way of resolving battle result files that did not match up.
Come to think of it, do you even get Battle Result files in MP battles?


I guess many of the problem arise because I am trying to make the system Gamesmaster-less... ie: as fully automatic as possible. We will not really know until we have play-tested a working system

Your thoughts welcomed.

TT

[Nigel]

Quote[/b] ]...and in fact have never tried an MP battle.


Give it a try. It is good fun (just as long as you don't expect anything more than a thourough beating in your first 10 battles http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif ). But really, it is good and you should at least get to know what is involved. I am happy to meet up with you if you like.



Quote[/b] ]Sunday evening = new year.


You could call it Next Season instead of Next Year. This way you could make use of the games inbuild feature of setting seasons in MP games and could fight in the snow on every Winter round.



Quote[/b] ]Come to think of it, do you even get Battle Result files in MP battles?

That would be the logfile. One logfile contains all information from all players, so you really need only one of it and results that dont match up should not occur. Just how you would read teh file (it is a .txt) into your PC I have no clue. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif




Quote[/b] ]I guess many of the problem arise because I am trying to make the system Gamesmaster-less... ie: as fully automatic as possible. We will not really know until we have play-tested a working system


Aye, don't try to be too perfect and dont take too big steps in one try. You can easily overreach yourself with something like this. My approach for a first step would be to assume everyone will play by the rules and to keep any economy to a bare minimum. Keep It Simple.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-clown.gif

[Palamedes of Sarras]

Guys,

What a savior finding this and the other MP campaign threads. RTK have been working on this for 4 to 5 weeks now and have started our campaign this week. Go to the following ORG and NET posts and follow the links:

http://totalwars.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2826

http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....t=18669 (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=4;t=18669)

In the Warrior Isles forum you will fins many examples of how a lot of issues you guys have raised have been addressed. The focus of the campaign was to have like a cwb format with a title holder and people moving toward the title.

We have tried to ensure it is flexible so involvement is not required every week, is open to numerous possibilities suc as mercenaries arriving at the battle or allowing firendly allies to pass their troops through your lands and keep it entertaining by having a storyline and random events that keep interest high.

Palamedes

[Duke John]

TonkaToys,

What are thoughts about the ME:TW mod (http://www.metw.net/forum/index.php?sid=4e9a4f83ca3c50131086d255468d4fa1)? The community is pretty large although I think that most members are "sleeping" till the next beta. If you can pull it off, then your mp-campaign will be played by loads of people plus it will be tailored with completely original graphics made by Hoggy and me. If you love the books then we will have a place for you at our developers team.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-yes.gif

Cheers,
Duke John

[TonkaToys]

Nigel

I'll save the MP Battle until I can beat the AI Also what with new son and MP campaign I barely have enough time to play MTW
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-juggle.gif

New Year / New Season - either should be easy.

Can you email me a logfile? I'll start deciphering it - unless anyone else out there has already done so

Next thing on the agenda is to release a link between graphic interface and database... then we can try multi-player interaction.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-glasses2.gif

TT

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Palamedes of Sarras @ May 27 2004,23:19)]In the Warrior Isles forum you will fins many examples of how a lot of issues you guys have raised have been addressed.
Hi Palamedes,

I looked at the links, but couldn't find the Warrior Isles forum.

Just blind I guess... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

TT

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Duke John @ May 29 2004,19:05)]What are thoughts about the ME:TW mod (http://www.metw.net/forum/index.php?sid=4e9a4f83ca3c50131086d255468d4fa1)?
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-yes.gif
Hey Duke John

very interested in ME:TW, was looking at it when you had your crisis earlier this year. Hope that is all resolved now.


Quote[/b] ]If you can pull it off, then your mp-campaign will be played by loads of people plus it will be tailored with completely original graphics made by Hoggy and me.


Anyway, I'm hoping the MP campaign engine will be easily mod'able so that people can set up their own MP campaigns without too much hassle. That way it would be adaptable to any era / mod / version of TW.
Tall order but with enough encouragement I might eventually get there.


