This is the second article in our series about creating play-by-mail games. These are games that are now played over the web (or by email), and we’ll be looking at various aspects of this, including user input, use of JSON, clans, and free versus paid games.
Original play-by-mail (PBM) had one advantage compared to modern games: you didn’t have to worry about user input. Game turns were entered on paper or specially printed cards, with an address on one side and a simple form with 10 lines on the other. You just filled in your game number and player number and orders, added a stamp and popped it in the letter box. We played It’s a Crime back in 1986 and filled in orders on a card like as seen to the right
Now, though, there are two main ways to do it. First is emailing your orders. Just send in an email and it is processed manually or automatically. That actually takes more work, because someone has to copy the orders from email and get them into the game data. The other way is to create a website that not only lets you capture player input, but also enables you to exercise your ingenuity in displaying the game screens.
We’ll look at the gangster game mentioned in the previous article – Turfwar – and consider how the user interface can be created.
Designing a user interface
The game is based in a city with a map made up of city blocks, and these consist of four main types: residential (apartments), commercial (shops) and industrial (factories).
