Re: [Rails-devel] Game Options

[Brett L. <wak...@gm...>]

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 18:49 -0400, John A. Tamplin wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Aug 2007, Brett Lentz wrote:
> 
> > Take a look at nearly any other computer game ever made.
> >
> > Take a look at Simtex's 1830 game and how it's UI operates.
> >
> > Every single game allows the user to freely navigate the game's setup
> > window(s) without starting up a new game or locking them into a specific
> > way of interacting with the setup options.
> 
> That is because you have already selected which game you are going to play 
> by running the app.  To start a different game, you exit and start over 
> with a different app.  Rails is adding another level of selection above 
> that, which is selecting the game to play.
> 

I think this is an issue of semantics than an actual design concern.

We aren't switching between several different game engines with several
different ways of storing and retrieving their data.

We've got a single game engine, and a single data representation. 

The only real problem is one that we've known already exists: we've
chosen to prioritize a quick design and a working codebase over haggling
over everyone's pet ideal designs and having no codebase.

The current design is now showing a weak point which requires us to
refactor this area of our code.

We knew this was coming. Now, it's just a matter of figuring out a
better design and implementing it. 


> > MegaMek (Java Battletech): http://megamek.sourceforge.net/
> > Java Blood Bowl: http://home.austin.rr.com/javabbowl/
> > Colossus (Java Titan): http://colossus.sourceforge.net/
> > VASL ( Java Advanced Squad Leader): http://www.vasl.org/
> >
> > None of these have this kind of a restriction on when or how game
> > options are selected.
> 
> None of them allow you to play different games either (at least MegaMek or 
> Colossus).
> 

Incorrect. Colossus supports a fairly large number of variants and
dynamically updates their game options window based on the variant. Try
playing some of the 9 or 12 player variants that even use an alternate
master board.

More to the point, all of the games are examples that allow the user to
configure their game options in any order they choose and then starting
a new game is what actually initializes the game engine.


 ---Brett.


There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.