Quote[/b] ]If you love the books then we will have a place for you at our developers team.


I'm flattered... I'll be happy to knock this into shape for ME:TW.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

[Nigel]

Hi Tonka,

you can download a zipfile of a battle replay including log file and battel write up here (http://www.totalwar.org/Downloads/Mtw_Uploads/MTWrecords/Nigel_MB1_Mission_1.zip).

Let me know if you cannot download it, I can also send just some log file by e-mail.


Lady Ann has made a web-based logfile reader. there are different versions of it which you can find it here (http://www.thiep.com/cgi-bin/ffmtw/logread.pl) and here (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/ba/pctscore.pl).

There must be several others around, but the one from Annie is the only one I have,
Hope that helps. Good luck with linking the map to the army database http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

Nigel

[TonkaToys]

Thanks Nigel,

downloaded the stuff you suggested.

The provincial borders and names are now linked (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.asp) to the database... next to track an army's position on the map by its database entry.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

[TonkaToys]

Latest Update

Army list connected to Database http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-balloon.gif

The prototype page (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.asp) now picks up information from the database and places armies in the correct provinces.

It also associates army counters according to faction / player. The demo shows four players, and I've made up simple graphics to represent each.

The limitation of one province moved per army per year still exists.

I have not put in the End Year = save army moves back to database yet, but this is not far off.

Note: the map currently shows all armies whatever their faction. I will eventually get around to making it display only armies belonging to that faction or other factions' armies when they are in bordering provinces (ie: just like SP campaign).

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif

Feedback welcomed

[Nigel]

Very nice, Tonka http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif


Would it be possible to show the database info?
Either on the same page or in a different window?


couple of bugs http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif (but, hey, it's a prototype)

1. sometimes I could not pick up an army.
2. sometimes I could not drop an army after picking up.

I have not been able to identify any systematic behind this, which would help you debugging. But perhaps you are on these, anyway.


Keep up the good work,
Nigel http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-toff.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 07 2004,19:13)]Would it be possible to show the database info?
Either on the same page or in a different window?

1. sometimes I could not pick up an army.
2. sometimes I could not drop an army after picking up.

I have not been able to identify any systematic behind this, which would help you debugging. But perhaps you are on these, anyway.
Hmmm...

Database stuff... you mean things like troop compositions etc. No problem, I'll put that in today (if I get time).
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-juggle.gif

Bugs... GAH

Did they occur as soon as you started moving the armies? Or was it after a while?

Were you very near the sea? Or even very near another army?
I haven't tested what happens if you try to drop an army onto the graphic of another one
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-blush.gif

Perhaps I'll put debug info on screen as well.

Cheers for checking it out.

[TonkaToys]

Just checked... and there are a couple of interesting things that may explain some problems...

1) When you pick up or move an army, the army will appear not to move if your mouse is on the graphic of that army.
In English: pick up the army in Derby by its base, move due North. The army will not move until your mouse is not on the army's graphic. Try moving left/right/down instead and the army moves immediately.

2) Armies will not move over the sea / Scotland. They will stick on the boundary of the land, until your mouse goes back onto land elsewhere.

3) Armies will not move over other armies. They will stop on one side of the other army, until your mouse moves off that army graphic.

These are all bugs which I will try to resolve later.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 07 2004,19:13)]Would it be possible to show the database info?
Either on the same page or in a different window?

1. sometimes I could not pick up an army.
2. sometimes I could not drop an army after picking up.
OK, database results shown in text, eg: Army 1 has 60 V1 Swordsmen etc.

Also border appears around selected army.

[Nigel]

Looks like this is rapidly approaching the stage where it can become really useful for administring a MP Campaign.

Border around army is nice and help you knowing when you have seleceted your army. Another thing that may be helpful if armies had numbers now. Will also make it easier to discuss examples for debugging.


Debugging, right, http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif


Quote[/b] ]1) When you pick up or move an army, the army will appear not to move if your mouse is on the graphic of that army.

