@Edward, You are the designer on this site who pushes the envelope the most where the use of factories is concerned.  There are others who use factories for the occasional gimmick here or there, like a simple clock for instance, but I don't know of anyone else out there that has maps with thousands of factories which act on each other to create movement, etc.. The exception may be Risky's newest addition, which I haven't played yet...and there may be a few others, but by and large..

I think most of the designers who incorporate factories in their maps use them in a more straight ahead fashion.  I.e., we use them at face value.  My point is - Although we often agree on a number of proposed features and our goals are similar, the paths we envision to those goals are different.

I'm not looking for features that enable programming capabilities by manipulating factories.  I find it truly amazing that you have figured out how to do some of the things that you have done with them, precisely because they're not in the context of the factories originally intended purposes.

I think that, for the sake of newer designers, newer designer features should be powerful and game-changing, yes ..but functionally simple and accessible, not just by designers, but players as well.

For example, with my New Earth map..  Ownership of coastal waters puts bonus units on their corresponding adjacent land territories - pretty much the definition of what a factory does - ownership of A puts a unit on B.

Conversely, many of the things that you have accomplished with factories, (like the scoreboard in Pong) I would only put on a board if there was a basic designer feature that made it simple to understand and implement, like a 'Scoreboard' feature/widget.

I'm not putting all this out as an argument, but rather as a seed for discussion regarding what people think the site should look like on the designer side moving forward.

Moving to the topic of general discussion.  My wishlist:

#1) Fix native player history.

#2) Add per-territory minimums.

#3) Add token territories or random capitals.

Those last two I think are fairly straightforward (at least to understand), and would allow 'off board' territories and also would be useful to the general developer population.

I can't remember if this is true or not, but I think I'm the one who proposed factories in the first place, and I only sort of knew what I was getting myself into.  And to be fair, there is plenty I can still do with what we have, I'm sure.  I actually made "Of Kings and Men" because I wanted to show that "I can do that too."  Then it became my most popular map... somehow.  

I just know what is possible with what we have already, and I can make some really incredible things with what we have... it's just really close to being able to do it without spending hundreds of hours to get it working.  I can also make things that are rather intuitive to people, they just take so many continents.  I did not intend to spark this debate when I proposed the Territory Class idea, I just wanted something that would make what we have easier to use.  

I am a game designer in real life, this is what I do, and this is a place where I can do it without relying of programmers.  The art I can do, the design I can do, the programming I can do... here.  As a game designer, an idea like "Can only control 1 territory on the board" is basic.  Here is takes a silly amount of work to make that happen, so to make it easier I tried to propose a way to make any function that says "any territory on the board" a one-step process, instead of an n-step process, where n is the number of territories on the board.  Especially when you have to repeat that per player.  

As much as I would love a workshop of tools, I don't really need it.  I understand that I'm not the only one who has requests for features, and that nothing implemented on a site like this is easy, but there's a suggestion box, and I figured I'd insert a suggestion that would allow me to make what I want to make.  Currently it's not worth it to me, and if it's not worth it to tom, then I just won't make it.  

I was assuming (as dangerous as I know that to be) that it would not be incredibly difficult to update the code to allow a variable that represents each "tid" in a particular group, so that I can make one continent that functions as 500, since the tool I want to use currently requires 500 continents.  As soon as I have that many continents, I can only work in XML, and it is very easy to lose your place.  Partially because if I import and export the board, the XML document can sometimes be completely rearranged.  So I keep a main document, then cut pieces from the export, then import the main document, and repeat.

I am really not entirely concerned about whether it happens or not, but it does heavily impact what I produce on this site.  More so that anything right now.  I've slowly compiled a list of tools that I can use with factories since they came out.  I started to make probably 10 maps with them, and can't finish any of them.  I think I even have to start from scratch on Mario Kart (erasing 5K continents) because the XML document is so long, that it takes me 30 minutes to find an error.

I may not be a high priority, and this may not be wanted by too many designers, but I am confident that I can show you that this is a worthwhile update.

Edward Nygma wrote:

I can't remember if this is true or not, but I think I'm the one who proposed factories in the first place, and I only sort of knew what I was getting myself into. 

I remember the origin of factories as more of a group effort.. there were a number of considerations that morphed the concept to its current state.

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1401p1

..but we are hi-jacking this thread..

More OT in my mind is the idea of something larger than the current piecemeal approach to strengthening the designer.. Engine/Engine sounds wonderful but as btilly has noted, it is fraught with complexity and security issues.  Widgets, or miniature engines could be powerful but limited in scope.  In some ways my idea of a widget is nothing more than an additional designer tab for board conditions, victory conditions, etc..

Likely we are stuck with the status quo, which really isn't all that bad because tom is meticulous and his implementation is thorough and consistent.

Certainly, the existence of factories is one of the jewels in the WarGear crown. Many things have been tweaked to make them the powerful features they are. No doubt, there are even a few more (relatively) simple tweaks we can suggest that will even further enhance their utility. I don't doubt yours is a great idea, but I feel strongly that its implementation be accessible to designer dilettantes like myself.

