| Archive for IMPACT! MINIATURES A forum for the discussion of board games and miniatures of the company (Impact! Miniatures) |
| brownrob |
Some thoughts about a possible JavaElfBall....
Well yeah, Im not all that good with coding, Im OK but not great... but I dont have much of an outlet to play ElfBall, bar the odd VASSAL game, and while that is great, it could be better! I was thinking about the possibility of a fundraiser (Id participate by painting and selling some minis, Id like to think I could get £150 for a team of 16 minis!  ) but how much dosh would you be talking to raise enough funds to get a programmer to write a clean program that we could play ElfBall on, something like JavaBB, infact I may have sourcecode for the L or B5 version that Falesh was working on for fumble!  I could also do very basic stuff wrt getting a site up and running for the teams etc
Am I wasting my time or would it be a good plan, having a site to play the game means that some people can try before they buy, and Im sure it would raise the profile of the game? |
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| Dark Lord |
Seeing as how I live 180 miles away from 3-4 other Elfball players, and currently run a league of 4 other coaches, I would LOVE to have an online program.
I need help VASSAL at least. I haven't fiddled with it in awhile but I couldn't figure it out...and I know from experience if it's a computer program that is tough for me to figure out, there are a couple guys I know that will never get it. |
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| bouncergriim |
I love to play it, but I don't have a lot of people around me. I am still buying minis and the game when I do get a chance for the good old board itself. But, if we could get an even stronger online presence that could help build the real world support also.
What I really wish, is I could win the lotto to be independently weathly and fund the professional box for EB to get it on more stores shelves. |
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| SillySod |
Getting a client written by a proffesional is expensive. The fact that FUMBBL hasnt had a donation drive to pay for a LRB5 client to be completed should be some indication of how much it will cost.
Besides, your client is pretty good and I think it would be much nicer to see more people actually using that than it would be to see a new client. Or maybe everyone is using it secretly and they just dont like me 
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| Dark Lord |
My problem with the VASSAL client is that it doesn't seem very intuitive. PBEMBB I picked up in a matter of minutes after watching a sample turn emailed to me.
VASSAL Elfball gives me fits whenever I try to do just about anything. But in its defense I haven't played the most recent version. |
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| brownrob |
Im off Weds - Sunday (Thurs evening and Saturday are out however!)
so I can have a blast at the VASSAL mod with you, and maybe Silly can knock me silly........ again! The main benefit of a standalone program would be the data collection aspect of it, you could quickly see how people play and what are effective strategies are, its also a good way to teach someone the premise of the game, its a little tougher with VASSAL as you need to have a really good grasp of the rules otherwise the thing takes aaaages. The standard of opponents will also gradually get better. I know playing FF online really did help me become a slightly better player! I understand that programmers do not come cheap but Im hopeful that if we raised a token amount (say £500, I dont know how far this would stretch, but it may be enough to get the attention of a FF playing programmer who wants to earn a little cash!) |
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| SillySod |
Get someone to talk you through a game. Its one of those things where you have alot of hotkeys and garbage but you only really need a few of them. Once you have played a game it should be ok
I'm definately up for more elfball, if someone wants a game or a walkthrough then just send me a message 
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| brownrob |
will you give me another walkthrough?
Oh sorry thats walkover!!!
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| SillySod |
I'd be delighted to give you another whip.. I mean game. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Heya,
I am a professional software developer, but I generally work on embedded systems (read: cellphones, radar arrays, missile guidance, etc). However, I was planning an Elfball client at home the other night. It was serendipity that I noticed this thread when I had been turning over the idea in my head so recently. So, that being the case let me ask a couple of questions: 1) Would Impact! be bothered by an online client? I would hate to undercut a business that I, personally, would like to see succeed. 2) Are there any artists willing to put together player artwork: a) 2D sprites (preferred) b) 3D models for OpenGL rendering (Also good, but would have heftier system requirements than the 2d Sprites) All that aside, I'd love to start, though I have personal obligations that mean I will not be able to put a ton of time into the client on a daily basis. However, I've recently finished a couple of personal obligations that have prevented me from starting this project for the past year so I'll have more time free to pursue this one. |
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| bouncergriim |
Have you looked at the vassal elfball client at all? There might be some good 2d sprites there for you. I still haven't figured out the vassal thing. But I would be interested in a java, more intutive game. Though I would still like to see the die rolls and such to make sure that people who learn through java will know the rules well enough to play the RL version. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
I saw a couple of screenshots, but I'm at work just now and don't want to waste company time on personal pursuits (and no, forum posts don't count. ;))
I will go through those sprites, though. Are they animated? If not I know an artist locally that can put an animation together. I guess I'd just need the permission of the original artist to use their work. |
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| Cephalopod |
For feature requests/suggestions I have created a Goggle Moderator thread. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| brownrob |
The original artist was pat, who is on this forum, he is very good.
