[Rails-devel] Operating Round

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

I have implemented OperatingRound to include most
of the actions that a player can do in that round.
Track and token cost and train buying is still a matter
of just moving cash from a company to the bank, though.
Also the revenue must be entered manually, but payout
and withholding work, as does buying private companies.

This class and StockRound intend to become the prime
interface for the UI to get the status and allowed actions,
and to execute the player's actions. Direct access to lower classes
will in most cases only be needed to get the display details
(cash, owned certificates, etc.).

Other responsibilities of these middle-layer classes are:
- all validation of player actions (though many invalid actions
will be impossible if the UI is set up correctly - see below).
- logging messages and errors (both retrievable for UI display 
from the Log class).
- keeping track of who has the turn (I have not used the Turn class,
I think we don't need it).

I have (of course) changed GameTestServlet to use these classes,
have a look there if you want examples of usage. Maybe I'll
publish some updated screenshots shortly.

Switching rounds is not implemented yet, this should currently
be done externally, simply by creating a new StockRound or 
OperatingRound object. Handling that will become the duty of
GameManager.

These classes allow marking allowed actions in the UI in detail.
For instance, to check if the current Player can buy a share
of a given company from the Pool you could call
    isCompanyBuyable (company, pool);
This method does not yet include a check that the player has enough
money (this is checked, though, in buyShare), but I will
add such checks later.

My suggestion would be to mark the background of clickable fields
with a light colour (e.g. pale yellow), and those that are have been
selected (or pre-selected: the player or company that has the turn)
with a darker colour (e.g. green).

I have not touched the XML in a while: there is a lot hardcoded now.
This is high on my list to do, but I'll first try to complete the
round/turn management, as this deeply affects the UI code that Brett is 
currently working so hard on.

Erik.