David Chapuis Posted September 17, 2003 Share Posted September 17, 2003 Originally posted by Tim O'Shenko: I can understand Battlefront's reluctance to open up the program itself. Look and Quake et al. and the extent thay have to go to to prevent cheating with PunkBuster. It sucks. That being said, I can see a few places where the ability to read and write OOBs in simple text format would be super useful. Tab delimited text would be sufficent. Most useful for campaigns and meta-campaigns: -Read OOBs into the Scenario Editor. -Write out YOUR OWN OOBs during your turn and at end game. Both of these would be an immense boon for projects like CMMC, or for players trying to track what happened in a game. Maps could be written and read using a text or binary format. -In the map editor, read in Elevation, setup zones, Terrain data from an open map format. Write out would be nice too, but not as vital. This could be minimally supported, just a simple documentation of the format. No fancy API. I think an import/export utility, like you mention here, would be an incredible addition. to the game. It would limit the changes to thing external to the basic CM engine, and provide a mechanism for incorporating the CM tactical battles into larger campaigns. In fact, it would be great if somebody could/would create an operational game - call it CM:OP - that BFC could publish that would interface with CMX2. CM:OP runs at the operational level, and when battles need to be fought data is sent to CMX2 to create the tactical battles. If you could make CM:OP a multiplayer WE-GO game - ohh yeah - that would be the true CM Meta Campaign. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WWB Posted September 17, 2003 Share Posted September 17, 2003 Originally posted by Tim O'Shenko: What would XML do that plain text couldn't? Can XML be read by most spreadsheet programs? XML can do alot that plain text cannot do. Plain text is a flat file datasource. XML is a heirarchical self-defining data source. In the long run it will be alot more flexible than some kind of CSV export and it requries pratacally the same effort to generate. Excel 2002+ can read XML without a hitch. But the point of these exports is not to be read into a spreadsheet, it is to be read programatically, have some things calculated or added to a database, and then have some sort of setup file returned to CM. WWB 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted September 18, 2003 Share Posted September 18, 2003 If you want to weep, have a look at the TacOps "Import/Export OOB" functionality. Umpire/Scenario designer pens map, adds units to each side as he see fits. Then he exports the OOB files for each of the sides (up to 8) and sends it to the first player for each side. He places his units, saves the file and sends it to the next player on his side. The last player for each side sends back to the umpire. Next day the game goes off already set up for both sides (modulo some stuff not in the OOB files). The OOB files also stores who sits in what vehicle, precisely. [ September 17, 2003, 09:25 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Holt Posted September 18, 2003 Share Posted September 18, 2003 Originally posted by Cpl Dodge: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tim O'Shenko: I can understand Battlefront's reluctance to open up the program itself. Look and Quake et al. and the extent thay have to go to to prevent cheating with PunkBuster. It sucks. That being said, I can see a few places where the ability to read and write OOBs in simple text format would be super useful. Tab delimited text would be sufficent. Most useful for campaigns and meta-campaigns: -Read OOBs into the Scenario Editor. -Write out YOUR OWN OOBs during your turn and at end game. Both of these would be an immense boon for projects like CMMC, or for players trying to track what happened in a game. Maps could be written and read using a text or binary format. -In the map editor, read in Elevation, setup zones, Terrain data from an open map format. Write out would be nice too, but not as vital. This could be minimally supported, just a simple documentation of the format. No fancy API. I think an import/export utility, like you mention here, would be an incredible addition. to the game. It would limit the changes to thing external to the basic CM engine, and provide a mechanism for incorporating the CM tactical battles into larger campaigns. In fact, it would be great if somebody could/would create an operational game - call it CM:OP - that BFC could publish that would interface with CMX2. CM:OP runs at the operational level, and when battles need to be fought data is sent to CMX2 to create the tactical battles. If you could make CM:OP a multiplayer WE-GO game - ohh yeah - that would be the true CM Meta Campaign. </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiloIndiaAlpha Posted September 19, 2003 Author Share Posted September 19, 2003 Below is