I would love to see an elfball client to match JavaBB in ease of use. I think its a good way to learn, and from the guys who play a lot of JvaBB and move over to FF, I think the transition isnt too painful. It can also work the other way round I think, the rules in JavaElfBall would be solid, meaning there can be no rules lawyering, so when you play, you can encounter situations in the client that can be open to interpretation on the board, but in the client, its already been sorted, so you know for next time you play on the board, Im sure I could have made that more concise! Personally I think what would draw me to a client is the strategy and ease of play. I know given the choice Ill play on the board. Id prefer the 2D sprites as I know I have my own nicely painted minis and however nice 3d stuff is, its not a mini I put hours into painting! I know Falesh on fumbbl has been making a JavaBB and he will most likely let you have the source (he should, as he gave it to me!) so that you can poke around As a sweetener from me, if you manage to make something, then I will buy and paint you an ElfBall team, for reference, I did the Divine Wind in the store! But I can do better than that! I know there are one or two more guys who would be rather grateful 
But in all likeliehood you are much better than me, making my offer worthless!
You do realise you have brightened up my week already considerably, considering if you read the forums, lat week was not a good week for me |
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| Dark Lord |
I would really be interested in this too. I've been interested in the Vassal version but find it a little hard to learn and impossible (for me) to teach.
So an intuitive GUI is what I would want most. |
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| brownrob |
and as co-creator of the vassal mod, i have no problems with you taking anything out of the vassal mod ;) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| bouncergriim |
I kinda picture it like this:
Box with zoomed in view of board that you can scroll to were you need. This would be the majority of the screen on the left side. Right side control menu. After you click on an eliglible player this would have a list of actions you can do that "light up". Below this actions maybe have the requisite stat for each and this is were the dice rolls would be shown. Below this have a box with the whole board miniaturized with teams as different colors. I say focus on the ease of use and GUI, then worry abou the graphics. Just my two cents, but I can't program. |
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| mattwakeman |
I see it graphically much as bouncer does but I have always thought that it would be nice to just select a player and then use keys to move them. Kind of like
W E A D Z X Anything the player does is then automated, if they move out of tackle zone then the tool does the roll and applies the result, same for moving onto the ball. Move into another player and you are asked if you want to shove or tackle. Ease of use is everything though; ideally imo people should be able to look at the tool and only have to know a few keys. The more the tool does the better since this is the way that it will drag people in. If they feel they are having to play the tool as well as their opponent they will get stressed but the more that they can focus on just playing the game the better it will be. Really hope that you can take this somewhere mate. You won't lack for suggestions that is for sure! |
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| Cephalopod |
I'm a big fan of JavaBB and FUMBBL, for all that I don't use their site anymore (preferring to play with localfriends and converted teams from out actual league).
To sum up so far: Get the rules right! 2d Sprites not 3D models Ease of use is key The moderator page I put up is for me to track what people want. Of course, I don't expect to see much there since I don't have anything to show you. If you do have a suggestion put it there and I'll get a notification that there is a new suggestion/bug fix. Easier on me, though admittedly I'll also be checking this forum often. I will contact the artist and ask about the Sprites. My wife, bless her, has agreed to do the animations (at least initially. She's far busier than I am sometimes...) so I'm good for the moment. The next step for me is to build the game board (in software) and then draw it to the screen. The latter is easy, getting the former right will be the tricky bit. Does anyone have any links or info on how the hexes are laid out? I want to make sure I get all of that right, and if there is an algorithm/formula that was used when the board was laid out that would be ideal.
We are totally in-sync with how the controls should work. Beyond that, a "Risk assessment" would be handy. "Disengage here is unlikely/high risk" that a player could choose to use would be handy, but I think that can be saved for a later version. First things first, getting the game board up and viewable.
Also, I need to make sure that the network speed is very fast and that players can reconnect to a game that is ongoing if one of them drops accidentally. Man, I need to get home and write up a design doc for this... |
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| bouncergriim |
Like I was saying with regards to the disengage/other stuff where you roll dice, have a little status box that shows stats for you and opponent related to roll and # of successes need.
Then actually show the dice as they are rolled and also have a momentum bar indicator that doubles as the use momemtum command. So I picture the box like this move/disengage Shove Tackle Pick up Throw Etc. Your attribute Opponent # of successes needed dice momentum I would like the keys or click to move as an option for either to move. |
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| Cephalopod |
For momentum: If they have any then after the roll, before the next action is take, the user could click on the picture of rolled dice and cause it to reroll using up the momentum generated so far. Does that sound like a fair system, and easy to use? For key vs click movement: I'm in. I like it. |
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| bouncergriim |
sounds, good I want to keep it simple, but also as close to the real board game as possible. So I want people to see the dice and choose things on their own rather than have the computer do it.
If you ever played the old FF pc game. I liked how it simulated the board, I hated the way you couldn't see the dice or choose to reroll failed dice rolls after they failed. I also think you should aviod special "skills" and tracking experience points until you get the basic game figured out. |
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| Cephalopod |
I agree with all points, including that league play, experience, and skills should wait. They would come after a 1.0 release of the basic rules. I'll leave placeholders in for that stuff. I did play the old, old FF computer game for the PC. I liked it, but I still wish it have been a little more responsive. Ah well, such is life. :) |
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| SillySod |
In terms of keyed rather than click movement.... being able to do both is probably handy. Personally I find clicking more intuitive but keys are usually faster and thus more useful when you dont need the client to be intuitive any more. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Ok, I realize that I should have sat down and written a detail description about how I'm going to build the client... but I didn't. I spent this evening getting an early version of the pitch working. As you can see it has identified the important hexes (including the face-off circle, though that isn't shown). Clearly there is a lot of work to do, but please check to make sure that I've got the wide-zone hexes in the correct spots. I checked it, but a second, third, or 100th set of eyes never hurts!
