Like a move calculator of sorts?

A sandbox would be super useful.

1. Yes, that seems neat. Not that I know anything about app design.
2. Diplomacy sandboxes exist, but not for vDip unfortunately. I *think* Backstabbr has one, and I know webDip has one (albeit one that is a little tricky to get to).

I generally prefer to use my phone browser over an app,, but if an app has better efficiency, sleek design, and is just as thorough with capabilities, I’ll use.

The main thing I think that might be easier in an app versus the website is a notifications setting when a message is received. Otherwise, I don't think it would make much of a difference to me.

Not sure if that's exactly possible, though.

I'd freaking love an expanded mobile app! I have a few things I'd want from that, if it happened.

- Sandbox for more variants
- Something to make custom variants playable!! I know you can technically do that here on vDip, but with Admins gone, good freaking luck...
- Notifications on turn updates?
- Integration with other services might be nice. Getting variants and players from vDip might not be possible, but sure would be cool.

I'd love to help in any way I can!!

As for me I need a simple option to the game. A small icon with a flag to it with shows the prefered language to communicate in a certain game. It will let us create games to a specific communities: English-speaking, Chinese, Russian, French, Spanish, German an so on

Isn't there a Russian vDip somewhere?

@MooCow17, yes it is. I think it would be more rational to keep all Diplomacy community on one website.

@MooCow17, yes it is. But I think it would be more rational to keep all Diplomacy community on one website.

To be honest, I think that if a new app was to be written, it would have to be coded from scratch, because this site is written in an archaic way and the code would have to be totally refactored and written in another language (I would suggest Java or some other object-oriented language like C#). Therefore this would be a lot of work to be done and even more testing afterwards. However, this could be fun task, so if there was need for help I could join the team of devs. And all this work could go to waste, if no one migrated to the new app/site and all stayed here (which most likely will happen if the new app doesnt in the end actually replace the current site, under the same link, with data migrated or something)

vDiplomacy is so old, and the original creators and admins are not really active anymore, unfortunately it is unlikely that the website gets improved or that an app gets built from it. :'( I fear the website might in fact die at any time.

For those interested, the website Diplicity is currently being rebuilt after it disappeared last year:
https://www.diplicity.com/
There are a website version, an IOS app, and a soon incoming Android app. For now it's still mainly a work in progress, but the code is open-source and anyone can contribute, so feel free to join (and from a community point of view, it's probably better to have one Diplomacy app rather than multiple ones). On the website, you can find a "Community" tab for the links to the forum and codes.

Obviously it would have to be made from scratch, even if the code was reuseable. yeah, vDip is so old, it NEEDS a code update. Maybe a new site and website would be the play. I just beg there to be an easy way to make and play custom variants without drastic amounts of playtesting. (even just between friends)

An active admin team/site owner might also be the way to do that.

I would be open to a well managed migration to a new website that has interactivity with a mobile app.

The caveat on that would be a clear definition of what Well Managed means and what data migrates with the move (ie. Game records etc...)

I think that if anyone that would like to be leader of this thing appeared, then we could build the app as a seperate project at first and after it is done, migrate the data and the whole site to the new app (which could be both available as an app and as a site) with Oli's permission (and therefore this wouldnt require him to be active, just to accept the merge and provide the data).
(I dont wanna lead this, but I can help with the coding/architecture and be part of the team)
However, I think that coordinating this via the forum will be hard and therefore I suggest to make a discord server or sth like that, where the project could be coordinated

By "leader", I mean simply someone that would coordinate the whole thing

I'd like to draw your attention to my point that this should be a website first with app integration second, but apart from that I agree with your sentiment.

If this project was to go ahead we should also have a robust discussion and roadmap set out, so that we all have a clear understanding of what a migration will entail, alongside clear communication (site announcements) so that all users can prepare and have input into the process.

There is also a financial aspect to this, currently Oli is keeping the lights on by very generously paying website fees, even though he isn't active in maintaining the site. We can't really progress any discussion on the subject without also acknowledging that at some point this will have to be addressed.

An Android app adjudicator (based on the same source code that vDip uses) already exists for the classic map, but the app is extremely old:
https://www.getjar.com/categories/all-games/board-games/little-dipper-388543

To get full functionality you need the 'menu button', which Google removed from Android more than a decade ago:
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2012/01/say-goodbye-to-menu-button.html

There are third-party apps that allow you to use the menu button on more modern Android devices, but they require a lot of permissions to work.

Anyway, if anybody wants the APK for Little Dipper, let me know.

It's really interesting, I may pay some money for it!
But it's very difficult, like others said, VDip's code id very old

I would support this in any way that doesn’t involve me coding things because I would be very bad at that.

I think that I could provide an adjudicator with an api, that is generic and would work for most of the variants that I could come up with with configurable edge-cases, but I will have time for coding that during summer and this will most likely be ready in August/September I think, because that is a lot of work for me to do

And even if you won't use it, I think that I will need it for myself, because I play irl a variant that is extremely hard to adjudicate (Beleriand from uk variant archive, which has mult-unit provinces and multi-strength units)

For those curious:
https://diplomacyzines.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/tf01-Beleriand.pdf

Yeah, I once did a graphic for a map and printed it and printed on 3D printer these named units like Morgoth and now we play it together with friends. This map is in my opinion EXTREMELY balanced (though I had to rewrite the rules to modern language because the sometimes are hard to understand for me and sometimes don't specify some things) (sorry for going out of topic here)

Just a small update on my previous message about Diplicity. The Beta version of the variant creator is online, for those interested: https://diplicityvariantcreator.netlify.app/

This looks great!

that's toooooo helpful for me!

Impressive!

That's awesome! Where can we follow updates on the return of the Diplicity Android app?

You can join the Diplicity discord. They are glad to get user input.

In a few week's time I'll have some time off- this looks like a good project to sink my teeth into - porting some of our variants here over to duplicity...

*diplicity

@JECE, as David already said, there is a Discord server. But if you don't have a Discord account, you can follow the project on GitHub (Discord is more to find help and ask/answer questions).

On the Diplicity website, there is a "Community" tab. In this tab you will find all the links.

Thanks, Jean_Henri_BERNARD!

I found some recent discussion about the app here:
https://github.com/johnpooch/diplicity-react/discussions/614

I use jDip. It supports custom variant plugins that are in the correct format. The problems:
It is so old that I had to download an older version of Java just to open it.
The format is a pain to deal with.

However, it is the only way that I know of to open and play/sandbox custom variants.

I only use my phone to play so this would be great. Know nothing about coding but do have some money to donate to the cause

Diplicity is awesome. Ported Canton to it some years ago, but wow it looks like they made the entire variant creation process easier than ever.

If you're genuinely serious about making this happen, create a discord or something! I'd sure join. It'd be better than a forum panel...

Yeah, I'd join too

I can lend some coding help if needed. Seems like a great idea, I’d *love* an app and especially notifications!

I’d join