Difference between revisions of "User talk:Rich/18xx Play By Email"

Revision as of 06:15, 2 September 2020

Introduction

This page was created to more fully discuss tools and other resources, developed by the gaming community, that can be used to support 18xx Play by Email games.
The tools are used either alone or in combination with other resources (for example: spreadsheets (see below)) to support game play from remote sites.
Some of the tools discussed below can be used for other gaming purposes (EG: live play) or can be used for non 18xx games. But the thrust of this discussion is 18xx Play by Email games.

Play By Email Tools

This section lists and briefly discusses seven currently active tools that meet the above criteria.

18xx.games

BOARD18

BOARD18 WIKI

CyberBoard

On of the earliest tools that was used to play 18xx by Email is CyberBoard.

CyberBard was developed in the late 1990's by Dale Larson "to simplify a PBEM game I was playing" ^[1]. CyberBoard origionally ran as a Windows 3.1 application.
It has no internet capabilities and is totally dependent on the attachment of large files to emails.

CyberBoard supports mostly military war games ^[2] but it can also be used for 18xx games ^[3].

Despite the fact that now there are much better tools for 18xx PBEM available; CyberBoard is still in active use today.

The oficial CyberBoard web site is at cyberboard.brainiac.com.

rails

rails home page

RR18xx

The RR18xx web site does not seem to be active at the time of this writing. There is a single page at www.rr18xx.com.

The above page has a link labeled "Registered Rail Barons only!". This link activates a sign in popup that contains no way to register for a user ID.

The author, not being a "Registered Rail Baron", has not gotten past this point.

Tabletop Simulator

Tabletop Simulator uses the STEAM engine.

Tabletop Simulator is the only one of these tools that has its own Wikipedia article.
This article can be consulted for more information.

VASSAL

Vassal^[4] is a game engine for building and playing online board games. Vassal can be used in real time or by email.
Vassal runs on most platforms, it is open-source software. The Vassal game engine was originally designed by Rodney Kinney.
It is documented on the VASSAL open-source boardgame engine web site. But there is no direct mention of 18xx games at this web site.
The 18xx game modules for VASSAL are listed at and can be downloaded from this 18xx VASSAL WIKI page.

References

[1] ttps://cyberboard.brainiac.com/descript.html

[2] ttp://www.limeyyankgames.co.uk/cyberboard

[3] ttps://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/66146/18xx-games-cyberboard-gameboxes

[4] www.vassalengine.org/about.php

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[2]

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 == Introduction ==
-The term 18xx is used to describe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game board games] that are based on the railroad development that occured mostly during the 19th century.
+This page was created to more fully discuss tools and other resources, developed by the gaming community, that can be used to support 18xx [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game Play by Email] games.<br>
-These board games are described more fully on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18XX this Wikipedia page].
+The tools are used either alone or in combination with other resources (for example: spreadsheets (see below)) to support game play from remote sites. <br>
-This page was created to more fully discuss tools, developed by the gaming community, that can be used to support 18xx [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-by-mail_game Play by Email] games.
-These tools are used either alone or in combination with other tools (for example: spreadsheets) to support game play from remote sites.
 Some of the tools discussed below can be used for other gaming purposes (EG: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotseat_%28multiplayer_mode%29 live play]) or can be used for non 18xx games.
 But the thrust of this discussion is 18xx Play by Email games.