Thoughts, comments and suggestions wanted.

G'day,

A few years ago, I ran a successful Play By Mail company. In the PBM format, players write their orders on paper, mail them to the Game Master who inputs the data into his computer, runs the game, prints the results and mails them back to the player.

With the advent of the internet, PBM is almost dead and I have stopped running games.

However, I still have the source code for some of them and was wondering if anyone is interested in creating a web based game. My main problem is the inability to do graphics, and limited experience/ability/time with VB6. Two games I have in mind are written in basic and Pascal. The main one called Balance of Power (not the one you might be thinking about) is based on WW2, but with a suitable engine could be any combat form - only the graphics and raw data need to be altered.

Peter

Wargames?

It would be a good idea to have a central server if the game is turnbased and turns take long.
This could be a server made by you but also an email server.
Many computer wargames have an option for PBEM. (Play By E-Mail)

You could use PHP if you want to run it in any webbrowser.

You may want to make the server just a dumb datapasser and put all gamecode in the player's programs.
That way slow connections won't make playing sluggish and you won't need a big, fat server if a lot of people play your game.
PBEM would completely remove any need for a server provided by you.

How should the graphics be?
Just 2D? Fancy animations?
Something could be done with BitBlt.

G'day Jeroen,

At this stage, I am thinking that the simplest/easiest way is the best way. The game is a 70 * 50 hex map with terrain and army units so simple 2D graphics are more than sufficient.

My initial thought is for the GM to run it on his computer as a PBEM game, but I am open to suggestions.

I have a file of a Delphi program that we started work on. Not sure what is there, or if it can be read, or works, but it might give some indication. At the moment, it won't upload so I'll try later.

Peter

G'day,

Ok. Here it is. If you run WinBoP.exe, it will crash, but you should get some idea of what we were doing before we stopped.

I can understand reservations about running an exe, I am hesitant too, but it was created in 2000 on a non-internet machine, and I am as sure as can be that it doesn't contain anything malicious.

Peter

Wouldn't the program be the GM?

I understand the need for a human GM to work the program and send data when the players don't have PCs and/or a good network connection.
Players couldn't get all data with PBM if you want to maintain fog of war.

But with PBEM they can just save the game at the end of the turn and mail the other guy a file that he can load in his copy of the program.
He wouldn't need to read the file to setup the game as that is done by the program.
If you don't trust the other side then you could even encrypt it.

I see no reason for a human GM unless you want to use some special rules that the computer can't handle well.

G'ay Jeroen,

Yes, the computer is the GM, but when I was PBEMing, I had to load the files in before the game would run. Actually, it was all batch file work, but I needed to be here.

BoP is a 20 player game so you would need a central computer.

Peter

I dont understand how this game would work, but this sounds like an easy program to make and if you contact me on a messenger. i might just make this program.

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