Re: What to do with Xconq

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Erik Jessen wrote:

> I'm a "hardcore" strategic game player.  Which means:
> - I play v. humans, not AI.  No AI has been good enough
> - I want an AI assistant to handle things I tell it to do (like telling a
> transport to
>     keep doing a load/move/unload/return until all the cargo at A is moved to B)
> - I play v. people across the planet (so I need pbem, not interactive network
> play)

Brent Allsop once hacked a pbem system into Xconq version 5, but I don't remember
if the code got merged in - certainly it's not in 7.x.  The basic theory is that
you play your part of the turn, save the game and mail it; the trick is to make
all this smooth.  Xconq infrastructure has the necessaries; turns can be made
sequential, intra-turn saves are possible, and there is some record of what
happened during a player's part of the turn.  I haven't pursued this because
I have zero experience with pbem.

> I look at it this way: the only sort of play-aide that has made it out there is
> Aide-de-Camp.
> If you get something that works as well as their setup & is free, you'll get lots
> of people
> using your system.

That's good to know - I looked at ADC a bit, but couldn't see what the big deal was...
But if the pbem system is worth mimicking, I'll look closer at it.

> Xconq is table-driven, I'm told (I've not really dug into the format, other than
> the tutorial with
> Godzilla).

Sort of - it's really a miniature data description language, but most of the
interesting data fits into tables conveniently.

> I'd like to recommend the following, to make it easier to generate games:
> - use a free spreadsheet program (Linux has one, doesn't it?) to write up the
> documentation
>     on units, and have a way to convert its spreadsheets into Xconq data files.
> This is the mantra of software design - have the spec. generate the software.

An interesting idea!  Hadn't thought of using a spreadsheet to write the docs.
The conversion should be easy, since the Xconq files are just text with parens
here and there... :-)

> I am willing to document games, if someone can recommend a relatively simple
> 'standard' combat
> game for me to start with (I'm not up to speed on the engine or how to read the
> tables).

Try "gazala".  It's closer to being finished than most, not too complicated,
and (IMHO) plays pretty well - neither side ever feels like it quite has a
hold on the situation, things can change in a hurry...

Stan