Re: [PBEM Engine game announce] Usage of Play-by-Engine for next LEGENDS

[<je...@pb...>]

Hello,

first of all my apologies for responding to this e-mail 3 months late. It
seems my e-mail client didn't have automatic notifications turned on for
this mailing list, mainly because the Engine is still very much in alpha
and undergoing rather serious rewrites (and quite honestly, your question
belongs on the Ruleset Development list :-P), so I didn't notice it until
today.

> I'm a longstanding player of LEGENDS
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_(PBM) / German speaking community
> www.wolkenburg.net). Our community is thinking about to take
> LEGENDS or even Play-by-eMailgames to its next (r)evolutionary step.

Can't say I've heard of it but considering the game's history it sounds
like a serious game.

> Can we use your engine or engine concept towards an software architecture
> which adresses such a goal?

Probably, once I get a more coherent version out, though it's probably
better if I address each of your individual concerns. The main thing you
have to keep in mind is that the primary tasks of the engine are:

+ E-mail functionality
+ Scheduling
+ Database access (through the Hibernate framework)
+ Ease of configurability (through the mini-webserver)
+ Templating of web pages and e-mails (using the Freemarker engine)

> + turn-based

No problem at all, the Engine automatically fetches e-mails (and processes
them depending on how you want them processed) several times prior to
running a "processing round", during which you advance the game 1 turn.
This is pretty much the standard way for which the Engine was designed.

> + multiplayer-orientied

Again, supporting multiplayer games was one of the design goals, and
should be fairly straightforward.

> + mod-enabled

This might be a bit tricky, but certainly not impossible. A PBEM game
running on the Engine is basically a "plugin" called a Ruleset. Each
Ruleset needs to announce which classes it wants mapped to the underlying
Database using Hibernate. The Engine does not prevent you from programming
a system in which the basic game logic is modified, but it does restrict
you from adding Hibernate entities dynamically.

> + simulaitons-realising

That mostly depends on the developers of the actual Ruleset. The Engine
neither helps with nor gets in the way of the actual game you are running
through it (aside from basic programming restrictions such as where to put
code for handling e-mails and how to tell the Engine what to do when a
turn should be processed).


> Are you willing to devote your expertise
> towards such a project?
>

While I would be more than willing to answer any questions regarding usage
of the Engine, I simply do not have any time to devote on new projects.

Regards,

Jeroen Steenbeeke