[OLPC-Games] Treenimation: help wanted

[Mike Hahn]

Hi Edward,

Thank you for your prompt reply to my posting.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: games-bounces at lists.laptop.org 
> [mailto:games-bounces at lists.laptop.org] On Behalf Of Edward Cherlin
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 12:46 PM
> To: Games for the OLPC
> Cc: baypiggies at python.org
> Subject: Re: [OLPC-Games] Treenimation: help wanted
> 
> Copied to Bay Area Python Interest group. I'll talk to the 
> Hip-Hop Chess Federation, too, and to people I know in the 
> game industry.

Thanks for offering to spread the word about Treenimation, and for helping
me find a partner/collaborator. I appreciate it.
 
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Mike Hahn 
> <mike at treenimation.net> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> >  As a newcomer to the Linux/Python world, I am seeking to 
> team up with 
> > an  experienced Python programmer, preferably someone who knows 
> > Pygame. If  you're interested, please visit 
> > http://www.treenimation.net and click on  Help Wanted (under 
> > Miscellaneous). Treenimation is a software tool enabling  you to 
> > create multiplayer board games, features a built-in 
> scripting  language called Treescript, and runs on both 
> Windows and Linux platforms.
> >
> >  Regards,
> >  Mike Hahn
> 
> The home page says , "Treenimation Builder (which is not yet
> implemented) runs on both Windows and Linux." There seems to 
> be a problem with that statement.

I agree that I should probably reword that; it's a little awkward. Also I
should probably not call it Treenimation Builder (a leftover from the Delphi
era) anymore: just Treenimation will do.
 
> The gamedemos page says, "All of the games except Scramble 
> and Bridge Deluxe demonstrate the user interface of a 
> minimally coded (or completely codeless) Treenimation board 
> game. There is little or no move validation (checking for 
> illegal moves), no playing against the computer, and of 
> course these demos are not web-enabled (single computer 
> only). Both the Scramble and Bridge Deluxe demos have move 
> validation but no playing against the computer."
> 
> What would it take to implement collaboration in the Sugar 
> manner, so that two or more XO users can play a game 
> together, with any number of observers?

That's the whole point of Treenimation, to allow multiple users, each user
on her/his own computer, to play board games with each other. The game demos
are just canned demos, written in Delphi, that illustrate sample user
interfaces (and they're all single-user).
 
> I would like to see implementations of African board games 
> such as owari and mlabalaba, Chinese/Korean/Japanese flower 
> card (hanafuda) games, and many others. There are lots of 
> good ideas on the Games page in the Wiki.

Prior to when the time comes for me to specify in detail the design specs of
the reusable board game components (such as Board-grid, a class for grids
such as a chess or Go board), I intend to research all the different board
configurations out there. The existing grid classes: Board-grid, Table-grid,
and Hex-grid, ought to handle most cases, one would think.

> Is it possible in Treenimation and Treescript to implement 
> the Superko rule in some versions of go/weiqi/baduk, which 
> forbids repetition of an earlier board position? Can we 
> create a UI that allows the user to choose from the various 
> rule options? Can Treenimation track previous positions in 
> chess, to implement the three repetitions rule for claiming a 
> draw? Or the rule against castling if either the King or the 
> Rook has previously moved?

When using Treenimation to implement games with non-trivial rules, such as
game-position-repetition-detection, or the castling rule you mentioned, at
least a small amount of Treescript (or Python) code must be written by the
game designer. For instance, the repetition-detection feature utilizes a
custom game-state class, specific to a particular board game (such as
chess). Once such a class is created by the game designer, it is fairly
trivial to write code to compare 2 objects of that class, in order to detect
repetition.

As for creating a UI to select from various rule options, it's also fairly
trivial to create dialog boxes using the Treenimation board layout editor.
But to enforce those different rules requires writing Treescript or Python
code.
 
> Chess with move validation would be perfect for kriegspiel. 
> This is chess where the players see only their own pieces 
> (fog of war), and have to locate enemy pieces by attempting 
> illegal moves. People don't play kriegspiel over the board 
> much, partly because it requires a referee.
> 
> --
> Edward Cherlin
> End Poverty at a Profit by teaching children business 
> http://www.EarthTreasury.org/ "The best way to predict the 
> future is to invent it."--Alan Kay 

Regards,
Mike Hahn
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