Another piece in the TOCS-MASL infrastructure is the ability to map battles that occur on the TOCS map into MASL scenarios, and then to map the scenario combat results back into the TOCS game system. Part of this infrastructure was to create the metadata descriptions of the available scenario boards, so that the Board Generation Code could dynamically select as series of scenario boards that best represent the TOCS map hex artwork. There are a couple ways that we can implement this code logic, the first would be a simple table lookup based on terrain types to find a list of scenario boards that fit the hex description. The second way would be a ‘best fit’ algorithm that compares the board metadata against the map metadata for the best match (or are most like) the TOCS map metadata. This is more complex to implement, but in the long run is probably worth the effort. For now the simple method is quicker and pragmatic solution.

I just finished categorizing 180 scenario boards into their metadata definitions using an ordered list of terrain types, where the most dominant scenario board terrain features appear first to the left in the list and the least dominant terrain features appear to the right in the list. This might not have been needed, but it would allow the TOCS hex panels to be drawn using multiple terrain types within a hex panel, such as a village in the woods on a hill. This metadata supports several board types, such as (a) standard boards, (b) double-wide board pairs, and (c) double-wide half boards including pairs when they exist.

The takeaway is that the metadata needed to map the TOCS battles to scenario board sets is completed, which was just one more piece of the infrastructure needed to make the TOCS-MASL system workable.