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MWIF External dice roller support would make life easier for PBEM players really speed up game play.

If MWIF could make external http calls to external APIs it would be quite nice.

Not all external Dice rolls support Query string arguments or has APIs, but if they do it could be easy to set it up.

MWIF Need to know
* which player controlls each major Power nations and the email adress for that player,
* the URL to the External dice roller
* how to translate to External dice rollers query string arguments and press submit
* how to make short descriptions about the email subject from the current combat situation.

Here is a example of a External Dice roller https call https://www.rpglibrary.org/software/securedice/?dq=1&ds=10&dt=1&to=Dummy@hotmail.com&sub=DiceTest Replace the dummy email adress if you want to test.

Would it be hard to code?

New menu to the PBEM settings

PBEM Settings Window example




Here is a example of a External Dice roller https call https://www.rpglibrary.org/software/securedice/?dq=1&ds=10&dt=1&to=Dummy@hotmail.com&sub=DiceTest Replace the dummy email adress if you want to test.

Use of External Dice roller in land combat example

Do you need the external die roller if MWIF emails everybody the result. Based on this input it has the emails.

Pat

Allies and Axis wish to play a board game over e-mail. They need to find a way to roll the dice in a way that will not let them cheat.

Using MWIF as dice roller and sending the result with e-mail has problems.

For example:
* Internet connection might go down preventing the email.
* E-mail program might fail.

In both cases above could the player use the above to cheat, redoing the combat until the "right" result is generated.


What is a good algorithm to use? If one wanted to creat a MWIF dice roller with no cheating

This could be seen as classic problem in cryptography.

One such simple paper describing the problem is : Coin Flipping by Telephone. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/coin/

The algorithm can become somthing like:

Axis picks a random number R and the value 0 <= Vb <= 5, Calculates a hash H=crypto_hash("Vb R"), and sends it to Allies
Allies picks the value 0 <= Va <= 5, and sends it to Axis
Axis sends Vb and R to Allies; Axis calculates V=(Va+Vb)%6+1
Allies verifies H=crypto_hash("Vb R"); Allies calculates V=(Va+Vb)%6+1

... Although I would feel better about it if:
0. Allies picks a random number Q and sends it to Axis

And the string to be hashed becomes then "Vb Q R".

BUT the above need the players to be online at the same time or it takes time waiting for the values.


So a third party online dice roller is often a quick, good and secure way to do it. Cheating option is out.

I agree, we use Slack to dice rolls because MWIF have more extrems results, 1 to 3& 7 to 0.

With Slack the final results are 50% of total points.

ORIGINAL: peskpesk

MWIF External dice roller support would make life easier for PBEM players really speed up game play.

If MWIF could make external http calls to external APIs it would be quite nice.

Not all external Dice rolls support Query string arguments or has APIs, but if they do it could be easy to set it up.

MWIF Need to know
* which player controlls each major Power nations and the email adress for that player,
* the URL to the External dice roller
* how to translate to External dice rollers query string arguments and press submit
* how to make short descriptions about the email subject from the current combat situation.

Here is a example of a External Dice roller https call https://www.rpglibrary.org/software/securedice/?dq=1&ds=10&dt=1&to=Dummy@hotmail.com&sub=DiceTest Replace the dummy email adress if you want to test.

Would it be hard to code?

Yes, it would be difficult to code.

While the vanilla case doesn't look too hard, there are a lot of possible deviations from your expectations.

Say the external die roller changes. The program would either have to replace the die roller with a new one, or enable players to do so.

The internet is shaky at times. Relying on it in the middle of an air-to-air combat or an extensive naval combat could be fatal to game play.

Requiring the players to 'wait' until the die roller returns the result via their email could slow down the game quite a bit. One of my opponents has his email account on a separate computer from MWIF and he has to go over to that computer whenever email communications are necessary (with NetPlay that isn't a concern).

I am very dubious of bringing in outside software and relying on it as part of playing MWIF. Using outside providers also make me nervous. Even with Matrix/Slitherine providing a dedicated server for NetPlay required a lot of communication and joint development. It took over 6 months to get working smoothly and there are still blips in performance from time to time as changes are made at the server end.