2) Armies will not move over the sea / Scotland. They will stick on the boundary of the land, until your mouse goes back onto land elsewhere.

3) Armies will not move over other armies. They will stop on one side of the other army, until your mouse moves off that army graphic.

These are all bugs which I will try to resolve later.



It is none of these, I'm afraid.
In fact, all of these are minor issues, and we could live with them if they were not changed at all.

1. What I found was, that on one occasion I could not select an army (no red bordermarker appearing). This one happened on one of the red armies.

2. The other thing was when I picked up the brown army in Anglesey I could not move it to the NorthernMarches or Chester although I had just pressed EndYear (and yes, the name of the target county did appear in the top indicator when I moved the army over it). It was just dropped back to Anglesey http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif


oh, yes, and if I start up the page, there seems to be a red army (2 cav units) right over the orange army (2 sword units) in Anglesey

[Nigel]

These errors seem difficult to reproduce. But for error 1. it happened again with the green army.

When I moved the blue army near, it moved it behind the green army.

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/story/Nigel_bug01.jpg

Hope that helps,
Nigel

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 08 2004,21:54)]oh, yes, and if I start up the page, there seems to be a red army (2 cav units) right over the orange army (2 sword units) in Anglesey
Ahhh http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

It could be something to do with browser / screen res. I'll test this out.


Quote[/b] ]When I moved the blue army near, it moved it behind the green army.

This is to do with z-depth, ie: whichever image was put on the screen last is the one that appears on top of the others.

I just need to mess with the code to make sure selected images have the lowest (highest?) z-depth.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-book2.gif

[Nigel]

Well, I am sure these bugs will get sorted eventually.

Meanwhile I had another thought about which armies to use.


Can you make the game so that it uses a flexible dataset for armies ? I am thinking of having a .txt file which has a list of the units allowed and the corresponding unit cost. This could be easily edited by the players much in the same way the modder edit txt files for their mods.


Thus you could also have different army text files. One for the original VI, one for the WotR mod, one for the Community Mod, one for LotR mod and yes, even one for RTW.

This would give your campaign a tremendous potential. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/ceasaryes.gif


Only small drawback is that all these mods would campaign on a map of England. But perhaps that too is not too difficult to change.

[Palamedes of Sarras]

Tonka,

Here is the link:

http://p066.ezboard.com/fclanoftheroundtablefrm29

The focuss of this campaign is to simply move the online community into campaign format. The rules have been developed to allow all size of clans such as Celtiberos with 50 generals and those as small as 2 generals. It is flexible so that you may play 1 season and do nothing the next 2 or 3. A season is 2 weeks real time.

It incorporates as many of the dynamics in the community as possible. Already it seems Insane and Aggony will act as one clan due to their close ties. However Elite clans like Wolves may be on everyones hit list (BTW wolves are yet to join). You may have a dispute with a clan in real life and decide in the campaign to invade their territory take their home castle and remove them from the campaign. They can rejoin after a month or so but will be given some crappy little isle in the far distance.

We lan for this campaign to be the mother of all campaigns and have no time limit. It is hoped that it will be around as long as TW games exist. Already we have plans for Rome. The map will stay as it is we just convert units to rome units and use the RTW engine. Who knows the isles may have World War II total war on it in the distant future.

We have a few people working on the database aspect of the campaign. They have had little luck and I personally would greatly value your assistance in this project. I have webspace available just getting up to speed on web authoring so I can move it from RTK to the web site.

BTW the current map is here:

http://www.clanroundtable.homestead.com/CampaignMap.html

I have sent you an email lets get in touch soon,

Palamedes

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 10 2004,10:46)]Can you make the game so that it uses a flexible dataset for armies ? I am thinking of having a .txt file which has a list of the units allowed and the corresponding unit cost. This could be easily edited by the players much in the same way the modder edit txt files for their mods.

I have already built the db to accept different types of army depending on which game you are playing...
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Code Sample Each USER can be a PLAYER in a number of GAMES.

Each GAME has TROOPTYPES selected from an overall list; ie: the overall list may have Longbowmen, Orcs, Squires, etc, but WotR would only pick Squires.

