User`s Manual
Contents
1. The board contains a map and several units see figure 1 The player may see the properties of the units and control some of them Figure 1 A typical game board A typical game is a wargame The players control some number of military units that engage in combat against each other For a more thorough and general discussion of games and their properties see the related document GECCO General Description 1 1 2 Games As stated above GECCO is a platform for simulating games It is not itself a game To be able to play a game somebody has to implement a game for the platform and deliver it together with the rest of the platform It will be assumed that you have access to a game implementation 1 3 Requirements The game is written in Java It requires Java 2 runtime version 1 3 to run and should be runnable on any system that supports Java Since the game involves communication between computers the game also requires a TCP IP network it is usually enough to be connected to the internet or some intranet 2 Starting the game To start the game three things are needed the general server package the client package and a game implementation package Furthermore the game constructor usually supplies startup scripts that makes it easier to start the game The general server package contains the server components that are in com mon to all games It consists of a single Java Archive jar file named server jar The clie2. against what to perform the action and in such cases the mouse cursor will change to a crossbar It should be clear from the name of the action if the argument should be a point on the map or another unit 3 5 Ghost units When a unit disappears from your field of vision it is replaced by a semi transparent ghost unit see figure 6 The ghost units are used to mark places where a unit was last seen or places where a unit is believed to be Figure 6 A ghost unit You can put ghost units of your own on the map by right clicking where you want it when no unit is selected of course see sections 3 3 and 3 4 and selecting the type of ghost unit you want You can drag the ghost pieces with the mouse to place them where you think there are other units To remove a ghost unit select it and choose action Remove ghost see section 3 4 The ghost unit feature can be turned off by un checking Use ghost units in the Game menu References 1 Joel Brynielsson Henrik B rnhielm Andreas Enblom Jing Fu Zi Niklas Hallenfur Karl Hasselstr m Henrik H gerstr m Oskar Linde Klas Walle nius and Jon Aslund GECCO General Description Department of Numer ical Analysis and Computer Science Royal Institute of Technology Stock holm Sweden May 2001
3. Game Environment for Command and Control Operations GECCO User s Manual Joel Brynielsson Henrik Baarnhielm Andreas Enblom Jing Fu Zi Niklas Hallenfur Karl Hasselstrom Henrik H gerstr m Oskar Linde Klas Wallenius and Jon Aslund Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science Royal Institute of Technology SE 100 44 Stockholm Sweden gecco nada kth se May 14 2001 Contents 1 Introduction C1 Whatis GEC CO t a nd a ee a rae do 1 2 Games cita a Ls Oe ele ele o ee BS he Td Requirements A o 2 2 a Soke petite ce Oe e a eh ce 2 Starting the game 2 1 Installations irk a3 a fort es Ae A ee 2 2 Starting the server a ass s a goatee Sie we ee er 2 3 Starting the client o 3 Playing the game 3 1 Connecting to a game server sooo eee g2 The game board zaa A AS e a de Side MONS a oe hw ad de 4 BAA eS es 34 Controlling a unite d a s sd Ai oh eb e aca ta 3 5 Ghost nits aa AA a a a N NNYN www Aa NIN coo RR 1 Introduction 1 1 What is GECCO GECCO is a platform for simulating strategic games It consists of two parts the server and the client The server is a program running on some computer that simulates the entire game The client programs are used to control the actions of the game Every player starts a client on his her computer and the program contacts the server program The game board see section 3 2 is then presented to the player
4. ales Biia Teambeadar Blue Team Planer 2 Blus TeamPisvar i Red TemPisrer2 Figure 3 The role selection dialog Be aware of that it may take some time from the moment when the connec tion to the server is established to the moment when the role selection dialog shows up When the role has been selected the map of the game is loaded and you are ready to start playing To disconnect from the current game server choose Disconnect from the Game menu If you connect to a new game before having disconnected from the current game the connection to the current game will be disconnected 3 2 The game board The game board see figure 4 displays the map and the units of the game Typically large areas of the map will be darker than the rest This indicates that you currently can not see what is there because you have no units close enough If the map is too big to fit the board the scrollbars can be used to see different areas of the map You can use the zoom buttons to zoom in or out on the map If a unit is selected see section 3 3 the map will be zoomed in or out around it 3 3 Units To select a unit click on it A red rectangle around the unit will indicate that it is selected The unit info panel on the right will now contain information about the unit see figure 5 The information is e Name displayed on top of the panel e Type displayed under the name Properties like fuel or health Actions e M
