=============== OGRE/GEV list, July 18th (Last: July 16th) =============== ===== Would like to try GEV PBEM From: Bob Pariury ===== Computer OGRE From: garth.getgen@genie.com ===== Roll your own counters... From: Goldman of Chaos ===== Finger this. From: sirgray@clark.net ===== Main River Bridge at hex 2013 From: peletier@grolen.com ===== COMPUTER HEXMAPS FOR OGRE AND GEV From: David Paulowich ------------------------------ From: Bob Pariury To: hcobb@io.com Subject: Would like to try GEV PBEM Hi Henry, Do you have a list of people who I could contact to try playing GEV via PBEM? I'd like to try it out and see if I like it. Let me know. Thanks! - Bob ----- [http://www.nyx.net/~epass/pbemlist.html, while you're there, could you ask him to back-link me? -HJC] ------------------------------ From: garth.getgen@genie.com To: hcobb@IO.COM Subject: Computer OGRE Recently I mentioned the old computer game OMEGA during a live chat session and someone mentioned a new board game called RoboRally ... I got a chance to see that game (well, the outside of the box) and talk to someone that plays it, and it turned out to NOT be what I was thinking of. But it got me thinking: how about combining the concept from OMEGA with OGRE, whereby you have to "program" your Ogres on just how they will seek out enemy Ogres and destroy them??? Also, if anyone happens to have a copy of OMEGA (with the book!!) they're willing to part with, please E-mail me. In fact, I'd sorta like to see a Web game based on OMEGA -- you build and program your cybertank and let it go onto the battlefield, then you can watch on-line or log off and it will send you reports on its performance via E-mail. Now, if Steve Jackson Games could only get the copyrights to OMEGA .... Speaking of that, are there ANY plans at all to re-print the OGRE computer game or even come up with a G.E.V. computer game??? I have FRONTLINE which is supposed to be "close" but I'm not too sure it is. Of course, I haven't messed with it enough to find out ... never enough gaming hours in the day. Garth L. Getgen SSgt USAF ------------------------------ From: Goldman of Chaos Subject: Roll your own counters... To: hcobb@io.com (Henry J. Cobb) > From: garth.getgen@genie.com > It probably won't happen, but I'd like to see the Ogre/GEV counters scanned > in and posted on the Web page as a GIF file ... that way I could print out > as many as I need by running light card stock thru my inkjet printer. You could make your own counters. It isn't really hard to do. See for an example of some of the counters I've put together. At one time I made up a magnetic Ogre counter set. When I did that set, I enlarged the silhouettes by 200% made up new boxes (also at 200%) and then shrunk everything down to normal size. Then it was off to Kinkos to duplicate on any colors I wanted. Matthew Goldman E-mail: goldman@winternet.com Home: (612) 535-5220 Work: (612) 906-6008 Fax: (612) 906-6250 My day today? Nothing major, just Xenon base gone, Scorpio gone, Tarrant dead, Tarrant alive and then I found out Blake sold us out. ------------------------------ From: sirgray@clark.net To: "Henry J. Cobb" Subject: Finger this. > From: garth.getgen@genie.com > > Learn Web or die - http://www.io.com/sjgames/ - dinosaurs, Lego, Kahlua! > > The heck with PGP keys; finger for Geek Code. Fnord. > > OK. To learn, someone must teach me: what is "finger"?? I've seen that > five times in the past couple days now ... so I presume it's a Web term and > not an obscene gesture. Actually, it is a small utility first run on unix and VMS machines, now available for virtually all TCP/IP connections which allows you to "place your finger" on a person on another machine. It is a way of looking up a person remotely, but can be used for other less important purposes like displaying a short message. If anyone is interested, I have created a set of counters for the Aircraft rules posted on the Steve Jackson Ogre webpage. I believe I have them currently in Macintosh Canvas format. I have printed these out on card stock and they look pretty good, even if they are not really the same quality as the Ogre originals (they are a bit blocky looking). I haven;t tried the originals because they are probably copy righted and I didn;t want to get in trouble. But since the Aircraft and the Naval rules were never printed I have created a set of each. If anyone is interested I could re-format them in GIF or JPEG and send them to Mr. Cobb or Mr. Jackson for posting on the Official Web page. Scott ------------------------------ From: peletier@grolen.com To: hcobb@slip.net Subject: Main River Bridge at hex 2013 How does one destroy the Main River Bridge by using the 'destroy