Each GAME has PROVINCES selected from an overall list; ie: the overall list may have Wessex, Gondor, Crete, etc, but Hellenic would only pick Crete.

Each PLAYER has multiple ARMIES
Each ARMY is in a PROVINCE selected from those available in that GAME.
Each ARMY consists of many TROOPS selected from those TROOPTYPES available in that GAME.
[/QUOTE]

Phew... anyone understand that?
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-stunned.gif

Once I've got it working like this, I can look at creating mod'able text files that will allow people to set up their own MP Campaign.


Quote[/b] ]Only small drawback is that all these mods would campaign on a map of England. But perhaps that too is not too difficult to change.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-lost.gif

Should not be a problem The map can be any image so long as there is an HTML image map definition for it (easy to make with modern image manipulation software). Each area in the image map would simply need to be named the same as the PROVINCE name in the database.
Some javascript / ASP code would need to be added, but I'm trying to make that addition very simple, so that one or two lines of copy/paste code will sort out the map interface, eg:
Code Sample <-- #include file="mpcampaign.asp" -->[/QUOTE]

IMPORTANT NOTE: all to be done in the future, lets get the current thing working nicely first
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Palamedes of Sarras @ June 10 2004,12:21)]Here is the link:

http://p066.ezboard.com/fclanoftheroundtablefrm29
Cheers, I'll check it out.


Quote[/b] ]We have a few people working on the database aspect of the campaign. They have had little luck and I personally would greatly value your assistance in this project.

No probs, so long as you understand I want to get this project working as a priority over any other work (I only meant on this forum boss... honestly).


Quote[/b] ]
BTW the current map is here:

http://www.clanroundtable.homestead.com/CampaignMap.html


I'll take a look at that too.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-juggle.gif

[Palamedes of Sarras]

Tonka,

A MSN conversation may work our best to discuss a few issues.

My MSN is Palamedes_of_Sarras@hotmail.com


Palamedes

[Nigel]

Quote[/b] ]Code Sample [.....]
Phew... anyone understand that?


Sounds good Tonka. I think you are spot on with this.
Heading in the right direction http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif


But yes, you are right when you say

Quote[/b] ]all to be done in the future, lets get the current thing working nicely first


Take it one step at a time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
If there is anything I can help with let me know.


Oh, and Palamedes, I too have added you to my MSN, if you dont mind.

I'll be away for a week now, but try to get in touch when I get back.

Nigel

[TonkaToys]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-party2.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/barrel.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-balloon.gif

The prototype (http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.asp) now saves armies that have moved

Move your army, hit End Year, read the message, press the return to map page link et voila

Please test.
Edit by TonkaToys
DOH Bug on one of the armies... ignore it and try the others


PoS I'll stick you on MSN today.

[Edit by Duke John: I fixed the Url, the link now works correctly.]

[Edit by Tonka Toys: double-DOH The link was pointed at my local machine not the webserver... should work now?]

[Nigel]

Gah, I'm getting a "page cannot be displayed" error. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif
Some problem ? Or is it just me ?
Or perhaps you are working on the prototype just now http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[tombom]

I'm getting "Cannot be displayed" too.

[Palamedes of Sarras]

NP Nigel,

I have Tonka and yourself now on my MSN lists. So cant wait to chat and put you in contact with some campaign players that have bd experience.

This will be the mother of all campaigns. Already word seems to be out and I have at least a new clan joining every few days and we havent even started promoting it. Monday most clans will receive a personal invite.

The campaign will have no time limit and is intended to last years. All clans and ronin are expected to participate with flexible time frames and rules that allow all sizes of clans. Ronins will of course register as Mercenary Warlords. Think of the campaign as a ladder format where you work up the ladder to challenge the title holder like cwb. However it is on a map and you have to be a damn good diplomat as well as game player to do well.

We have spent months getting the rules and numbers right to do this. All we need now is automation via db to make it even better.

Cant wait to speak to you guys soon and possibly get you involved.