5. e of the class to be executed is client Game On a UNIX system this would look like gt java classpath client jar client Game When the client has been started you are ready to connect to a game and start playing 3 Playing the game When playing a game you take control over some units moving and acting on a map Which units you control depends on what role you play The role also determines what part of the map that you can see and which units you can get information about In a typical wargame a role is something like Blue team player 1 and the role controls some number of units and can only see what is going on in areas close to those units 3 1 Connecting to a game server When the game is first started the game connection dialog pops up see figure 2 To bring up this dialog at another time choose Connect to game from the Game menu In the dialog type in the name of the host machine the machine where the server runs and the port at which the server has set up its communication see section 2 2 or try using port 7000 EE Hasan rp ata kL be Part Tona conc coment Figure 2 The game connection dialog When the connection has been established the opposite is stated by a mes sage on the screen the role selection dialogs pops up see figure 3 displaying the available roles Choose a role from the list by clicking on it and then clicking the Select button i Anv ndes p
6. essages Figure 5 The unit info panel It is however not necessary that there is information available on the unit since it may be a unit controlled by somebody else The actions are things that the unit is about to do The ongoing action is what the unit is currently doing and the actions in the list are what the unit will do later in order Red lines are drawn between the points where the actions will take place starting at the unit itself see figure 4 To stop some action from being executed select the action to stop and click the Stop selected actions button To stop the ongoing action click the stop button below it At some point of time some action may fail to be executed correctly like for example when a tank is trying to move across water and then every action in the list of the unit will be stopped automatically In section 3 4 it is described how to assign actions for a unit to do 3 4 Controlling a unit To control a unit means that you assign actions for it to do The actions will be executed in order and be displayed in the info panel as described above Some actions however are instantaneous and will be executed the moment you select them They will not appear in the list To assign an action to a unit first select the unit and then press the right mouse button somewhere on the map A list of available actions will appear When an action has been selected it will sometimes require an argument i e
7. nt package The client package contains the complete client program Again it consists of a single Java Archive file named client jar The game implementation package contains all the data specific to the game It usually has a number of image gif files a number of configu ration conf files and a Java Archive named something like game jar where game is the name of the game The game implementation should also include documentation about the game containing informa tion about how the game is started using the startup scripts described below The startup scripts are the only things of the system that are platform dependent and they are used to start the game For info about how to use these see the documentation of the game implementation 2 1 Installation The installation is really simple put all the files of the server client and game implementation packages along with the startup scripts in some folder 2 2 Starting the server To start the game use the information in the documentation of the game imple mentation and the supplied startup scripts for your platform Make sure you start the program from the folder where the game has been installed If there are no startup scripts the server has to be started manually us ing the Java interpreter program and the Java Archive files See the Java documentation for information about how to load jar files and starting Java programs The Java Archive jar files that
8. should be loaded are the game implementation Java Archive and server jar It is important that the game implementation archive is loaded first and that the folder where the game is installed is included in the classpath The name of the class to be executed is server startup StartServer On a UNIX system a manual start of the server would look something like gt java classpath game jar server jar server startup StartServer When the server is started several messages are printed to the screen and when the server is ready to receive connections from the client programs a message indicating that is displayed The network name of the machine where the server runs is necessary to know to be able to connect to the game see section 3 1 The server sets up its communication on some network port and it is also necessary to know that port number The information about port number should be stated in the game documentation and if it is not the port is probably 7000 The port number is also among the information displayed when the server starts up 2 3 Starting the client The client is started pretty much like the server using the documentation of the game implementation and the supplied startup scripts Again the game should be started from the folder where the game has been installed If no startup scripts are supplied a manual Java interpreter startup is neces sary see section 2 2 The necessary Java Archive is client jar and the nam
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