Subject: Proposal - current discussion topic

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Tue, 16 May 2000 09:36:20 +1000

People,

Following on from my general conversation in other mails, I suggest that we
start a current discussion topic - a sort of focus for our ministrations on
the ruleset.

I'm going to suggest we start by considering how Actions are organised.

For instance, I like the table in 1.7.2, where each action is listed with
its 'arguments', costs and benefits, timing, duration, and relevant rule.
I'd love to code more information in here, but the big question is how much
can you put in without either making it incomprehensible or, even worse, out
of date. The Fosdyke Requirements, in particular, are not guaranteed to be
correct.

But to approach the problem from another angle, I think that a lot of the
confusion is that there's no real standard way to phrase Action rules. IMO
they need a sort of header, similar to the columns in the 1.7.2 table, and
then the rule description. This too needs to be more consistent, so that
one Rule doesn't say "This Action allows a Special Move to <Station>" and
another says "After performing this Action, the Piece now exists at
<Station>."

In part, we've gone some way to doing this - standardising things like
Special Moves, Pieces, and other terminology. However, I still think that
the wording of Actions needs to be standardised in some useful way. This
would allow people to skim rules much more quickly to find the one that they
wanted.

What do other people think?

Paul Wayper -- DPI IS&S ITO Computer Systems Officer
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