Palamedes

[TonkaToys]

Reminder: fixed link... my fault
Should be http://www.hitchintriangle.org/tw/wotr_map.asp

Still buggy... but works in principle.

[TonkaToys]

Now included a switch to stop the army following the mouse as that may be causing bugs.
Started to include interface to create armies... not yet working though.

[Nigel]

Tried out the "don't follow mouse" button and was able to move several armies into one county without getting the "non-selectable army bug". So that seems to have fixed it.

Small drawback is that after pressing the End Year button, all armies in one county are on top of each other and you have to go and sort them out to get a good view of the map.

Its a beauty glitch, which makes handling still a bit awkward, but functionality wise it seems to be working http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 24 2004,18:48)]Small drawback is that after pressing the End Year button, all armies in one county are on top of each other and you have to go and sort them out to get a good view of the map.

Its a beauty glitch, which makes handling still a bit awkward, but functionality wise it seems to be working http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif
I'll work on having four or five drop points in each province to hang the icons off.
Also will put in a flag icon to indicate province ownership as I cannot easily colour the provinces without having loads of graphics on the page, which would slow down the page loads.

[Nigel]

Quote[/b] ]I'll work on having four or five drop points in each province to hang the icons off.


Or could you save the x-y coordinates of the icon back to the army data file for each army when hitting the End Year button ? Just a thought, you probably know best what is easiest (safest) to implement into the coding.


Flags for county ownership are a good idea. Anything else would mean re-colouring the map image after each conquest. That is straight forward enough if you do it all manually, but for an automated system I dont see it working easily.

If I am not mistaken, the Battle Isles game Palamedes is hosting, also has flags to indicate county ownership. So I think that's a good direction to take.


Alternatively, if you do want coloured provinces, you could leave that up to the players to change. Two players meet up for a battle and fight. After the battle, the winner downloads the current map.jpg and uses any graphics program (e.g. Paint which comes with WindowsXP) to change the colour of the new province. Then he uploads that file and the admin (or a computer system) merely overwrites the old map.jpg with the new one.

Just to be kept in mind, but I think for now, flags would be nicer http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-clown.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 25 2004,15:49)]Or could you save the x-y coordinates of the icon back to the army data file for each army when hitting the End Year button ? Just a thought, you probably know best what is easiest (safest) to implement into the coding.


Flags for county ownership are a good idea. Anything else would mean re-colouring the map image after each conquest. That is straight forward enough if you do it all manually, but for an automated system I dont see it working easily.
RE: saving XY coords for each army, very good idea... why didn't I think of that
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

Too many sleepless nights http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif

And too much beer http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/barrel.gif

And far to poor a football team http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

Flags is best for now... I might be able to do some sort of colour overlay on the map eventually, but that is cosmetic.

[TonkaToys]

Added login and games in progress interface. Not released yet as security needs to be tested.

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (TonkaToys @ June 25 2004,20:16)]
Quote[/b] (Nigel @ June 25 2004,15:49)]Or could you save the x-y coordinates of the icon back to the army data file for each army when hitting the End Year button ? Just a thought, you probably know best what is easiest (safest) to implement into the coding.

RE: saving XY coords for each army, very good idea... why didn't I think of that
Armies now remember the exact XY coords of where they were placed at End Year.

[Nigel]

Good job, Tonka,

I played around with it and did not encounter any of the previous bugs, even if I put all armies into a single province.

https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[TonkaToys]

Quote[/b] (Nigel @ July 22 2004,19:06)]I played around with it and did not encounter any of the previous bugs, even if I put all armies into a single province.
Excellent.

ConstableBrew has kindly agreed to help out with this, and has experience in various aspects such as the database formats and the login screens.
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

This should help things to progress much faster.

https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smile.gif

[ConstableBrew]

Holy cow I can post in this thread

Tonka, Regarding the drop off points for provinces.