I've done some dabbling with xml files to fix errors, or change things that I couldn't get to in the designer etc., but I barely know what I'm doing, and I can imagine how there are a lot of potential map makers out there who are be intimidated enough by the depth and complexity of the designer in its current state.

M57 wrote:

I've done some dabbling with xml files to fix errors, or change things that I couldn't get to in the designer etc., but I barely know what I'm doing, and I can imagine how there are a lot of potential map makers out there who are be intimidated enough by the depth and complexity of the designer in its current state.

So... because you don't think people understand how to work it, you don't think we should improve upon the format to make it more usable?

Ozyman wrote:

Moving to the topic of general discussion.  My wishlist:

#1) Fix native player history.

#2) Add per-territory minimums.

#3) Add token territories or random capitals.

 

Those last two I think are fairly straightforward (at least to understand), and would allow 'off board' territories and also would be useful to the general developer population.

I'm not sure how #2 would work in the case where the minimum is bigger than 3 and you are being whittled down.  Also what happens if the minimum is 5, and I am a would-be attacker with 4 troops.  Am I allowed to attack?

But I would like to add factory production caps.  That is, the factory shuts off when the target territory is past the cap.  (For positive factories, that is a maximum, for negative factories, that is a minimum.  This would let M57 create "regrowing neutral barriers".)

I was just thinking of minimum of 0 or 1.  Right now you can set the minimum to zero or one, but it affects the entire board (i.e. the abandon rules).  Lots of the neat stuff you can do with factories requires abandon on (i.e. minimum  = 0), but most boards play better with minimum=1 (i.e. no abandon).   It would be better if you could abandon some territories and not others.  The reason I like the two rule changes I suggested is that I think they are fairly straightforward extensions to existing rules.

>factory production caps

Yeah, I like this idea also.  I think some way to change behavior based upon how many units are in a territory would be very helpful.   Maybe a more general way to do this would be to define a range of unit counts where the factory would be applied.  For example, I'd like to say "You need to have 10 screws to build a spaceship."   Right now you have to create 10 screw territories, and have the player put 1 in each territory.  If I could say, "This factory only triggers if there are at least 10 units in it, it would be a lot cleaner'

Edward Nygma wrote:

M57 wrote:

I've done some dabbling with xml files to fix errors, or change things that I couldn't get to in the designer etc., but I barely know what I'm doing, and I can imagine how there are a lot of potential map makers out there who are be intimidated enough by the depth and complexity of the designer in its current state.

So... because you don't think people understand how to work it, you don't think we should improve upon the format to make it more usable?

Basically, yes.  Certainly not at the expense of making the designer itself more usable/flexible.  By 'expense', I'm talking about Tom's time.

That Tom even made the xml files available to designers is somewhat amazing to me.  Every time I open one up to fix something, I feel like I'm treading on sacred ground, and might irreversibly break something.

Is it out of the question to ask if the things you want (classes of territories/continents) could somehow be directly incorporated into the designer?  If so, then I'm all for it, because everybody wins. I and other Joe six-pack designers could play with them in the designer, while you and the advanced crew could uber-code on the quantum edge. Believe me, I make big boards too, with lots of groups of territories/continents that I would like to easily connect to other groups of territories, etc.

1. Forced Abandon (I think it was called something else when suggested earlier).

2. I'm all for per-territory minimums if it includes 0 and 1.

I vote against mins > 1 if they make tom work too much.  I'm thinking a per-territory abandon ON/OFF switch would be clearer and cleaner in the designer.

3. Factory Production min/max/caps

Ozyman wrote:

Moving to the topic of general discussion.  My wishlist:

#1) Fix native player history.

#2) Add per-territory minimums.

#3) Add token territories or random capitals.

 

Those last two I think are fairly straightforward (at least to understand), and would allow 'off board' territories and also would be useful to the general developer population.

+1 for Token territories

I desperately need token territories to finish my first board and also to create my second board which is already seeded in my mind.  I know that this has been on cram's list before and now I see Ozy's as well.  So, it seems like perhaps a simple modification that could bring many new boards to the forefront.  win-win.

berickf wrote:

+1 for Token territories

..and already included in the modeling language.  ;)

@tom, I don't remember if this was included in victory conditions.. but the ability to set a single territory as a Victory condition would be nice (I guess it would be a Territory Attribute in the Set-up.) - The whole point being to get rid of the handshake round.

From there, Factories could be used to create a host of win scenarios..

M57 wrote:

@tom, I don't remember if this was included in victory conditions.. but the ability to set a single territory as a Victory condition would be nice (I guess it would be a Territory Attribute in the Set-up.) - The whole point being to get rid of the handshake round.

From there, Factories could be used to create a host of win scenarios..

The territory would necessarily be assigned as Neutral, and though I suppose it could be attackable for the win, I'm thinking most designers would treat it as a factory and point continents at it. So the territory should be normal in all other respects - Max unit count, etc.