Rollcall for Mac OS X?

[Chris]

Hello there,
I stumbled across this page a couple of years ago, and have been using RollCall ever since.

I've got a Mac now and was wondering if there's been any progress recently on the Mac version?

[IBBoard]

It depends what toolkit support Mono provides for the Mac. There are version of Mono for the Mac, though, so theoretically the new WarFoundry app should work. If the Mac doesn't like the System.Windows.Forms GUI (Windows-based) or the GTK# (Linux-based) then the design should let you write a Mac-native GUI and keep the core app.

I've just repaired my wife's old iBook (it had a broken hinge) so hopefully I'll be able to test it out at some point. It's a few years old, though, so I don't know whether there will be versions of Mono for it or if they'll only build for later versions.

[Chris]

I could do well enough to follow the instruction on building adf files, but I don't know enough about programming to be sure what you mean by Mono and GUI. Is the WarFoundry app available for download anywhere? The screenshots that I saw looked great.

[IBBoard]

No, it's not available for download yet. There are still a few features I want to include at a minimum before I release it (and a reasonable amount of documentation so that people can actually use it and not be confused!)

Creating files will initially only need knowledge of how to write XML, which is just structured text with pointy brackets (< and >). I'll include instructions and examples and it should be more descriptive and useful than the old ADF files. I also eventually plan to create a file creator/modifier as well that helps people create files.

Mono is a framework that you can install on your computer. It lets you run .Net applications on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X without installing Microsoft's .Net framework (which you can't do on Linux and OS X and might not want to do on Windows).

GUI is a Graphical User Interface. It's what the screenshots are of. Like I said, I've separated it out so that all of the main operations are in a library and the interface can just be replaced on top of that without affecting anything. Even if you're not a programmer yourself then there will be someone out there who is and who wants to create the graphical interface for your operating system.

Unfortunately everything is being slowed down at the moment by the fact that I've moved house and so everything is still in boxes!

[IBBoard]

I've now got my wife's old iBook rebuilt and apparently it is running 10.3.9. That means it supports Mono and CocoaSharp so if I get the time and work out how then I could, at a push, also create a native Mac interface for the app.

[Kyderdog]

I've now got my wife's old iBook rebuilt and apparently it is running 10.3.9. That means it supports Mono and CocoaSharp so if I get the time and work out how then I could, at a push, also create a native Mac interface for the app.

I am a OS X user. What Can I do to help you.. I have some graphics experience and have done some GUI interfaces.

Also I have a couple of GUI ideas that will make your program leap frog even Army Builder... If you are interested.

Let me Know
Kyderdog

[IBBoard]

Once I get a solid and stable core back end that can be used on all platforms (because I've been re-writing it again! Curse this gaining experience to do things better ) then you'd be free to create your own GUI for it. In the mean time I'd recommend learning one of the .Net languages and how to create interfaces in CocoaSharp or some alternative .Net GUI toolkit.

As for interface ideas, please drop me a PM or email. I'm always interested in how to make the best interface (generally the most usable, but powerful is good as well as long as it is well executed) so I'd be interested to know what your ideas are.

[Kyderdog]

Heres the Idea I have for an interface for Warfoundry



What do you think?

[IBBoard]

That would be an interesting idea. You'd need some way to map the troops to the images, since it wouldn't be a standard part of the army file (not all interfaces will use images) but that should be possible via the IDs. The ratios as filled boxes is good and quickly readable as well

What is the difference with Troops 1, 2 and 3? Most of the armies I've seen work on categories. I guess Chaos and the like work on retinues, but I didn't think Dark Elves did.

One of the advantages of the way I'm writing the backend API is that it should be able to support this kind of interface as well as the "tree and MDI windows" for System.Windows.Forms and "tree and tabs" for GTK#. As long as you can get your interface to poke the right data to the right objects then all of the feedback comes as events and so multiple sections can be updated at once.

[exponent]

Hi guys,

Ive just stumbled across this page, and followed the links to WarFoundry. Im a professional software engineer and im currently developing a very similar thing to WarFoundry, currently working cross platform for windows and (my main platform) mac. Currently its very tied to 40K (as thats my main game) however, i coded it such that it should be easy to make a few simple changes and get it working for any game system (and hopefully avoid the wrath of the over zealous GW lawyers!). Originally i coded it just for me as there is nothing similar on mac (I used to use ArmyBuilder before i moved to mac), but i would be happy to share it with other people, once its finished!

