The factories feature has allowed a new form of gameplay that is unique/distinct from Simulgear and Turn-based.  "Game action" is able to happen both before and after a player's turn and enables new strategies.

Specifically, I'm thinking of Edward Nygma's "Pong."

Discuss :)

~ATH

I'm still a little confused as to how the timing on the factory mechanic works -- not sure I understand exactly when the checks take place and territories change hands. Is there a good explanation of that somewhere? If not, first order of business might be a Help tab page.

Kjeld wrote:

I'm still a little confused as to how the timing on the factory mechanic works -- not sure I understand exactly when the checks take place and territories change hands. Is there a good explanation of that somewhere? If not, first order of business might be a Help tab page.

I'm in the same boat, and I haven't taken the time to truly understand it all yet, which I haven't even begun a Help page (other than thinking it would be good to have :P).  I'd be up for tossing a new Barren/Factory Help page together if someone wrote the content :D.  Otherwise it will probably be a while before I get to understand it enough to put a Help together.

I would love to help write this, but I am not sure I will have the time to do a good job for a while.  If I find time, I will write something up and send it to you or post it in the forums.

Here's a summary of the workflow. Firstly, factory bonus assignments happen before the player's turn actually starts inside the function which works out how many bonus units they get (due to continents / number of territories occupied).

1. Loop through all continents

For each continent check to see whether the player owns the continent.

If the player owns the continent, check to see whether this continent has a factory. If it does, add it to the list of factory bonuses.

Now check to see if the player owns the factory territory, if they don't and auto-assign factories rule is set to on then add this territory to the list of territories to auto-assign to the player. 

If continent does not have a factory then add the continent bonus to the player's reserves.

2. Loop through list of territories to auto-assign to the player

Update ownership of territory

Check to see if this results in an elimination of a player by capturing their final capital, if so process capital elimination

Check to see whether this resulted in the player being eliminated

3. Loop through the list of factory bonuses

Check the bonus will not exceed territory maxes / mins and apply change to board state

Check for abandonment of territory (if this was a negative factory) and abandon is on

Check to see if this abandonment resulted in the player being eliminated

Check to see if this abandonment resulted in a player's last capital being destroyed

The F/B features were not orginally conceived to support the kind of functionality that Ed was able to wrestle out of them. I see a number of "gameplay features" in Ed's Pong as a curiosity, and I believe there are very few designers who would take the time to create such elaborate and complex mechanisms out of Factories, though I could be wrong, especially if there are more designers who can quickly edit xml (of which I am not one).

As far as the development of a different engine is concerned, everyone here knows that I would like to see a game that plays on existing boards that enables players to play in as close to real-tima as possible - basically a Lightning Engine, and I have proposed a way to do this.  I do not think the site is ready to support yet another engine that would essentially require a completely new set of boards. 

But your post did remind me an idea that I had when I was play-testing Pong with Ed a few weeks ago. I dismissed it out of hand at the time, but perhaps there may be an interest.  The idea:

Board Widgets

Consider that instead of Ed having to create a scoreboard from scratch, there could be a "Score Widget."

Designers would simply designate areas on their boards for widgets. Unlike the Player Color Area on WG boards (which I always thought was a nice feature), Board Widgets would have functionality; they could be tied to victory conditions, or make local or global changes to board conditions (think dice-mods, disable/enable borders).  They could affect all players, or individual players. On the front end, they could be tied to things like factories, cards, unit count, even luck stats. I haven't given it that much thought, but I'm sure folks could come up with interesting ideas.

In order to let designers retain the graphic integrity of their boards as much as possible, most widgets would simply be text and color fill, and the designer would have a number of fonts and sizes to chose from.

The nice thing about this idea is that it is completely scalable on top of the two existing engines.  For instance, Tom could code a Score Widget and be done if no one comes up with any other ideas.  Different widgets could be created to enhance different engines.

Thanks for the recap, Tom, that's very helpful. Now we just need Nygma to write up a few examples of this logic in action from his designs, and we should be set ;)

M57 wrote:

The F/B features were not orginally conceived to support the kind of functionality that Ed was able to wrestle out of them. I see a number of "gameplay features" in Ed's Pong as a curiosity, and I believe there are very few designers who would take the time to create such elaborate and complex mechanisms out of Factories, though I could be wrong, especially if there are more designers who can quickly edit xml (of which I am not one).

As far as the development of a different engine is concerned, everyone here knows that I would like to see a game that plays on existing boards that enables players to play in as close to real-tima as possible - basically a Lightning Engine, and I have proposed a way to do this.  I do not think the site is ready to support yet another engine that would essentially require a completely new set of boards. 

But your post did remind me an idea that I had when I was play-testing Pong with Ed a few weeks ago. I dismissed it out of hand at the time, but perhaps there may be an interest.  The idea:

Board Widgets

Consider that instead of Ed having to create a scoreboard from scratch, there could be a "Score Widget."

Designers would simply designate areas on their boards for widgets. Unlike the Player Color Area on WG boards (which I always thought was a nice feature), Board Widgets would have functionality; they could be tied to victory conditions, or make local or global changes to board conditions (think dice-mods, disable/enable borders).  They could affect all players, or individual players. On the front end, they could be tied to things like factories, cards, unit count, even luck stats. I haven't given it that much thought, but I'm sure folks could come up with interesting ideas.

In order to let designers retain the graphic integrity of their boards as much as possible, most widgets would simply be text and color fill, and the designer would have a number of fonts and sizes to chose from.

