Re: [Rails-devel] Redo & 1835

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

> > A selection box after selecting 1835 will now ask for the opening
> > variant to play: Standard, Clemens or Snake. The Start 
> round variants
> > work, except for some validation rules (cash!).
> 
> Rather than a separate pop-up, I think we should include this in the
> Options dialog.
> 
> I think some sort of "when game X is selected, we populate the dialog
> with the available options" mechanism would work.

Fine with me, but I'll leave the work to you, if you don't mind.
You can find in Options how I populate the selection.

> > I have chosen this game because (1) it's already partly done,
> > (2) it adds some interesting new game aspects, and (3) the
> > extra's are probably not too difficult to implement.
> > In particular, there are no special private properties
> > beyond what we already have (except for the Prussian formation).
> > It is a well-known game too, at least in Europe...
> >
> 
> Sounds good to me.  Will coding the Prussian formation be generic
> enough to also handle the CNR in 1856?  Or are there specifics about
> each that might require special-case coding?

It is very different. In 1856, the CGR is formed from other 
major companies under certain conditions, and it is an automatic process.

OTOH, in 1835 the Prussian forms out of minors and privates,
and players have several occasions to decide if they want to convert or
not, first at the start of the first 4-train, and then further 
at the start of each SR and OR.
I will try to reuse the existing M&H/NYC swap mechanism to implement
a first version of this process.

> > Another simple game that should be easily doable is 1851;
> > only the start round needs extra coding.
> >
> 
> Is there an easy way we can differentiate between playable and
> unplayable games in our UI?  Right now, users have no way of knowing
> what isn't fully implemented until they try to play it.
> 
> I suspect this may require changing how we populate the game list, but
> perhaps that might be a good thing for a few different reasons.

Yes, that is a very good suggestion.
Rather than looking for subdirectories of 'data' we could put a
'catalogue' file in that directory. That file could contain
a list of games with a status value for each game.
Status values could be:
- Playable (or finished)
- Partly playable (or unfinished)
- Unplayable (under development)

Options could include a selection of what minimum status level
should be applied. On publication, this should be preset to 'playable'
(but of course I will set it much lower).

We also need a properties file to store parameters
like this preset level, language etc.

Erik.