Turn Summary/Game Log

[bloodybucket]

Is it in the realm of possibility for a log of events to be generated?

I've seen some requests for viewable turn replays, but what I have in mind is a text summary of battles fought, moves made, arrivals and events. The game does this for each turn, and it would be great if this could be saved as a file. If this file could include the details of each battle fought, that would be even better.

I'm sure that the community would soon produce ways to export this data to various number crunching programs, where they could be converted to charts and and graphs. It would also be very useful as a bare bones summary of events for AARs.

The game is epic, and each game seems to have a story to tell. It would be great if there was a tool to help the players tell it!

[Pocus]

This is a good suggestion and I noted it in my book, but you have to know that I note more things that I can possibly do... so don't hold your breath

[jimkehn]

Bloodybucket,
Not sure if you are familiar or old enough to remember, but years ago a big thing (before internet and email) there was a whole industry out there called PBM...Play by Mail (I called it Pay by Mail). These were games designed to be multi-player in which you paid a fee to play the game, usually per turn. One of my favorite games was called Hyborian War...based on the age of Conan. In that game, the battles were described in verbose detail, with lines of battle drawn out in text form, but you could see in those lines which types of units were where. But the battles were described in a cool way. Like reading a battle from Killer Angels, maybe not quite that detailed. I thought I had a sample printout of one of my old battles that I could scan in and let everyone view it. It would have provided something to look at by way of example, but they all got thrown away. I got on the internet and the company is still in business with some links to private websites, but I couldn't find any sample turn results. You can find the website here

[bloodybucket]

I'm old enough to remember looking up results in the stock market to serve as random numbers for PBM wargames.... apy:

I do remember seeing ads for that Hyborian War game in The General, or was it Strategy & Tactics? I never played it, but I grasp what your driving at in how reading a summary of game events can bring the game to life. Sports games can be pretty good at this, since the stats they spit out can be translated in to reports that mimic actual box scores almost exactly.

I think a box score of an AACW campaign game would be interesting, but I wouldn't be surprised if players fleshed it out in various ways. Besides, it would give me a chance to relive my glory days as a PowerPoint Ranger!

[Jagger]

I'm old enough to remember looking up results in the stock market to serve as random numbers for PBM wargames.... apy:

I bet you walked seven miles to school everyday, knee deep in snow and even worse, uphill both ways. People were tough back in those days, not like these kids of today with their new fangled computer boxes ...

Seriously, I remember the stock market for random numbers too...

[jimkehn]

Yeah.......we used to hafta get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the TV.

[Wilhammer]

"Yeah.......we used to hafta get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the TV"


Ahhh, fond memories of ME being my Dad's remote control...thank goodness they had only 5 channels back then...

[Wardyr]

Is there a battle summary in the game? One that I can pull up and see what battles were fought, who won, and what were both sides casualties. If not that would be a neat thing to add.

[bloodybucket]

I think that's what I was after. In the "Mailbox" on the game screen you get a overview of the turn, stuff like "On day two, the Army of Sandfleasia arrived at Boondocks, VA", "Gen Inertia issued conflicting orders and his command remained in a defensive posture", "[color="Red"]On day thirteen, the Union won a victory at at Futuretouristrap, PA. 1 national morale point gained[/color]" and when you click on the red text, the battle summary box pops up with all the icons and butcher's bill.

What I'd like to see (Dreaming mode) is a file generated each turn that listed the date instead of "day two", and gathered the data from the from the linked pop up boxes, so the player could later string together a narrative of a game. (/Dreaming mode)

(Extreme dreaming mode) It would be great if the data was presented in a form that would be fairly easy to import in to a spread sheet, so the player could then compute total casualties, elements captured, casualties caused by Grant's commands, Leader who surrender the most elements, etc.(/Extreme Dreaming Mode)

(Nirvana Mode) An automatic screen shot would give a picture of the overall situation, and these could be combined in .gif that could show the ebb and flow of the war in animated form, or the individual shots could be used along with the narrative as snapshots of the situation. (/Nirvana Mode)

[mike1962]

(Extreme dreaming mode) It would be great if the data was presented in a form that would be fairly easy to import in to a spread sheet, so the player could then compute total casualties, elements captured, casualties caused by Grant's commands, Leader who surrender the most elements, etc.(/Extreme Dreaming Mode)

Now that would be great. Would really top off an already awesome game!

[FatalMad]

Put me down as someone who would like to see this added also. It would give the game a really nice glow. I think it would be neat to look back at the history of the war that I just fought and briefly relive the decisive and surprising moments of it.