Play By Post Gaming Core

[Carnage]

What does this do?
On its own this mod does NOTHING. It provides the Admin CP interface and common code for Play by post games.

What can I use it for?
There are two reasons why you might want to isntall this mod. The first and most common is that you wish to install one or more Play by post games for your forums. The second is that you want to develop your own play by post game.

What exactly IS play by post gaming/games?
The idea of a play by post game is that it is a game played by one or more of your forum members within a thread of your forum. A player makes a move by making a post containing the details of the move that they wish to make. As an example, take the chess plugin; this allows two members to play a game of chess beween them, each player in turn posts the piece they wish to move and where they want it to move to. The thread output gets turned into a chess board so that other members can see the game.

Features

Admin CP interface to configure games.
Admin CP interface to configure stats from games.
Allows assigning of games to forums.
When posting a new thread, members can pick between avaliable games to play.


Installation
1. Upload contents of upload folder.
2. Import product.
3. Find, download and install at least one PBPG compatible game.
4. Configure game and assign it to at least 1 forum.
5. I recomend turning off bbcode, smilies, images and post count in the forums you assign games to.

Uninstallation
1. Edit any forum with a configuration assigned; remove all the configurations.
2. Use the clear threads option (beta 2+) against each configuration to remove the config from threads. (the threads will revert to being normal forum threads)
3. Delete all configurations.
4. Uninstall all pbpg plugins.
5. Uninstall this product.

Changelog

4.0-0.1 b4

Added statistics management tool. Any plugins which provide statistics can be managed by this tool, mapping stats into user profile fields.
Added some admin help to some areas; some work still needed.
Added comms support. This includes the basic tools for plugins to communicate with each other and store state.

4.0-0.1 b3

Added install lib to simplify and unifiy plugin install code.

4.0-0.1 b2

Changed select box to checkboxes for enabling plugins.
Added clear threads option to configuration to remove it from any threads its enabled on.
Product drops its own tables on uninstall.

4.0-0.1 b1

Fixed bug with javascript in IE.

4.0-0.1 a3

Added safety check to delete configuration. You can no longer delete a configuration thats in use.
Added a common directory for scripts and images common to one or more pbp game.
Fixed a bug that occured in threads that go beyond a single page when you are not viewing the last page.

4.0-0.1 a2

Added ability to delete configurations
Phrased admin cp elements. (if anyone notices any missing let me know)
Cleaned up install code
Added uninstall code to revert changes to vbulletin tables only
Added redirect/error messages

4.0-0.1 a1

Initial release



Notes

YOU MUST INSTALL AT LEAST ONE GAME FOR THIS MOD TO WORK. Games are posted in separate threads; I'll use the first post to keep a list of all the games that are avaliable.
If you intend to develop your own game, the API isn't finished or fixed yet, so hold fire for a while :) I'll also be putting some docs into the thread to assist with this.
Contents of ref folder in the zip are for referance, they list uploaded files and the database changes made in case you want to remove the mod.
Install lib file has been moved; some older versions of plugins may fail to find it, if this is the case update to the latest version of the plugin.

[Carnage]

List of (and links to) Free PBP games

Chess (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=232923)
Tournaments and Ladders (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=234160) (I know its not exactly a game but still...)
Checkers (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=253247)

List of (and links to) Commercial PBP games
-None-

Games in planning/development stages

Othelo/Reversi
Go
Backgammon
...


Poker is also in my to do list, but its somewhat more tricky to implement (the number of different types + rules played makes it complex to start with, not to mention the fact that it can have many players in a game) so is currently last.

[simunaqv]

Looks very interesting. I will try it out once compatible games are available for it.
You might consider converting coroner's (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/member.php?u=240389) games to PBP games.

[togebi33]

demo?

[Carnage]

You can take a look at my vb4 public dev board; vb4.giveupalready.com (chess forum) Thats one of the games that this mod supports; I'll be releasing that in a few hours once i've got the critical bugs out :)

[Hornstar]

Yeah I might tag this to see what games come out in the near future. looks interesting tho. thanks.

