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Has anyone written a virtual BB board?

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:31 am
by mage75
I realise that there is FUMBBL and PBEM, but what I was wondering was whether anyone had written a virtual board that does not impose any rules or error checking on playing the game - much like just sitting at a table top.

My initial idea is that:
- logs would be kept of player movements
- dice rolls would be online/shared and logged
- comments types would be logged
- action types would be selected before selecting the player and logged
- nothing would be limited, so any ruleset could be used. If you have a special ability, you simply use it, and if it means that the opponent's player is removed from the pitch, you just take it off the "pitch" area and place it in the correct location.
- essentially just have a board that allows you to roll d6's, Block dice (you select how many) and track what happens - not enforcing rules
- Turns would be tracked, but again, not enforced, in case you have to deal with a riot etc - you do that manually. just like real life. Just move your turn counters back or forward as appropriate.
- a game should take the normal amount of time to play as per table top
- fundamentally it is just a graphical way of representing the miniatures and dice that we already use in real life, but you can play it with friends overseas instead.
- team maintenance is being ignored - this is just for single game play.
- any player type could be defined and your own pictures could be included to represent them.


So now I have 2 questions:

1) Is there something out there already that pretty much does this?

2) If there is not, would you be interested in using software like that?

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:51 am
by lucasluckydelux

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 1:01 am
by mage75
Sweet - thanks !! I'll try that out when I can get some time.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 9:07 am
by SillySod
If there isnt already something suitable out there then try out VASSAL.

VASSAL is ideal for building the very open and flexible approach to an online board game but is still powerful if you want to increase the level of automation and/or logging. If you want to build your own BB module then just use a suitable pitch image (I'd pinch a FUMBBL one) as the board, nab a load of GIF icons (again, stealing from FUMBBL is advised) for the pieces and add a few dice buttons and you're ready to roll, maybe within a few hours if you know what you're doing. Adding logging to the system is more in depth and will take you longer than a few hours but I believe it is possible.

Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 11:56 am
by mage75
Thanks SillySod, that looks mighty interesting!! I'll see what I can do with that one.

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 12:10 pm
by SillySod
No problem, I'm currently using it to build a Man O War platform.

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:25 pm
by BigD
The one of VasselEngine has been taken down. Apparently GW see it as a potential threat so have gone after everything and everybody on there who produced a module for any Games Workshop game. But people have downloaded it, all you have to do is ask ;-)

BigD