by being in the same hex' rule? We have just had a situation where a PanEuropean GEV was on the main span of the BIG River Bridge. A Combine GEV then apparently blew up the adjacent hex 2114, claiming the Main River Bridge and enemy GEV were destroyed. Some players say you can only blow the main river bridge by being on the main span, others say the main span or two adjacent hexes. Please let me know your thoughts on this since we are in the middle of an e mail game. peletier@busstop.com ps: the above Combine GEV was in hex 2114 ----- [Yes, an attack on ANY of the three hexes of this bridge will bring the entire span down. (I've always thought of it being like somebody cutting the cable attachments on either side of the golden gate bridge and having the entire thing snap over) -HJC] ------------------------------ To: hcobb@io.com From: David Paulowich Subject: COMPUTER HEXMAPS FOR OGRE AND GEV Fifteen years ago I was sitting in a Mathematics Department lounge with a GEV mapsheet - the one with smaller hexes put out by Metagaming - and informing a semi-interested audience that the slanted coordinate system of this map was ideally suited to computer play. It is too bad that Steve Jackson Games missed the opportunity to improve on this design by: (1) Giving line-of-sight enthusiasts a BIG BLACK DOT in the center of each hex between a pair of reasonably large map coordinate numbers, thus HEX 5050 would look like 50.50 (think of it as a decimal) (2) Adding 28.39 to each number on the old map, thus changing the WATER HEX 22.11 in the middle of the east mapside to a convenient 50.50 (3) Later releasing the SHOCKWAVE expansion kit with these coordinates extended to cover the popular case when the SHOCKWAVE west mapside is attached to the GEV east mapside. Thus S0112 would instead be 50.50 Now a determined gamer could attach two more mapsheets to the north edge of this pair and two more to the south edge - creating one giant map with the four corners only 44 hexes away from the central 50.50 hex. Also creating a tidy profit for a guy named Steve! Now every hex on the giant map can be assigned a unique number in the computer - in the case of the four additional mapsheets the computer would add a fixed correction number to the number printed on the mapsheet for data input and subtract the same correction number for data output. If some of these mapsheets were placed upside down, then it would be necessary to apply another correction formula. You may be wondering: What is a slanted coordinate system and how can a computer tell when that Howitzer is eight hexes away? Well, here is a little diagram (if the ASCII Gods don't intervene) 49.49 49.50 AND 50.49 50.50 50.51 AND 51.50 51.51 That was meant to represent a circle of seven hexes with 50.50 in the center. The two hexes 49.50 and 50.49 do NOT touch each other, the same holds for hexes 50.51 and 51.50 To shift a computer controlled OGRE one hex due south (towards the bottom of the map) just add 1.01 to the current HEX number. And so forth. Find the distance from HEX 16.15 to HEX 22.13 as follows: Let X equal INT(16.15) minus INT(22.13) = 16 - 22 = -6 Let Y equal (FRAC(16.15) minus FRAC(22.13)) times 100 so Y = (.15 - .13) * 100 = 2 Let D equal (ABS(X) plus ABS(X - Y) plus ABS(Y)) divided by 2. DISTANCE is D = (6 + 8 + 2)/2 = 16/2 = 8 hexes. Note that (X minus Y) equals -8, which yields an absolute value of 8, the number in the middle of the above calculation. Also note that credit should be given to Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) for starting this whole coordinate business. A copy of this letter is being sent to Peter S. Rabinowitz, who raised some questions on the Feb. 07, 1996 list. Imagine your computer generating a six-sided hexmap 99 hexes across. The central hex is number 5050 and you can travel 49 hexes in any direction, for a total of 1 + 3 * 49 * (49 + 1) = 7,351 hexes. Let the ASCII diagram below represent a portion of the computer hexmap with an OGRE on hex 1010 and craters on hexes 1110 and 1012. Note that the vertical scale is somewhat squashed. If, for example, you are playing the original OGRE game with a mapsheet in front of you - then the simple four character display below is adequate. No hexagons actually drawn. No rubble lines shown. Craters indicated by the code: XXXX. Make up some (short) unit names like 1INF, 2INF, 3INF, etc. and you could post a hexmap with fifteen columns to a newsgroup using sixty character lines. 