Edit: I forgot to mention when I posted this what the picture represents. The red hex is the goal, the grey hex is the goal-tender hex. The dark blue hex is the center hex of the face-off circle and the cyan hexes are the wide zones. There are hexes shown that won't be drawn in the final version, so for the moment just imagine that there is a white circle forming the boundary of the field...
The yellow and green hexes are normal hexes. I just wanted to make sure I could easily tell the difference between rows. The game is field is represented "left to right", though I can switch it to "top to bottom". http://i611.photobucket.com/album...94/boclarke/early_pitch_image.jpg I've titled the client Flop! as a working title. Momentum was also considered. My wife suggested Impact which was my favorite but that might imply a relationship with Impact! Miniatures that doesn't exist, so I had to say no. |
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| Cephalopod |
Oh, another note. I got a zooming function working last night as well. The Map class contains all of the objects that get drawn to the screen, and it has a scale attribute that can be set by the user. This will let you zoom in and out when playing. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| bouncergriim |
If this all works well, what would Tom aka Galak need/want to make sure his copyrights stay intact and we can still spread Elf Ball via the electric gospel called JAVA/internet? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
That is a really goood question, and above and beyond the usual copyright notices I intend to link teams to the impact store and try to drum up a little business for impact. I think of this client as a means to promote the board game to a wider audience. I'm hoping I can do something to help out Impact with this. |
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| Lychanthrope |
Other hexes to note, at some point, are the hexes it's legal to entire the game from the bench. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Good point! They had totally slipped my mind. I'll get them tonight. I swore I saw an image on these forums showing the legitimate hexes... Do the wide-zone hexes look right? I'm not 100% certain about those. |
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| GalakStarscraper |
As well .. you'll want to show us which hexes you think bounce the ball ... these are the ones that are tricky to get right. Galak |
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| Cephalopod |
Good call. I was going to start on clipping tonight. I'l put the white line in as well and start on collision detection as well | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| brownrob |
Hey, is this the image you are looking for? Courtesy of DL!
I hope this helps! |
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| brownrob |
Think you may have missed the faceoff hexes as well, should they be blue in your pic as well? 
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| Cephalopod |
A good catch! They are actually detectes, I just didn't change the color of the hex. On a side note, does anyone have a texture they'd like for the field? I'm debating just making it one big image and then overlaying the hexes but that would screw with any zoom function... |
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| Cephalopod |
That image will be very handy, thank you. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| brownrob |
I am more than happy to help you in any way I can, with this project :) Something else to consider is to allow the user to use their own custom fields, like JavaBB, I think the pitch in box is good, or you could use Franks home made pitch images... which ill have to look for as well! |
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| Cephalopod |
A definite argument in favor of making the background one large image and clipping it down to the playing field. Should the user field have the white lines or should the program draw those? I'm in favor of the latter, even if it does limit player creativity. Also, should the custom field be automatically shared between players? |
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| brownrob |
No, I think that you should not share that custom image automatically. It opens up a real can of worms if you do, ie is it family friendly, could the image be used to confuse a new player? I think if you create a folder where you can dump any custom image, then load it ingame, could be a neat feature you could add in down the line.
Yeah, well I would agree with you on the lines thing as well |
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| Dark Lord |
I'm just enjoying this thread a lot.
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| Cephalopod |
Ok, so to sum up:
Detect hexes where replacements enter the field Add White lines Clip playing field to only show hexes that can be played on Show which hexes the ball cannot be thrown across (midfield, boundary, and goal) I'll see if I can't bang all of that out this evening after work, family, dinner, etc.
Well, I'm glad to hear that!
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| Cephalopod |
This evening's update:
I got the centerline and boundary line in and created the clipping view. I didn't add the yellow or white circles but I did add rudimentary support for custom pitches. Bear in mind that the colored hexes will be leaving for the entire field, but will appear around a selected player and show what hexes are available to move to, etc. You can find it at: http://s611.photobucket.com/album...mp;current=early_pitch_image2.jpg Overall I think it is coming along nicely. The thread here has been a good source of ideas and inspiration, please keep it up! |
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| brownrob |
Work restrictions mean i cannot look at the image but had a thought for way down the line, again!
The option to be able to play real time and pbem, as i know i can be called out unexpectedly, or i would be in the position where i might be able to get a few turns played via email in a night, or a drive in real time! |
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| bouncergriim |
I think focusing on real time turnbased between players will be the best right now.
pbem is great, however, another engine than JAVA might be better suited to such a situation. A great addition though would be to save games and return to them, if inturruptions happen. This would make a way of playing piece by piece possible. |
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| Cephalopod |
Pbem would be an interesting challenge for a later revision of the client. All of the turns are are serialized objects to the game, so I can see how I would go about starting it.
Well, lets consider that to be a suggestion for later, once the real-time turn based client is working. Save games are definitely in. I would hate to not have that. I also want to add a "replay" option so that people can watch games already played to learn from them. |
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| Cephalopod |
Does everyone like the working title? Or, to put that another way, I would love some naming ideas for what this program should be called.