Anyway, i just wanted to put it out there that i would be very happy to share what ive done with the WarFoundry devs, and if possible maybe pool our resources to build something for the community?
Im very in to open source (I have a full open source API available on my site that i coded called Inifnity) and also very in to wargaming - what better way to combine the two pursuits

If you wanna check out some of my stuff (code) please check my website:
http://www.expdigital.co.uk
Infinity is in the Developer section

All the best
Paul

[IBBoard]

One of the many joys of open source is that there's always someone else working on the same idea.

Interesting, but it sounds like it might still be something that would need compiling for different platforms. The advantage of WarFoundry is that the main library will run on any OS that has a .Net 2.0 compatible framework, and the GUIs will run on any OS that has that toolkit (e.g. a System.Windows.Forms front end, the Windows default, will run on Linux but look ugly, and GTK# will run on Windows but you'll need to add GTK# separately).

Getting additional developers to help would be good, but first I need a stable release. Also, it is definitely going to be a .Net app so anyone who helps would need to know a .Net language. That even includes VB.Net, even if I do think it is the son of the programming language of the devil!

Interesting licensing - a bit more stringent than open source (because you need to use the logo). I think that might put a lot of developers off. I'll happily credit a library, but I wouldn't want to have to put its logo in as well.

Also, as a Linux user, I object to:

All code 100% cross platform capable, supports Windows, Macintosh PPC and Macintosh Intel platforms

While it is better than the BBC's iPlayer, which was "Windows XP and Windows Vista", Mac and Windows aren't the only OS

[IBBoard]

Just as an update for anyone interested in the Mac version, and to Kyderdog if he is going to create the Mac GUI, I've just noticed that on the Mono Cocoa# page they're putting a big push in to updating Cocoa# and the website.

That means that there is now a new website with tutorials for Cocoa#, and hopefully it has a decent editor as well.

I've also now got my old iBook hooked up to the Net via my main computer, so I can test any Mac apps as well (as long as the Mono install I'm downloading is still compatible with 10.3.9 and they've not dropped support recently!)

[pchan3]

Hey, just checking out progress.

and wouldn't it be easier to have written it in java then you wouldnt need to worry about portability issues. coz java is on every platform. hell you could even put it on pdas.

[IBBoard]

Progress on the main WarFoundry core is on the WarFoundry progress page. Unfortunately the past week or more have been lost due to hard disk problems. There probably won't be much progress on the Mac OS X version because I've not released the API for Kyderdog and others to use yet.

With regards Java, from my point of view:

1. Java interfaces are damned ugly and don't integrate well with the desktop (unless you want to start bundling SWT)
2. Compiling Java down to a JAR file involves the many joys of explaining to people either a) how to run a Java app from the command line b) or getting them to set up an association with .jar files
3. People using Java may still have Microsoft's Java JVM, which may cause problems (any time I've had an app not run under Windows it has been because of the MS JVM)
4. .Net with System.Windows.Forms has no portability issues that I know of, it just doesn't look so pretty outside Windows.
5. Java is a "one language, one VM" system, where as when I get plugins set up in WarFoundry then I can write in C# and other people can write in any .Net language they wish. There's already the functionality to replace the "factory" that loads objects from files, so while the default will be XML there won't be a requirement to load XML files.
6. If you wrote it in Java then you could put it on PDAs if you wrote an alternate interface, since a standard app interface would be too big. Something similar should be possible with .Net as MS has the .Net Compact Framework for WinCE PDAs and there's probably a PDA version of Mono (there's mention here which seems to imply a standard install works fine).

If this is more of a "progress on WarFoundry" than "on OS X" then I'll break it out to another thread.

[Kyderdog]

Progress on the main WarFoundry core is on the ...
[*]If you wrote it in Java then you could put it on PDAs

Why use .net at all? if you have to run in a Funky language just to be crossplatform?

Also if it was written in Java it would run on the iPhone

BTW.. I am not a Programmer I am a Graphic Artist with GUI inter-Phase experience.