0808 0809 0908 0810 0909 1008 0910 1009 0911 OGRE 1109 1011 XXXX XXXX 1111 1210 1112 1211 1212 These coordinates are taken from METAGAMING's 2nd edition of OGRE. This is a slanted coordinate system which allows the computer to calculate the distance between, for example, hex 1615 and hex 2213 as follows: First divide the hex numbers by 100. Let X equal INT(16.15) - INT(22.13) = 16 - 22 = -6 Let Y equal (FRAC(16.15) - FRAC(22.13)) * 100 = (.15 - .13) * 100 = 2 Let DISTANCE = (ABS(X) + ABS(X - Y) + ABS(Y)) / 2 Then DISTANCE = (6 + 8 + 2)/2 = 16/2 = 8 hexes. Note that (X - Y) equals -8, which yields an absolute value of 8, the number in the middle of the above calculation. Also note that credit should be given to Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) for starting this whole coordinate business. I don't program computers (or moderate PBEM games), I just give free advice to the dedicated people who do. Perhaps someone will put together a BASIC program to operate a single OGRE in SJ's classic game. Garth Getgen asks for a computer version of GEV in his July 16 post. Not likely in the near future - see the July 7 post by Steve Hodson for just one of many problems that can arise in programming terrain rules into the computer. Right now all I can offer is a computer hexmap combining the new GEV and SHOCKWAVE maps, on which the overlapping hexes G2312 and S0112 are now the central hex 5050. This is a side by side arrangement with the GEV map on the west (left) and the SHOCKWAVE map on the east (right). Note that G2212 and S0212 are 5051 and 5150 on this computer hexmap. Given a hex with map number "abcd" - we need four formulas for odd and even "b" on the two mapsheets. Your computer can run a check to see if the second digit "b" is odd or even, but it will probably resent you afterwards. In each of the four formulas we are multiplying an expression by 99 and then dividing by 2, resulting in a whole number. ODD:(1) Gabcd is: 5050 + (ab - 23)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 EVEN(2) Gabcd is: 5051 + (ab - 22)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 ODD:(3) Sabcd is: 5050 + (ab - 1)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 EVEN(4) Sabcd is: 5150 + (ab - 2)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 Things are beginning to turn ugly around here! My problem is the fact that the current Steve Jackson Games mapsheets follow the unfortunate industry standard coordinate system. To give an example: the new GEV map numbers the East edge from G2301 down to G2323. This is not at all like the old coordinate system (see the ASCII diagram again) on the 1980 edition of GEV, where the mapsheet can be converted to my proposed computer hexmap by simply adding 2839 to each hex number. Also the DISTANCE formula given earlier works for the old (METAGAMING) GEV mapsheet. If that is the only edition you own, however, then you cannot follow many of the scenarios being discussed on the WEB - which refer to the NEW EDITION mapsheets. To return to Steve Hodson's letter posted July 7th - he mentions movement along hexes G0406 and G0405 and G0505 ... bypassing G0404. On the 1980 mapsheet these become 0715 and 0614 and 0613 ... bypassing 0513. How many copies of the 1980 edition are still around? Fortunately we now have the means to provide a conversion formula from the NEW GEV to the OLD GEV: Looking at where the fold lines meet the East edges, we see that hex G2312 on the new map is 2211 on the old map. Also G2212 happens to be 2212 on the old map. To convert from the new map to the old, check the second digit "b" in the new map number Gabcd and apply the formula: ODD:(1) Gabcd becomes: 2211 + (ab - 23)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 EVEN(2) Gabcd becomes: 2212 + (ab - 22)*99/2 + (cd - 12)*101 One of the strengths of computers is their ability to provide automatic translation between different systems. A computer moderated Play By EMail game can handle players using different edition maps and store all their moves on one big map. For a really big map - a determined gamer could attach two more mapsheets to the north edge of the GEV and SHOCKWAVE side by side pair and two more to their south edge - creating one giant map with the four corners only 44 hexes away from the central 5050 hex. Now every hex on the giant map can be assigned a unique number in the computer - in the case of the four additional mapsheets the computer would use other numbers than the ones (5050, 5051, 5150) used in the four formulas earlier. Signing off now ... David Paulowich paulo@cdngateway.pe.ca CYBERTANK DIVISION FNORD MOTOR COMPANY ----- [Pity Steve isn't selling (http://www.io.com/sjgames/catalog0/) the game design book, The OGRE book, Gurps: Prisoner, Battlesuit or GEV anymore, because there was a nifty article about map layout there. -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1996, by Steve Jackson Games.