Also, if anyone has some good sport sounds or wants to create some sport sounds I would love a link! |
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| Cephalopod |
Ok, so elfball.net has been registered. In a couple of hours I'll get a roadmap and developer blog going at http://developer.elfball.net and www.elfball.net redirects to impact's main site. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Another update, the Developer blog is up and running. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| GrumpyGrizzly |
Thanks a lot for working on this Ceph. When BR and I were working on the Vassal client, there were a lot of places where we couldn't do what we wanted. It's great that you're doing this.
I thought your pitch hexes looked great and the overlay is nice. I look forward to moving around some players on it someday
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| mattwakeman |
Well after a couple of hellish days away with work I am back home and am very happy to not only see that this thread is still going but there is even a pitch there for all to see. Nice one Ceph, didn't think that you would be this keen!
But when I have been away I have been thinking about stuff that I would like to see in this potential program and have made something of a laundry list of wishes and desires. I stress that this is just me thinking out loud and I certainly don't expect to see any of this, it would be just nice if one day these things came to pass. Some of them are real eye candy but some of them I think would actually make the tool more fun to use. On we go: 1 - Using a mouse to select and move players as well as keyboard. Maybe you double click to select your active player and if you move the cursor to a hex and click they move there, or if you select one of your players then it will throw the ball to them (automatically handled by the tool of course). Having said that someone (ahem) said that they would like to see a, 'a "Risk assessment". "Disengage here is unlikely/high risk" that a player could choose to use would be handy'. So maybe you dbl click your player and highlight an opposition player and the icon is green, good chance with a shove/tackle, orange maybe not so good, red, well, just don't go there. The same thing would apply if you were in a tackle zone and wanted to move. You would move your cursor onto the hex you wanted to go to and the tool would suggest the likelihood of it being an achievable move. Something like that anyway. 2 - Animated sprites. No, to me, just no. Don't like them and never have. But having said that, if there was one thing in the tool that would benefit from this it is die rolling. So much more tension if the die move all over the place before coming to a rest. As long as it isn't overdone. Of course it would be really clever if the tool took just a little longer to roll them if the ball was very near somebodies goal area... 3 - Why not include an option for coaches to do away with sprites for players altogether? Instead of messing about with trying to get small sprites to be easily seen for a player please have an option for shapes instead. Since players share stat values why not have all midfielders as squares, strikers as triangles, hunters as hexagons etc etc. At a glance once coaches are used to this then their game speeds up. 4 - Lots of different options for how long a game lasts. First to one score, two scores, coaches can agree on a number. Timed games using an inbuilt chess clock (45 mins total each and if you run out then you are penalised in some way), blitz game where you only have 10 secs a move. Limitless options but build them in to the tool itself. Maybe try to get Dark Lord's card rules in as well. 5 - Eyecandy. Is it just me or would it very cool if every time a player left a hex then that hex became just a little muddier and dirty? After a while the green pitch would become brown. Of course if a player was injured then that hex would be red and brown. No idea if this is totally impractical to program but I love the idea of degradation on the pitch. 6 - And if you could do 5 then how about every time you move across a white line it becomes less white until there are more passing lanes (this is moving dangerously close to being an optional rule so one for waaaay down the line). 7 - Teams should obviously be loaded via html files but make it so that there are various things added to the html file as a matter of course. The tool could flag things like: Who started the game, who came on as a sub, who scored, who was on the pitch for a score, who was on the pitch when they conceded a score. Yes some coaches may not care but for those who do then they wouldn't have to do anything themselves. Think of the fluff possibilities. 8 - If html is used a lot then the tool could update at the end of the game not only player results but the team as well. A pop-up box could be there where you would enter what type of game it was (league or cup) then the tool would fill in who you played and the result and each coach would be given an opportunity to type some brief comments about the game. Once they have, they click a button and on each teams html is a running list of the players they have, what they players did, the team results and comments and history and background and identity and personality. 9 - I shall think of some more.... I stress that a lot of these are just me thinking out loud and if all (all, all?!) we get is a tool that has the playability of that which exists in FUMBBL then I for one would be happy. But why not dream about the many things that it could be and try to prompt our giving programmer (and not even with a sharp stick...yet) into biting off more than he can chew. As ever, comments and suggestions on these ideas are more than welcome. |
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
Thanks for that. I'm actually really enjoying it, though I fear my wife may kill me if I stay up until 1 AM or later again... The overlay is just to show where the hexes are and the different colors are there to show either what a hex is or to make it easy to see the difference between different hexes. I think I'll put a toggle in so that you can turn that on at any time, though, since it makes it easy to see what's going on.
Hey, welcome back and thank you! I like a lot of your ideas. If you want, feel free to add them to the moderator site I posted a link to earlier. That lets me track them more easily. I'm going to remove a lot of the text below. It isn't anything personal, but there would be a LOT of text if I included suggestions and responses as well...
Agreed. I'll be doing both. To start it will be keyboard control but once I've got all of those functions in place, mouse movement isn't hard. I want the risk assessment in there, and it will use the existing overlay functions to make it happen. The concept is that when you've activated a player, all hexes that it is possible to move to with a point of jog get highlighted, and if there is a disengage to be made to move there, or an impact/shove/tackle challenge is what uses the point of jog, the highlight will have a different color. Later versions will precalculate the odds of success and provide a different color for 75% likely, 50% likely, and 25% likely.
Hey, I totally understand the dislike of animated sprites, and I should have been more clear. I want to use the sprite to show what direction a player is facing. This means that I need 6 different poses. Switching from pose to pose is the "animation". I intend to use an overlay on the hex that the player is standing in to show that they are activated.
Well... I like the idea for simplicities sake, and I was already planning something similar to use until the sprites were ready. I like the suggestion, and I'll make it an option available to a player or observer.
All of those are good ideas and I had intended to add at least the first two and one other: - play until total points = X (from 1 to 10) - play until one team has scored X points (from 1 to 10) - play for X minutes (where X ranges from 30 minutes to 240 minutes) - any combination of the above Individual turn limits would need to be enforced.
I had planned the injury one, by drawing "gore" onto the hex (i.e. a small gore/blood stain image that is drawn over the hex). It would be an option that could be turned on and off. Other "field artifacts" - Fireball scorch marks - divots from dash challenges - impact craters from missed passes (and maybe knockdowns) I like the footprint one. I'll think of a way to make it look cool. At the simplest version, it could be an image drawn with an alpha channel that gets more and more visible over time (starts invisible). However, showing some type of continuous path would also be cool... Well, I'll think on that one later.
While I had planned optional rule support, I hadn't planned on introducing new ones. Each rule has to have the logic programmed in (as opposed to visual effects, which just have to be told when and how to be drawn). It sounds cool, but we'll have to talk more about it later.
Boy, now I wish I had put the roadmap (not quite finished) up on the developer.elfball.net site. You and I want the same things from this product, but we have different takes on how it should be done. I'll see if I can't take another break this afternoon and post it. If not, I'll have to wait for tonight when I get home from work. Close! The teams will be described in XML. HTML is a subset of XML, so exporting them would be easy enough. The server (working title called Momentum) will track all team stats and game events. The plan is to publish those stats to the player (via the client) and then they can export the game if they want. The server also published those stats to Elfball.net via an application called Grit. This would allow for a global database of Elfball statistics to be reviewed. Also, I want to create a "replay" ability, so that an entire game can be saved and rewatched. This will be trickier.
Cool idea. I'll have to think about that one. I take it that the comments, history, and background are added by the team's coach? Or were you thinking they should be generated by the client?
Hey, toss them all out there. I have nothing against saying no! Let me sum up my plan. 1) Get the client working, drawing players, the pitch, the bench and infirmary, the dice, etc. Also, this version of the client will allow you to test out player movement, etc, in an offline, single player fashion. 2) Get the server working. This is a stand alone app. Any time you play, you start up the server, then start the client and log into it. There are a couple of good reasons for this, which I will describe later. 3) Get the client and server running together. 4) Distribute and test, test, test 5) Get Grit up and running (i.e. Elfball.net league and match making site). Hmm... I appear to have taken longer than the 15 minute break I had planned. Post feedback to this and let me know what you think when you get a moment. |
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| GalakStarscraper |
Sorry Matt ..one item on the list I'm not in favour of is the white lines disappearing. Those are there for a reason.
Tom |
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| mattwakeman |
Yeah I just thought that it might make for an interesting optional rule to be honest. No way am I advocating that it should happen as a matter of course; the game would be fundamentally different if it was.
As to your reply Ceph, I like your idea of risk assessment more than mine. The comments section after a game is something that the tool would open but the coaches would actually write themselves. I just like the idea of both coaches making comments on every team so that you have to carry it around like a badge of honour if that makes any sense. As soon as I get the chance though I will neaten up this list and any other ideas that come to mind and post them all up on the mod site. I am getting pleasantly excited by all of this I have to say! |
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
I had a couple of minutes so I posted a draft of the software description on developer.elfball.net It describes the three software products and how they relate to each other. I figure if we're all on the same page it will help. If you see something that should be changed let me know! |
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| Cephalopod |
Heya guys,
Not as much progress tonight. I had hoped to make a release that would allow you to press a key to turn on and off the overlay for different hex types. I got keyboard and mouse input working, but I just don't have time to tie it all together. Tomorrow! |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Looked over your dev page. Makes me feel practically giddy to consider it might happen
I was wondering if it will be possible to play using the client off line in a hots eat mode? Not a critical feature, but one that I would like if possible. |
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
I had not considered a hotseat mode, but certainly nothing technically prevents it. Initially you'll need to run the server and two clients from the same machine. Edit: http://developer.elfball.net has been updated. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Hotseat is of interest to me because I often use the VASSAL mod to play elfball when I travel and don't want to pack a board. From the dev blog it looks like teams will be coming to the pitch soon. So you're at a point where things can move, but not where rulesets are being used? I envy your programming ability and the progress that you are making. |
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| mattwakeman |
Hotseat is huge to me since I have no friends...no wait, I mean that I have no time, yes, that is what I really meant to say...but I love messing about so I would love to be able to play games with just me, myself and I. Looking great so far though mate and looking at the developer blog I can see why I would have been a rubbish programmer. No way can I think in that orderly a fashion!
\Still feeling excited by it all |
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| Cephalopod |
Ok, so hotseat... yeah, I cam do that. It will just be an architecture change at this point in any case as I've only started to stub out the pitch-player-rules interactions | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| brownrob |
I thought about the team rosters and I think somethin like what the PBEM uses could be nice, so I hope you dont mind, but I made a rough n ready roster that you may or may not find useful!
I think it has everything thas needed to play a game, though I know about the skills part not being in at this stage!
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| Cephalopod |
It is useful. Assuming that PBEM isn't Fantasy Football-only it means that any roster exported from the game's internal format could be compatible. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| bouncergriim |
What would be cool also is if your could make a mini-version to put on the Impact site to have people play a premade senario and see how the game works or even have a replayable preview with explaination for people to watch like the playby plays in the rulebook. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Sorry, just got home from a 12 hour day at work. Nothing like an emergency just before you try to sell a product, eh?
You're referring to an applet? That would be cool, but I'll go with a different tact. Since I want to write up a "replay" ability, I'd like to make an applet that just plays select games back, or shows a play-by-play of the rules. No mini-game, but something that could add immediate visual draw. However, that would be a long while for now. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
If you had a replay system and some way to record the chat text, and the community here would come up with the tutorials.
Can't be worse (or harder) than the ones that we did for Vassal If we had access to the dice roller to make them, that'd be great. But simply doing things over and over again until you get what you want worked before.
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| brownrob |
Yes, and if you have my luck GG, that takes a while!
seriously, dont get overwhelmed about the feature requests dude, there is a lot flying about, just work on the things you like!
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
True BR, sometimes it takes a lot of retakes before you get the result you want. I remember yelling at my monitor "come on... don't make the catch. Please don't make the catch!", and the little guy would still make a catch. 
Ceph does seem to have thing well in hand and if we drive him crazy I'm sure we'll get a well deserved bap on the nose :
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
Quick update while I wait for the barber. I reworked the way the pitch is drawn last night. I had a devil of a time getting multiple canvas objects working when painting directly to the frame. This should no longer be a problem. I also wrote the SpriteStore and Sprite classes. The store will hold all of the sprites, which in turn hold the actual player images. I'll do some more tonight after Valentine's day celebrations. And please keep the ideas coming. Even if I don't get to them in the first cut of this, they do help when I sit down and figure out how to write things. It will make updating later on easier. :) |
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| mattwakeman |
Lots and lots more suggestions have been plucked out of thin air and are awaiting votes and discussion at Flop: http://moderator.appspot.com/#15/e=1a6aa&t=1a2b5
Be honest about them chaps and I was very excited to read at the blog, '...we're just about ready for creating teams/players. At that point I'll release a copy for people to toy with and let me know what problems they find.' Let me at it please
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
Thanks for those! I've voted on those that I liked. In regards to the team/players. I am close, but I've been spending my time fixing up the pitch, making sure that everything is drawn correctly, etc. I'm still not quite sure what to do about the bench & infirmary areas, art-wise. I should probably get that in before I start with the teams, but once that is done I'll get the teams up there. At a rough estimate, based on current progress, that will be about a week. |
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
I've made an update to http://developer.elfball.net and have added a very, very early alpha download to show some of the pitch interactions. There isn't a team to play around with, but feedback will help me make that release all the smoother. Also, this is the first proof that I'm not totally yanking your chains.
See the developer blog for details. Happy President's Day! (Yes, even to those of you not in the US!) 
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
I downloaded the app and gave it a test drive.
General impressions: Ran screamingly fast on my system. No hicups, delays, bugs, artifacts or anything. Even with all of the overlays turned on it showed no problems panning or resetting. I really liked the responsiveness of it as a panned the pitch along the background. Something real nice about that. Did you intend for it to display a very large white stripe on the left? After seeing this, I had two suggestions: 1) Adding a key to reset all of the hex highlighting. After turning them all on, it was a bit cumbersome to turn them off again one at a time. 2) Any way that the user can choose the rotation of the pitch as it shows up on their screen? This isn't a deal breaker to me, but I was wondering if it would be possible to view the goal hexes on the top/bottom rather than left/right. I know that most people prefer left/right, so would be able to live with it Obviously the server would keep track of pieces who it wanted to, but how my client displayed them wouldn't have to be the same.
Good job Ceph! System Specs (by request) OS: Vista (SP1) CPU: AMD 64 X2 4400+ RAM: 4GB Video: ATI Radeon 3850 Java: V6 update 12 from java.com |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Quick question: is it possible for you to post a screen shot of what it is supposed to look like?
I just noticed that I can't see the bottom part of the window is not visible. Edit: Found a bug. If I move the window and then pan the field, the black hexes show up (and are frozen) in the white side bar. The pitch pans ok, but the black hexes remain in the side bar. Trying to duplicate exactly how I cause this and will get back when I have something. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
To reproduce this bug simply pick up the window and drag it to the right a number of times. I find between 1-5 moves the problem will show up. I have included a screenshot so you can see what I mean.
Sometimes when I exit and restart Flop after a bug, the bug will still be there. If I pan to the right it does not show up as quickly (usually taking between 20-40 moves). Left and Up usually occur 1-5, while down takes 5-10. I haven't done enough measurements to trust it entirely. But I can say that a single pan to the right is the most stable. A picture of the bug is below: 
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| Cephalopod |
Heya,
To answer your first question: The white stripe is reserved for other GUI elements, like the dice roller, message window, etc. It is supposed to be there. To answer your second question: None planned. I'll have to think of how I could make it possible. In regards to the bug: Ok, I see what you mean about the black hexes. I think I know what would cause that. I'll try to recreate it here. That it lasts between runs sometimes is... worrisome. I'm glad it went so well over there! Since my machine has so many debug and developer versions of things I'm never quite sure it will work the same. I'd use my wife's computer... but since she's also a software developer it is just as bad. 
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
I figured that the white space was administrative, but was just checking
I am not sure why it sometimes lasts between runs. It took time to reproduce the error 100% and I was never able to reproduce the startup error 100%. But I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be more on my end (vista + java = iffy sometimes). So is the none planned in reference to rotation of the board by 90degrees or for a key to turn off all of the hex markings?
But in all honesty, I was impressed by how smooth what was up there performed. I reproduced the bug on an old xp laptop with a 1.6Ghz processor, but the response speed was good still. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Hey Ceph,
I tried Flop out on my wife's machine. It's a XP beast running SP2 on an AMD 64 4000+ with 2GB or ram. It's a duel video card machine that is runing a GeForce 6600 as the main display and a Geforce FX5200 as the secondary. The hex drawing bug does not seem to show up on this machine. I'll test out Flop on a few other xp machines to see what is going on. However what I'm getting that is weird is that when flop comes up it tried to hog all of her primary screen and about 1/4 of her secondary screen. Both are running at 1024x768 resultion. What resolution did you intend for the game to be displayed at? I'm curious because I'm not sure how much of the pitch I am supposed to see before I start to pan. Response time is great for panning. A microbit slower for highlighting, but nothing I would dream of complaining about. |
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| Cephalopod |
Ok, so it is a Vista issue. Hmm. Well, I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately, I don't have any Vista machines here currently. Everything I have, with the exception of Dell laptop, is Linux. Unfortunately, my Dell laptop is my development machine, so I'm actually doing everything on an XP machine and then testing it out as I go along on Linux. I'm going to have to reverse that, it feels wrong. I do have an unused copy of Vista sent to me as a promotional deal. Perhaps I'll build a machine out of spares and turn that into a test box. In regards to the resolution: Yeah, right now I've made the resolution pretty big. I'm planning on making it re-sizable but the initial resolution is going to end up being 1024x768. I'm running it larger now just so that I can see more of what is going on. What will happen is that the initial zoom/scale will show the whole screen. You can zoom in if you want to from there. Getting that working is next on my list after teams/players. In regards to the display lag when applying the overlay: The client is currently double buffered. If I make it triple buffered it will no longer have any lag when applying the hex overlay (at least, it shouldn't). However, it will also use up a lot more in the way of system resources. I plan on making that a user selectable feature (stored in the ini file for subsequent runs). Oh, and before anyone asks, yes I need to fix the replacement hexes since there are currently too many areas for replacements to enter. I was up in the air about which areas to use for them so I did them all. I'll remove the extras shortly. |
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| Cephalopod |
OOps, just read that you got the bug on an older XP machine. Out of curiosity, was that machine also an ATI card? | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| GrumpyGrizzly |
I honestly don't feel that the tiny bit of lag you get from the hex overlay is really a concern. But user settings are always nice
It also could be due to the two machines are running different versions of java, the xp one is running 1.6.0.05 from sun. I'll try updating the java on my wife's machine and see if it comes up there. Thanks for the work you're putting in. Not trying to drive you crazy with all of this study of a simple grid on a hex Just imagine how it's going to be when we get things on the pitch
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Updated the Java on the laptop and everything is working fine now. No lag on the hex outlining either.
The laptop is running an Mobile Intel 915GM video card (It's a Dell D510 business computer). I'll tweak with my Vista machine a bit and see if I can narrow it down a bit. Would the fact that I'm running a widescreen monitor/resolution on my Vista machine give Flop any problems? Hopefully somebody else with a vista machine can confirm this. |
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| mattwakeman |
System Specs (by request)
OS: Win Xp Sp2 CPU: Intel Pent 4 RAM: 3GB Video: Nvidia Geforce 9400 GT Java: V6 update 12 from java.com First up it is just great to see how quickly you have got something real for us all to see and to look at. The hardest part may well be having to live with the eager clamour of those of us who want more and quickly! Ok, I haven't seen the bug that GG has talked about but that is mainly because when I load up I don't have any white bar at all, just the pitch. However, if I then make the window full size then suddenly I have a huge white bar which will sometimes be there when I restart the program. What it looks like when I load is this: 
which is great, but should I have a white bar somewhere on there? I am running at 1440x900 if that makes any difference at all. No lag or delay in any of the options at all. Consider this another vote as well for being able to choose directions. The side view is great if you are a spectator but most coaches I would think would prefer to be running upfield (as it were) when they are actually playing a game. Nice start mate, really nice start. |
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| Cephalopod |
Thanks for all of the feedback so far. I greatly appreciate it.
In regards to the ability to rotate: I think I'll try to add that later, once the client is more or less working. I will say it would be a LOT easier with squares as opposed to hexagons, but hexes are more fun. Look up the "point in a polygon" algorithm for more on why this is tough. You know, the more I tinker, the more this game benefits from larger resolutions to display the entire screen. What resolution is everyone here generally running? Would setting the display to 1280x1024 be too large? |
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| Dark Lord |
I run 1024 x 768. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cephalopod |
Gotcha. I'll leave it set for that, at least to start. It would have more compatibility in any case that way.
