Re: To all the PBM/PBEM'ers of the nation :-)

From: MindShift Design LLC <jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com>

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In article <3722e21a.6293483@news.uni-c.dk>,
  wicker@hotmail.com (The Wicker) wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I've been following this group for a while, and seen lots of different
> game posts. Medio Evo, Xpace, VGA Planets, Adventurer Kings, Atlantis
> and many others.
>
> I'm an GUI kind of guy. Ie. I like VGA Planets :-)
>
> Is it just me, or are games as VGA Planets a rarity on the net today.
> I've only seen a few other games where you have an interface for
> everything. Some PBM's have a turn viewer, but still needs the user to
> enter orders manually.

There are a lot of games that use GUIs, but functionality varies in a lot of
them. The way most games spit out data also determines if a GUI can be
developed effeciently for it. I don't doubt that almost every PBM/PBeM
comp-mod game could have a GUI, but it may not be the game developer's
intention to use one. Also it helps if the game itself has an export function
to export the raw game data in a format that allows a GUI to read in the data
from the data format given instead of parsing text files and removing
extraneous data to achieve the same result.

> Maybe i've been looking in the wrong places.
>
> If someone knows of other games with a complete GUI please let me
> know.

IIRC Swords of Pelarn has GUI. Also there's a GUI in development for Godfather
that I know of.

> PS: I've been pondering over the past few months about making my own
> PBM/PBEM. Over the years i've gathered programming experience with
> C/C++ and Delphi. It would be great to get started on my own, but hey,
> if someone out there would be interested in joining me, feel free to
> let me know.

Feel free to join the PBMDEV mailing list that we run at MindShift Design by
sending a message to PBMDEV@mindshiftdesign.com with the body message
"subscribe PBMDEV <EMAIL ADDRESS>" where <EMAIL ADDRESS> is the address you
want to subscribe from. You can also visit the PBM Game Design Community at
Dejanews (http://www.dejanews.com/~pbm_design) where other developers of a
like mind can talk and help each other out.

We use Delphi for our game development because of the Borland Database Engine
and the scalability aspect of client/server. On top of that Delphi gives us
the flexibility to "write once, deploy often" as a stand-alone product, an
ActiveX control, a CGI/ISAPI/NSAPI web program, or we can even convert our
code to Java through a 3rd party tool and generate Java applets, binaries or
executables all from the original Delphi source code. It's a good tool to
work with - very fast to develop with and very flexible allowing true
object-oriented development. I know that a lot of other developers use VB and
Access as well though.

> IF this project gets off the ground, I'd like to focus on the user. A
> good Interface is important (that's what I think anyway).

Focus on the game and then the user. No point in having a good user interface
and a game that doesn't meet the player's expectation (sound like any
traditional software Command & Conquer clones ?). The game is the important
thing, and the GUI is the user's interface and window to the world. I agree
it's important, but you it depends on which platform you are going to create
the GUI. Writing in in a native Windows format precludes Linzu and Mac users
(unless they run Linux and the WINE emulation package). Writing it in Java may
make it run slow on some machines. When developing your GUI, choose your
platform, language and layout carefully. There's nothing you can't do with web
pages today that is normally done in a GUI - it's just a little more work to
pull off.

--
Jason Paul McCartan - jasonm@mindshiftdesign.com
CEO
MindShift Design LLC Website - http://www.mindshiftdesign.com
	"Altering Perceptions, Creating Worlds"

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References

To all the PBM/PBEM'ers of the nation :-)
wicker@hotmail.com (The Wicker)
Sun, 25 Apr 1999 00:00:00 +0000