The Brick Mill Games Blog
One of the motivating factors behind the TOCS design and development was a litany of pet peeves that I had with other games that resulted in tactics that were either illogical or close to suicidal. In my opinion, when gaming the system becomes necessary to win, it cheapens the entire experience. Designing a game that…
Continue ReadingInitially the game system was called MASL, but after play testing the new CRT combat system we decided that the game was so much fun by itself that fighting the battles out as scenarios wasn’t mandatory. The decision to split the game rules into TOCS with a MASL rules addendum for WWII modules was the…
Continue ReadingI have been an avid war gamer since I was in the 8th grade and played many tactical, operational and strategic games of all sizes. I’d like to say that had the TOCS (Tactical Operations Command System) and MASL (Macro-ASL) system came during a flash of brilliance, it would be less than truthful. The design…
Continue ReadingWith the Dice Services migration complete and the Services/Crucible API protocol working nicely, it’s time to get back to work on the wargame desktop application, named Table (short for Game Table). Without going into a technical rant that I’ve been bothering my close friends and family with for the past 3-4 days, I hit a…
Continue ReadingThe date has finally arrived. Stay tuned. Update: The migration of the decades-old random number pipeline from Kenware to Brick Mill Games is now completed. The dice services at Kenware are now disabled.
Continue ReadingI added timeout handling to the dice services. So, if the network drops packets for some reason, a timeout handler will re-enable the roll submission button. Right now, the timeout is 10 seconds, which is an eternity when you’re on the Internet, but sometimes the server needs the time to handle your request. I still…
Continue ReadingI completed the initial unit testing and bootstrapping of the TOCS User database. My account, and Paul’s, are up and active. Among the various usual suspects in such a database, I added a roles field. This field will define certain roles within the TOCS system. By default, this field will be 0 for all users…
Continue ReadingAfter a solid week of hardcore wargaming at the ConsimWorld Expo, I’m back home working on Brick Mill Games projects. The less-than-optimal wifi experience at the Tempe Mission Palms hotel has impressed upon me the need to build in some network communication error handling code to the dice roller, and my other interactive projects as…
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