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Onion Wars GUI Developement


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Hi Everyone!

I am from Onion Wars- a meta campaign thats been going on for more than 5 years and is in the 4th campaign now.

Currently: We have a OOB databases and a web UI for players to update. Players post orders for units and GMs setup battles if any. Battle setups are uploaded on forums and players play it till end turn. GMs post AAR and players in return post next orders.

Issues:

1. Setting up battles takes time. Would save GMs a lot of time if the battles are automatically generated based on the campaign map, sector parameters and the OOB for the battle.

2. Posting AARs takes time as GMs need to check for wounded, experience changes, map front lines.

3. Currently players post movement orders, but not always do they do it right or follow rules. GMs get back to correct them. Time is lost.

4. There is no effective UI to view the OOB with the campaign map as an overlay (a la Rome Total War campaign map). Players go to the OOB website, log in, while keeping the campaign map open. Its clumsy and time is lost. Players make do with graphical pictures currently.

5. An automated way to calculate weather, ground conditions, consequences to movement orders, supply and intel order results.

I have listed some key issues though there are many more less significant. We planned many months ago to build a complete GUI that will address all of the above except 1 and 2 for OW 5. Since OW 4 is still ongoing, development and discussions have been slow. We are still discussing ideas and features.

Features(as planned so far):

1. The GUI will strictly be KISS. Only what is required to address required features will be implemented. We don't want to attempt building an altogether new game. We were also aware of CMMC developement.

2. The GUI will be an interface between players and GMs, not between players/GMs and CMBB. Hence we wont address battle generation or AAR generation. Quite obvious since CMBB source was not available at that time this was decided. (Now this might change with Hunter making the source available to the community. We will see, says the Zen Master.)

3. The GUI will be simple, browser-based and client-server architecture oriented. The language will be Java. Technologies being considered are GWT, WebStart, JSON, SqlLite and XML Porting(for any third party community that may be interested in our work).

4. The GUI will be entirely modular in design and all features will be plug-ins. For example if you just want the OOB editor, you can rebuild the GUI and just choose OOB as the only feature you want. And if you want to add a new feature, say a chat client for fellow generals to discuss while you view the campaign map, you can import plug-ins.

5. GUI will be completely documented.

We have no deadlines at the moment(OW 4 is far from over and currently the scenario is similar to just before the Battle of Stalingrad in WW2). Work goes on as we find free time. CMBB is one of my favorite games and this will be the least I can contribute. Now that CMMC is open source \o/, I will see if battle PBEM files can be imported into the GUI for posting AARs by GMs. No promises yet on battle setup generation though. If someone is going to do that, we welcome it.

For more details, please go here: http://www.onionwars.net/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=13

-Rommel

OW forums/MZO Forums

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  • 6 years later...

I will have a look at the source code and see what can be done.

My requirements are:

Build a software that:

1. Allows the user to create and manage campaigns.

2. XML interface with CMC source to import OOB and export battle results from the game.

3. GUI configurable rules - Eg: All CMBB parameters, link CMBB quick maps to the software to allow movement of units from one map to another at campaign level.

 

Use case:

1. Start software.

2. Select campaign details - year, sides, size, economy, population etc.

3. Import CMBB maps to populate the campaign world.

4. Create team/player tokens(passwords-same to be used for the battles) that will allow individual players to login and choose their starting OOB.

5. Team captains then issue orders (Player 1 -> Map2x1) for the turn.

6. Each turn: Software will roll a dice -> Weather and battle generation based on orders.

7. Battle Results will be the output -> Saved game of each side getting the battle results will be uploaded to the software which will update the OOB.

8. Repeat 5 to 7.

Edited by TigerTiger
Grammar
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