Could we do this dynamically? I'd hate to specify all the different drop points that each province could have. If we limit the number of drop points then we may come to a point during game play where X+1 allys want to group together in one province, but there is only X drop points. What happens then? I suggest we make it a little dynamic. Specify the centeral/primary drop point. When additional points are needed we could look at points at a certain radius away from the primary point and see if any point along that raidus lies withing the province bounds.

I'm pretty iffy on this. And the coding for it may be troublesome. What do you think?

[TonkaToys]

Yeah... you should be able to reply to any existing thread... I think https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

I thought about using drop off points before Nigel suggested that each army's xy coords could be recorded after a move. In that case, the original drop off point would be used when creating new armies etc, but thereafter each army would record its own location.
I think that makes sense... or am I confusing people?
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-confused.gif

[ConstableBrew]

Some unit placement behaviors I've observed:

*All units will group around a central location when initially moved into a province after a turn is processed, regardless of where the unit was set down in the province. However, before the turn is ended, the units will remain where they are placed. However, if the unit is moved to an invalid position after having been placed in a different province the unit will then go back to the original position at the start of the turn.

*A unit inside a province may be moved to a different spot within the province and the new location will be retained after the turn is processed.

*If a unit is moved to a different spot within the province and then given a mission (assault castle, propose marriage, etc) the unit will still remain in the same location. However, if the mission is then subsquently canceled the unit will move back to the original position at the start of the turn.

All this leads me to the following:
Code Sample
properties:
class Pawn{
vector HomeCords //XY Coordinates of the unit at start of the turn
*Province HomeProv //Province unit is located in at the start of the turn
vector CurrCords //Current XY Coordinates of the unit
*Province CurrProv //Current province unit is placed in

public:
cancelAction //Reset the army back to starting conditions
moveArmy(vector coords) //The pawn will attempt to move to the given coords and perform any appropriate action.
}
class Map{
public:
*token getAtLocation(vector coords) //Returns pointer to whatever is at the specified coords
*Province getProvince(vector coords) //Returns pointer to the province located at coords
vector findOpenArea(vector coords) //Returns vector of the closest available open coordinates to place a Pawn
}
[/QUOTE]

BTW: I figure an Army is greater than a Unit. So the individual companies of men are called a Unit and the stack of Units is called an Army. I imagine we could call any emissary, spy, etc. an Agent. Then as an Army and an Agent are still similar, we can call them collectively a Pawn. Still yet, castles, docks, etc. may be called Structures. And as Pawns and Structures are similar, I'd call them all collectively Peices. And since Provinces might be usefully grouped with Peices, we can call them both Tokens (or something better if you can think of it).
Code Sample
---->Token<---------
| |
--->Peice<------ Province
| |
-->Pawn<-- Structure
| |
Army Agent
[/QUOTE]

I apologize if this is all maybe a bit to technical for the forum here. Oh well. And if you guys care to call them something else or give it all a different structure, then do tell

[TonkaToys]

Nice work.

I've thought along similar lines...

I have an ARMY consisting of TROOPS (your UNITS) which are particular TROOPTYPES (eg: Spear, Peasant, Teutonic Knight, etc.)
I did have similar for BUILDING and BUILDINGTYPE (with some fudging for CASTLES as they dictate tech level for buildings). However I've put that aside to concentrate on the army movement and combat part.
I have not considered AGENTS yet, and like the idea of PAWNS and PIECES (makes it sound chess like).

Anyone else have any thoughts?

[Nigel]

Sounds good. I like the idea of a chess like appearance.

Cant comment too much on the suggested coding (makes my head spin). But if it works for you - great !

But it sure is a good idea to have a sound structure of classifying things. Well worth spending some thoughts on it, imho.

[TonkaToys]

Hey everyone...

sorry there has been no visible activity on this recently.

In actual fact the system can now send email when two armies meet in a province, which is a big step forward.
Next thing is army construction.

TT

[TonkaToys]

OK guys, I am hoping to get more time to work on this soon... it should be moddable to work in RTW as well.

Cheers

TT

[Duke John]

Just wanted you to know that I am still greatly interested into this. Keep up the good work! :2thumbsup: