Wartbed:Design

Overview

At its highest level and end goal WARTBED is a meta-engine for tactical wargaming. More precisely, though, WARTBED is a framework to automate a number of tasks related to this:

• 3D graphic of contemporary standards (implemented through the OGRE middleware)
• Input bindings and input handling (where raw input hardware is accessed through the OIS middleware)
• Flexible camera handling suitable for a wide spectrum of strategy game styles
• A GUI system (currently implemented through the CEGUI middleware)
• Human-readable data file parsing
• Audio layer (as of yet unimplemented)
• Scripting language support (as of yet unimplemented)
• Network support (not yet implemented)

Remaining design decisions

• How game modules (Bright Portents etc) should be implemented:
  • First option: As internal parts of WARTBED framework itself.
  • Second option: Modules are stand-alone applications using WARTBED as a library modules will use.
  • Third option: Modules will be fully implemented in script languages using the WARTBED framework.

"Regimental tactical warfare"

What being a framework for implementing tactical regimental warfare games more specifically means is providing a number of standard formats (and data converter to these formats):

• A unit and regiment ability and statistics set capable of accurately represent most games, periods and battle types.
• A regiment representation system capable of handling several individual units organised into formations (which can consist of other regiments), and formatted movement (manoeuvres) of these.
• Battle arena (battlefield) description
• Campaign definition and flow handling
• Unit and regiment ordering system
• Suitable and flexible AI

Design principles

WARTBED is being designed according to a set of principles and assumptions.

Dependencies

External and third party dependencies are being avoided. Nonetheless, some aspects of a modern game system are impractical or impossible to produce in-house. For such, open-source, free-licensed (Free or LGPL, but not GLP), well tested, stable and actively maintained solutions are acceptable.

Strictness of MVC organisation

See Architecture/Model-View-Controller

WARTBED strictly separates the game rules and logic (the model) from the session and player management (the controller) and the visual and auditory representation of the game universe (the view). This is emphasises by the client/server architecture used where even local games are clients that connects to a local server, where the clients are strict views removed from any direct model access, and the server is the controller dispatching all communications between player input and underlying game data.

Strictly speaking, WARTBED employs a two-tier controller architecture, where client is a controller with a view module and the server is a controller with a model module, wherefore the two controllers communicate.

Coding standard

Though not religious on the topic WARTBED is coded according to a set code style which is an adaptation of the Allman style.

Strict client/server game architecture

{placeholder text ...}
WARTBED intended to be strictly client server to the extent that even single player games entail the game being a front-end to a local server.

Pros:

• item

Cons:

• Item

{...placeholder text}

Graphics specification

Further information: Wartbed:Design/Map_format

• The base measurement unit is 1 meter. All 3D graphics are designed with 1 unit == 1 meter.