welcome to the online gaming Section of The Craftworld where our dedicated members come together for a fun game or two, and even place bets on the outcome. (this is jsut a compilation of all the other gaming threads put together for easier readings, if you have any suggestions feel free to post them below but remember only rules in this top post are official)

unlike other games of 40k, online gaming takes place online... usually over MSN Messenger, with a map made in excel and 2 players. Whilst it is possible to play with more than 2 people, the game will take far longer than the already lengthy 2 player game.

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How To Set Up The Map
this is an important step as it will play a large part of you game, when playing it is important to remember that its all in the name of fun, so dont get heated up over close calls with LoS or anything else like that.

Open Excel, if you dont have excel its probally worth installing of the Microsoft Office CD. With Excel open go across the top until you reach column AZ then go down to row 48 and create a grid (using the borders button) you want the one that looks like a window

then select rows 1 though to 48 nad right click select row height and set it to 43, this should make everything look like square blocks (48x48 well i think its actually 48x46)

afterwards set the ground to whater colour you want (a darker green works best (not to dark though) then you set a lighter green for cover (counts at 5+ cover size 3 terrain) and some darker green (impassible, blocks line of sight for everything (including skimmers)

each square is counted as a 1x1" square moving diagonally every 2 squares count as 3"

then send your map to the opponent and make sure they are happy with it, then roll for table edges, if you want you could both deploy at the same time (you stay within your 12" zone and just place everything then one person sends their map to the other who combines it with theirs and send it back, if either of you have infiltrators then once the map has been sent back deploy your infiltrators then again send it back, ifou both have infiltrators just roll of then send the map back and foward until everything is placed

to reperesent you models get an approx size (vehicles are rounded down and place a F in the front square of it so you opponenet knows what way it s facing) eg an eldar guardiang would take up 1 square wheras an avatar would take up a 2x2, necron destroyers would take up a 3x2 a vyper would be 3x1 and so on and so foward or alternativtly you can create small icons to reperesent you models, this is probally a good ide in the long run, but make sure they are clear and you can tell squads apart from one another, it also removes the hassle of having to re-colour the squares that you models were in,

Now this is a lot of work but once youve done it once or twice everything should be rather simple when creating another map. just remember where terrain is when you move models over it (a subtle colour change works well)

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Things that make the game run slighty smoother

NO template weapons, it just makes the game too fidgety, sure you could probally get a way with 1 or 2 blast/ ordanace weapons but just get a reasonable number because most people dont spread out their unit as much as they would in an actuall game because they are limited to their squares, so none is the best bet as it stops arguements before they begin

HONESTY, this is what makes the game possible, the game is for fun its not serious and the world wont end if you dont win (usually, there may be occasional games where if you lose the world might explode but these cases are rare) so just be honestand youll find its more fun, sure you may loose but at leasst your not cheating, you wouldnt cheat if the person was there so just because they cant see your rolls doesnt mean you can cheat.

MOVEMENT is a a tad dodgy but you get a rough idea and thats all that matters

TIME, the game may take a while (my current ggame were up to turn 4 and its been almost 5 days, but thats just because we were both on msn for a while, other games may take a while.

RULES, well rules are simple, play it just like you would any other game and enjoy the added dimension brought to game play by the large amounts of time you get to think about you opponenets and your own moves,

BETTING, ok to give people plenty of time to make bets please PM either myself or Euleze so we can create a thread for you battle so members can place their bets, and try to avoid telling people what is happening in your game so they can place more credits

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Betting

To make the Online Gaming community here on The Craftoworld more interesting Euleze has introduced Betting, and has quoted,

the rules for betting are reasonably simple,

every member who wishes to compete in online gaming is given 100 credits, with theese credits you may place bets on the games, there is a minimum bet of 20 credits and you may take a loan from the "Bank" if you run out although you will need to pay the credits back later.

now this is how online gaming works.
lets say Euleze and Calaith are having a game, the two players can make a wager on who will win, (this is independant of other bets) so the 2 players each bet 40 credits if Calaith wins he will get all 80 credits and vice versa if Euleze wins,
for players who are not involven in the game. If i bet 40 on Calaith to win and Arrowen bet 40 on Euleze and Brak'hir put 20 on Euleze, if Cal Won he would get 10 credits for winning +80 from the bets +5% of the bets placed againt him (without taking away from the actuall pool) and i would get all 60 credits bet by Arrowen And brak'hir, aswell as 150% of my bet (60 credits) (if you dont understand its ok because ill be doing most of the distributing of credits) but if Euleze won he would get 10 credits for winning +80 credits from their bet and 5% of what i bet on cal ( a whole 2 credits) now since Arrowen put more on euleze than Brak, its only fair that she gets a larget split. so she would claim 30 of my credits aswell as 150% of what she bet (60 credits) and brak would only get 10 of my credits +150% of what he bet (30 credits) in case of a draw, everyone gets what they bet back and the players get 5 credits each

now to keep the board clean i will create an individual board for each game and bets will be placed in there, at games end the participants will post who won, and i will lock the topic, sort out the bets and then after a week ill delete the post (the 1 week delay is for people to see the result)

when we get more members it will be possible for us to hold online tournaments with the winner getting a credit bonus and the all important bragging rights of being the online champion

well if you have any suggestions feel free to suggest them but remeber, only rules added into this top post are official (or any other official rules post that is made)

ok i have prepared an example map (feel free to use it just remember to change over where necessary

ok if you still feel like you dont quite get the whole idea (understandable its not finished yet) feel free to contact, one of the Staff, for a small 500point intro game (unofficial so no betting)

more updates on actual game play to come

ok heres a small sample of example movement

hi folks

just thought i'd drop in and see what was going on around this place...

Liking the idea of 40k online, nice to see that it doesn't require loads of software for a change.

Anyway main thing i was going to ask, do you mind me taking this away and defiling it a little? I have some ideas which might work pretty well, how to integrate ordnance etc, and also how to make sure theres no cheating (yeah, i know, baby sitting)

Good idea though, definately a solid basis

-wD

just thought i'd let everyone know, i've got a very VERY ropey beta of the kind of thing i was talking about. Basically it'll replace msn in the equation, much lighter, and only does what you want. So far its got a built in dice roller (that broadcasts to both players), chat (similar to msn) and a dedicated file transfer.

Brief details of what i'm doing / what i'm planning:

Chat feature currently only works between 2 people, am trying to work out how to allow "conferencing" now, so you can have spectators and so forth.

File transfer is a little rigid i.e. it will only transfer from a file called "C:/Basic.xls" to a file on the target machine called "C:/Basic.xls". This is my main priority, as its a bit of a pain in the neck at the moment. I'm also looking into adding support to automatically open the file once its recieved, but i haven't worked that out yet ^.^

At the moment its also purely IP based, unfortunately i can't make it any other way without having a central server (like msn). I may look into this in the future as it'll be minimal overhead, could host it on a home computer easily, but for if nobodies using it, theres no point.

Anyway, if you think of anything worth having, let me know, and i'll see what i can do

(I need someone to help me test this, i've tested it locally but over the net could be a different story, any volunteers, grab me on msn / pm)

-wD

just thought i would let you know devilfish that we have way to put ordance
and stuff just talk to meaphet

ah thats cool

am just chatting with calaith on the subject now, using the program... which seems to be working. Needs a bit of tinkering, but its certainly better than most beta's i've made in the past

-wD

=P i do have a way of using ordnace but its still rather fidgety, next time your on msn ill have to have a look at what youve done