[Carnage]

I just released a chess mod; not sure what else i'll release, but i'm hoping other developers will release some games as well, at least once i've got some docs for the code written up :)

I also want to write a leagues and torunaments addon for this. (At the moment its a case of soooo much coding soooo little time :p)

[Hornstar]

yeah I know how you feel ^^ Thanks for the Chess release.

What kind of games do you think developers will be able to make for this kind of platform?

[Carnage]

Pretty much any game which is turn based will work on this platform; chess is one example, poker is another. If someone had the time and desire, they could even code up something huge and massive along the lines of the space empires series. My personal list of games i'd like to create when i've got time is:

Chess (done but needs more features adding)
Checkers (pretty much the same code so seems silly not to add)
Poker (may take quite a while as poker is a fairly complex game)
Something based off my sites RP system, however this may remain private, depending on if I can release the RP system or not... (its based off the rpg integration hack released here for vb2, heavilly modified by sucessive generations of coders on my site)

[Carnage]

Released updated version. Not a critical update it just cleans up various areas (phrases, deleting, redirect messages, install/uninstall code)

[Carnage]

Another update. This one is required by [pbpg] chess beta 2 and upwards and by [pbpg] tournaments and ladders alpha 1 and upwards.

This also is tagged with an alpha tag, however meets my criteria for a beta release, it is tagged as such as the version number was assigned before It met these criteria.

As already hinted at above, I will soon be releasing a tournaments and ladders plugin for pbpg gaming. This is currently a stand alone mod ideal for running any kind of tournament not just tournaments for pbpg games. I expect this to be avaliable tommorow at the latest after some further testing/code refinements.

[Veer]

Sounds interesting.

Will you please show some screen shots and demo?

[Carnage]

screenshots and demo are tricky for this as its essentially a framework which other mods use; without one or more installed, you get an admincp menu item.

For the add-ons however, the next thing on my to-do list is providing screenshots. (I relised a couple of hours ago that none of my vb4 mods have any :s) You can see a demo of the various mods (Ive currently got all of them installed) on my dev board http://vb4.giveupalready.com

[Veer]

Thank you and good luck :)

I will test it and than will install on live soon.

[Carnage]

Added some screenshots - the configuration page is from the chess plugin, as currently its the only one that supplies custom admin options.

[Carnage]

Updated to beta 1.

This version fixes some javascript issues in ie and chrome. It will also be required by the next releases of the game plugins.

[Veer]

thanks for the update.

[starman?]

This looks great. I think more than a couple of members will enjoy the Chess. I'll install it over the weekend. Thanks for all the hard work.

[TimberFloorAu]

Do you have actual screenshots of the chess game ?

[TimberFloorAu]

How do you disable a forum after you enabled it ?

Chess images not showing:
Fix edit plugin.php
line 169
$img="<img src=\"/forum/pbpg_plugins/chess/images/$cell.gif\" />";

[Carnage]

you can ctrl+click to disable the last config enabled on a forum

[Carnage]

Made a few changes to make it easier to remove unwanted pbpg plugins.

- Checkboxes instead of multi select field in forum manager
- Clear threads option to reset threads to normal threads
- Changed error when deleting a configuration to assist with where it needs to be removed from. (forums or threads)

[PGAmerica]

I would like to see an addon that adds an RPG to the system. Like a Dungeons and Dragons game or something of that nature. How easy is it to create a game for this?

[Carnage]

Writing a dungeons and dragons mod would take a long time. D&D is also very copywrited so i'd not be able to release a direct copy.

My 3.8 forum uses a rpg mod based on the 3.0 rpg integration hack; I'm considering creating something based around that as an addon but thats not likely to happen for some time.