The nice thing about this idea is that it is completely scalable on top of the two existing engines.  For instance, Tom could code a Score Widget and be done if no one comes up with any other ideas.  Different widgets could be created to enhance different engines.

+1!  Like this idea a lot...especially if it means designers will have an easier time incorporating cool features like the scoreboard.

Interesting idea - how would you drive what appeared in the widget? Would it just be a counter of various things like # units owned, # continents owned etc?

tom wrote:

Interesting idea - how would you drive what appeared in the widget? Would it just be a counter of various things like # units owned, # continents owned etc?

Well, this would be what would be up for discussion.  The idea itself is scalable, so It might be interesting to start with a widget that just counts just what you mention, units or continents owned ..with the option of tying it to a victory condition.  For instance, on a board with 9 continents a designer could set victory conditions to something like 6+ continents owned.  

I'm thinking about execution from the designer's perspective.  I'm sure there are different ways to make this happen and I don't know how hard they are to code, and there are other things I'm unclear about and/or have put little or no thought into..

Should the widget area include the image, or might there be a button in the designer that uploads separate widget images?

How do widget sizes account for different numbers of players?  Remember how on WG you had to make room for 9 or 12 or whatever number of players even if only 2 were playing?  It would be nice if the widget could somehow auto-scale.

Depending on how widgets get implemented, I have some pretty wild ideas about how they could be used, but before I throw yet another one of my elaborate hair-brained schemes out there, I'm curious to find out how others interpret this idea.

M57 wrote:

tom wrote:

Interesting idea - how would you drive what appeared in the widget? Would it just be a counter of various things like # units owned, # continents owned etc?

Well, this would be what would be up for discussion.  The idea itself is scalable, so It might be interesting to start with a widget that just counts just what you mention, units or continents owned ..with the option of tying it to a victory condition.  For instance, on a board with 9 continents a designer could set victory conditions to something like 6+ continents owned.  

I'm thinking about execution from the designer's perspective.  I'm sure there are different ways to make this happen and I don't know how hard they are to code, and there are other things I'm unclear about and/or have put little or no thought into..

Should the widget area include the image, or might there be a button in the designer that uploads separate widget images?

How do widget sizes account for different numbers of players?  Remember how on WG you had to make room for 9 or 12 or whatever number of players even if only 2 were playing?  It would be nice if the widget could somehow auto-scale.

Depending on how widgets get implemented, I have some pretty wild ideas about how they could be used, but before I throw yet another one of my elaborate hair-brained schemes out there, I'm curious to find out how others interpret this idea.

Think this is a great idea worthy of its own thread...M shall you do the honors?

My first vote for implementing a widget would be to incorporate it into Wargear Warfare and each player gets a secret "mission." An easy example would be to eliminate a specific player (a.k.a. Assassin-Gear :) )

The widget could just keep track if that player is still in the game and, if not, provide the victory to whomever had that secret mission.

New thread has been started for the widget discussion:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1744/To_Widget_or_not_to_Widget

Yertle wrote:

Kjeld wrote:

I'm still a little confused as to how the timing on the factory mechanic works -- not sure I understand exactly when the checks take place and territories change hands. Is there a good explanation of that somewhere? If not, first order of business might be a Help tab page.

I'm in the same boat, and I haven't taken the time to truly understand it all yet, which I haven't even begun a Help page (other than thinking it would be good to have :P).  I'd be up for tossing a new Barren/Factory Help page together if someone wrote the content :D.  Otherwise it will probably be a while before I get to understand it enough to put a Help together.

How pong works...

I essentially took the factory system and made it work like a programming language...  It checks to see what you have (continent), and then at the beginning of your turn (just like a continent) it automatically places and removes units (+1 and -1 bonuses automatically placed).  

So, I limited the option of the player to control the paddle which can be though of like a D-Pad.  The continents check to see which paddle you have, and where your ball is (since I've only allowed you to have 1 paddle and 1 ball) then, at the beginning of your turn, it puts a -1 in the ball (rendering it 0 and neutral) and a +1 in the new ball location (based on the paddle direction) auto-capturing it for you.

The whole system is based on IF player has this paddle and that ball THEN take that ball and get rid of the previous, simulating the motion of the ball.

Timers:

Factories allow for a timer to be created.  If you trigger the timer to start (own a factory that produces 1 in the timer stretch) then each turn it checks what territories you have (continents).  If you have 0 on the timer, then autocapture 1.  If you have 0 and 1, autocapture 2.  If you have 0,1 and 2, autocapture 3.  If you have 3, then.... do whatever you want.  You've just created a timer that waits 3 turns to cause an action.  This works for king of the hill...  If you hold the hill for 5 turns, you win... so make a 5 turn timer, then if you have the turn 5 marker, then auto capture your opponent's capital... game over.

Reset:

In pong, there is a reset function.  I set a -1 factory for every territory the ball can reach into the reset location, as well as a constant +1 factory in the same location.  If you have a ball, then you get a -1 and a +1 resulting in nothing...  If you don't have a ball, you don't get the -1, just the +1 and the ball resets in the proper location.  I'm working on a mortal combat map, where if you knock your opponent off the board, then it resets you on the board, but removes a section of your health bar, similar to the pong scoring system.

Scoreboard:

The score board is a system that if you have the SCORE territory, then it checks (multiple continents) to see if you have a number on the board (or a few territories unique to the series that makes up that number's shape).  If you have a 1 and the score territory, it removes 1's and adds 1's to change the shape into a 2, then removes the unit in the score territory, as well as resets your ball, since there's none on the board.

Anything else?

That's exactly what I was asking for, thanks Nygma!

For sure, hope it helps!