a very quick and dirty shot at an OOB in XML format. As for using VB.NET I'd say Java is a much better option not least as the Mac folks will be able to use it. Please note that under no circumstances am I suggesting that the combat side of CM is tinkered with - just things that hang off it and play no part in resolving actions. The OOB just breaks a force mix into ground and air and then resolves them into the primary components as per the unit selection screens in CM. Reinforcements can also be included in a similar fashion. I expect that maps can also be resolved using a similar abstraction mechanism. As for doing any coding I'd be happy to do some myself if I were part of a small team of programmers. What programming skill are on the forum? I've about 20 years in software and 6 of those using Java. </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> <oob> <nation name="axis" year="1943" month="may"> <ground> <armour> <platoon name="?" type="..." > <!-- put commanders leadership factors here --> <commander name="??" stealth="??" morale="???" > </commander> <!-- other stuff to go in here ? --> <afv name="MklV" <!-- ammo and stuff --> <loadout ap="10" he="10" smoke="3" /> <!-- other stuff --> <afv> </platoon> <armour> <vehicle> </vehicle> <arty> </arty> <ground> <air> <cas name="??" > <loadout> </loadout> </cas> </air> </nation> </oob> </pre> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Chapuis Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 I could/would help with the programming. However, could this be done without BTS making a change to CMBB or CMAK? And since that seems unlikely, I think we will have to wait for CMX2. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Berlichtingen Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Originally posted by Tim O'Shenko: What would XML do that plain text couldn't? Can XML be read by most spreadsheet programs? XML can do thousands of things plain text can't do. Also, XML is truly cross platform where plain text is not 100% cross platform. Most apps are have been or are being writen to read and write XML at this point. Why limit yourself to a spreadsheet? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IntelWeenie Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Originally posted by Cpl Dodge: However, could this be done without BTS making a change to CMBB or CMAK? And since that seems unlikely, I think we will have to wait for CMX2. All too true. However, since BFC has shown a greater-than-average willingness to listen to their customers in the past, there's always hope! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Holt Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 I think the easiest thing to do would be to agree a schema (ask BFS to provide it or act as ultimate arbiter). Once that's in place, anyone could write a front end to generate the XML. The beauty of XML is that one could just change (by that I mean add to) the schema as and when there are major changes. Noted KiloIndiaAlpha's comments about Java - in my case I don't know Java. Also I read recently that Microsoft have recommended all developers to drop Java development (for Microsoft products) because of their on going court case with Sun. Needless to say I can't find the exact quote now (it was in one of the Wininfo newsletters last month). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Originally posted by Berlichtingen: XML can do thousands of things plain text can't do. Also, XML is truly cross platform where plain text is not 100% cross platform. Most apps are have been or are being writen to read and write XML at this point. Why limit yourself to a spreadsheet? Well, XML is just one kind of plain text, so I find that statement misleading XML is just a shortcut to agree on a variant of a plain text format which makes exchange of structured data easy and safe. It doesn't matter at all what kind of data format BFC would use to import/export from/to CM, as long as it is well-specified. Converting that to/from anything else that could be modified by hundreds of people would be a trivial task for one single hacker in one evening. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiloIndiaAlpha Posted September 19, 2003 Author Share Posted September 19, 2003 Originally posted by Jeremy Holt: Noted KiloIndiaAlpha's comments about Java - in my case I don't know Java. Also I read recently that Microsoft have recommended all developers to drop Java development (for Microsoft products) because of their on going court case with Sun. Needless to say I can't find the exact quote now (it was in one of the Wininfo newsletters last month). The issue is related to applets and plugins with browsers - not just IE. And of course MS will always tell developers to drop Java! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiloIndiaAlpha Posted September 21, 2003 Author Share Posted September 21, 2003 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.