I've uploaded a skeleton plugin file. Things you need to do:

1. rename the directory they are in to your plugin name eg rpgsystem
2. open the two files and change the classnames to match the directory name eg rpgsystemPlugin and rpgsystemAdmin
3. insert a db row into pbpg_plugins containing rpgsystem as the dir and a friendly name for title eg RPG System.
4. Create a new product to go with the plugin for the purpose of holding templates phrases etc

The admin file is fairly simple to understand, I suggest you just take a look at one of my mods for how to make that work.

The plugin file contains three functions:

A constructor which is passed in the config settings saved by the admin. The default constructor will work but you may want to set defaults for values that haven't been set and setup the state of the game (eg the chess mod initiallises the board with the pieces in their starting places)

A public function parsePost it takes one argument the post array as fetched by vbulletin from the db, its called once for each post in the thread. It should essentially behaive as a state machine, changing the object state based on the contents of the post; you can again look at my mods on for examples of how I do this.

An output function, this function is called at the end of processing and its return value is used to replace the postbits part of a thread display. (this means you don't need to worry about navbar, footer etc) I used a template based on the postbit template for my UI's but this is totally upto you. If instead you want to stick a flash video in there showing the two combattants mauling each other, thats upto you.

I am tidying up the interfaces so the above information may change in a next release; the only change i'm considering at the moment is adding an ajaxOutput function or a parameter to the output function for returning content for ajax display but there may be other things based on bugs that need changing.

[Jeremy8]

5. I recomend turning off bbcode, smilies, images and post count in the forums you assign games to.

Reason?

[Carnage]

post count is a simple one; playing a game of chess or similar requires in the order of 35 posts per player they may be made fairly rapidly over say half an hour, for any board that holds any value to the post count (eg usergroup promotions) will have things skewed by members playing lots of games.

bbcode, smilies and images aren't parsed by the comments display and may confuse the parsers in some of the games. The comments aren't supposed to be huge essays, a sentance or two perhaps but no more, bbcode and smilies aren't really required for them.

[Jeremy8]

do you have a live demo instead of just screenshots?

[Carnage]

you can take a look at vb4.giveupalready.com if you want a live demo this thread is a chess game http://vb4.giveupalready.com/forums/threads/67-chess-game?p=230#post230 bear in mind thou, this is my development area and there may be bugs and features in there that aren't in released versions as they are still under development.

[Jeremy8]

can you show an example of this? https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=234160

edit: nvm, i see it

[Vaupell]

well ive allready made a RPG core for vbulletin 4.0

dice roll, character creation, combat system with xp, level system and a PVE combat simulator,
next step is user vs user..

But this core would also be something interesting to incoorperate..

license info ?

[Carnage]

Beta 4 is /finally/ out.

Additions include support for stats from plugins and inter plugin communication.

Latest versions of chess and tournaments+ladders have been released; checkers is on its way once I've got some images done.

[starman?]

Good work man. Tagged.

[War.Frog]

I'm all over this once checkers is out. Looks fantastic.

[rob01]

is there any way, for implementing this to role play games??

[Carnage]

Yes, you would have to write your own plugin to parse the posts and output players statistics etc. It's on my list of plugins to write, however it's a LOT of work so it's likely to be a long while.

[Toorak Times]

Hi Carnage,

Love your work and want to implement it on my site, especially the Tournaments mod.



What I want to do is run LIVE Lawn Bowls tournament where entrant members enter the draw, entry fee of $30 - I have a sponsor www.kittychaser.com.au who will send energy your way $-), run over a couple of months where players can choose their own club to play at, or the major sponsor's home/sponsored club.

It has always been hard to fill real bowls tourneys because players have to turn up to a venue, somewhere in metropolitan Melbourne or up the bush, pay their fee and hang around for ages and, because like all sporting fields, only so many can be accommodated.

I believe your mod will revolutionise the way Australian clubs can produce live updates and all the other cool stuff contained in your mod.

Is there a scorecard, or did I miss it?

I would love to talk.

Mick

[flapjack]

Would be awesome to see this mod working with 4.2.0. I've tried both Chess and Checkers, and nothing seems to happen when you try to post any moves or set options. :(