Eventually, I'd like to support a variety of startup sizes. Between that and zooming everyone should be happy. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Hey Ceph. I saw that you put up a new dev blog. Did you really finish that up at 1:45am your time? I didn't see the new version up Don't mind me, just chomping at the big to abuse your defenseless program
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| Cephalopod |
I think the server is an hour off, it was 1245 my time.
I didn't cut a new version of the pitch test, though I certainly can. It will have a background texture for the GUI elements that will de drawn. Actually, that is a good idea. I'll get one posted when I get home from work this evening. |
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| mattwakeman |
Is it possible (or feasible even) to make the pitch take up huge amounts and have areas that if you push the mouse over them then a box would show up in which you can see who is on the bench or injured? Does that make sense? Elfball seems much more about who is actually on the pitch rather than what is available off it so it would seem that more pitch is surely better. Nice to hear that the pitch is 'effectively done'. Yippee
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| Cephalopod |
http://developer.elfball.net has been updated. There is a new pitch test build available.
As for a Pop-up box: Good idea. I had been stubbing out an area for GUI controls. I'll set some of that aside for a Bench/infirmary/Stat-box while the remained is for dice and momentum. That would leave more room available for the pitch. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Hey Ceph, I don't think that the new version of the pitch got updated. When I do the unzipping, the client file is still from Feb 15th and none of the options you mention are working. |
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| Cephalopod |
Hrmm. Let me try that one again then...
Edit: According to the FTP server site it is updated. You might have a caching issue with your browser. However, to just to be on the safe side I've uploaded Flop2.zip. Same link, but replace Flop.zip with Flop2.zip |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
Really odd is that now it shows flop.zip, but it's v2 Downloaded and am putting it through it's paces.
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
This build fixed the problems I was having before. The hex redrawing problem and the weird spanning across my dual monitor has been fixed. The clear all hexes works great (thanks! ).
On my two XP machines, the panning was slower that it was previously. But not enough for me to complain. But I have found a panning problem. to replicate it easily: 1) Pan the pitch as far to the right as as far up as possible (so the lower left quadrant is what is showing 2) Zoom out "Two Click" Now you can't pan at all. Another way: Resize the window so that it Also this panning problem happens when the window is resized to be smaller. How much smaller seems to be different across all of my machines. Once the window gets small enough (and it's not super tiny), then you can't actually pan across the whole pitch. It's not lockout, it's just parts of the pitch aren't able to be viewed. |
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| mattwakeman |
Yeah I'm also able to replicate the bug which means that you can't pan but mate, it still just takes my breath away. On my 19" monitor I can get the whole pitch there with plenty of room on the side for team info and the like.
It is a really great start that you are making Ceph. |
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| Cephalopod |
Thanks for the feedback. I'll up the panning limits (the limits put in place to prevent someone from accidentally removing the pitch from the screen). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| mattwakeman |
Now please don't laugh at my artistic inability here but having a play with the pitch this is kind of how I saw the total layout:
Shapes really work much better with a zoomable pitch I think but if everybody would prefer player icons that is fair enough. The areas on the side would work with icons on them or maybe if you ran the mouse over them they would expand and you could see who was in there. What I like about this is the whole pitch is there for a coach to see. Yes the shapes are bad and I tried a few bright colours to see which one would show facing the best but I for one would be happy to play games on something like this. \Still excited by it all...! |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
I don't mind shapes or letters as an option, but definitely not as the only option.
Player icons is definitely something I would prefer, but can see why somebody would want something different. But with this sort of programing, I don't think that it's hard for everyone to be happy Definitely a great start.
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
With the ability to recenter the pitch after panning, you can be pretty generous with them
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| Cephalopod |
Good evening everyone,
I have updated the developer blog with tonight's progress. There is a new client available with a test for rolling dice. Instructions are on the blog. Also, the panning limits have been expanded (well, doubled). Feel free to test that one out.
Matt, your layout isn't bad. I'm also going to try to shove Momentum and the dice rolled in there somewhere.
Actually, if I had the player card swap out for the dice box (when you mouse over a character it shows the character stats until you mouse over another character (and it switches) or dice are rolled (and it then displays the results). The plan is to make momentum sort of automated. You just click on the momentum bar where you want to use it and it re-rolls results, starting with Flops, then blanks, then successes. You won't select individual die. Does that make sense? An example: You have 4 momentum and roll 4 dice resulting in 1 flop, 2 blanks, and 1 success. You click on the "1" of the momentum counter, telling the game to reduce your momentum to one and re-roll the worst 3 dice using 3 momentum. The flop and both blanks get rerolled. Had you selected the "3" on the track you would have told the game to reduce your momentum by one (to 3 in our example) and re-roll the Flop only. |
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| GrumpyGrizzly |
I'll download and take a look at your new code, very excited about it. I think that you shouldn't automate the flop rolling. Let us select which dice to reroll. Click, then hit the reroll. This might strike you as odd, but there have been two or three times when I have used a reroll to actually lower my successes. Often before a particularly dramatic pass from some lughead with no skill (I don't want to flop the roll and give my opponent lots of momentum). So I'd definitely rather mantain control of my dice rerolls. |
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