FAQ
From CCG Workshop Wiki
What is CCG Workshop?
CCG Workshop is a company that started out adapting Collectible Card Games (CCGs) for online play. Our core technology is the gEngine, a Win32 application which can be used to play any game against multiple opponents over the Internet. Since then, we have grown to host online play of all sorts of strategy games. We are also venturing into miniature games and RPGs. See our Game List page for a complete list of games available to play, and their status. CCG Workshop has developed an descriptive language called gatlingML (gML). A game described in gML is fed into the gEngine and transforms the gEngine into a client of that game.
gatlingNet is the java-based network backbone that allows everyone to play real-time games across the Internet. It is an expandable server hub that allows all gatlingEngines to talk to one another.
gatlingWeb is the play-by-web technology that we are developing to play games over the web in a turn-based fashion.
CCG Workshop is adapting, through license, permission (or self-direction when necessary) collectible and non-collectible card games, dice games, tile games, board games, and miniature games.
NOTHING WORKS
Unfortunately, CCG Workshop is no longer available for play although the forums continue to work. Some games are also available to play on Ludoholic.
What does it cost to play?
With most games, nothing! CCG Workshop is free to play! We will however licensed certain CCGs, and they will require a Game Pass to play.
How do I get started?
To play, you first need a gatlingNet account. gatlingNet is the game "network" that CCG Workshop members use to connect, converse, and play.
The account creation page requires rudimentary information, but does require a valid email address that will be confirmed. I am not sending spam out in any way, shape, or form to the members.
Click here to create an account.
Click here to download the engine.
The download will install the gatlingEngine and all the necessary requirements. Once the gatlingEngine is downloaded and installed, just run the engine and login with the gNet account information you created.
For each game, all the images needed to play the game must be downloaded via a special Download Tool available from the Tools menu inside the gatlingEngine. The Download Tool will download all the card images for the game, do some processing on them, and save them in a cache directory.
Are there rules of conduct?
Yes! Please see the Rules of Conduct.
What are the Ghosts for?
Ghosts are the police of the community. Their job is to make sure no members disrupt the chat rooms with unruly conduct. They have the power to muzzle and shutdown ruffians and rabble-rousers.
What are Game Tours?
Game Tours are where a member volunteers to play games with other members. A Game Tour Guide will stick around the chat room for a designated hour and will teach anyone willling to learn.
Game Tours last an hour. A member can sign up to be a Game Tour Guide for any game/hour combination. Once signed up, they are expected to be in the chat room at that time to help players of a new game.
To sign up for a Game Tour, go to the Game List and select the game you are interested in, then select the Game Tours Tab. Select the day/hour combination you are interested in, then sign up!
What is a Game Pass?
Game Passes allow unlimited play of all games on the system for 30 days.
I see several games on the list I would like to try, but I don't know how to play them!
Once you load the game, click the Purple Gear->Help->Game Support.
Are the games automated?
Some, but not all of them. The engine allows a game developer as much automation as he likes. However, not every developer will completely automate a game, leaving some manual work for the players, or requiring the players to police themselves on who won. However, there are a handful of games available to play that are completely automated.
Where can I see a list of games?
A complete list of games can be found here.
How do I inform the game's developer about a defect?
Feature Requests can be discussed on the forum.
Defects can be posted here.
Why is the gatlingEngine Win32 only?
When I started development of the gatlingEngine back in early 2001, Java Swing was not mature enough for my tastes. Windows had a huge market share, and I had 7 years experience in Delphi writing Win32 applications.
Since then, the gatlingEngine has become a legacy app, and I don't have enough time or resources to maintain it, and port the code to Java. Perhaps some day...
What is the gatlingDevKit?
The gatlingDevKit is a stand-alone windows application that allows aspiring game authors to create your own games. It is a set of documentation and tools you can use to write and test your own gatlingML file.
Why can't I observe resumed games?
When you observe a game, The observing engine "recreates" the game by loading all the game messages that have been sent so far. That's why when you observe a game that has been in-progress for a while, you see all the game go by in fast forward.
When a game is resumed, it is initially created from the saved info. Then, as the resumed game progresses, that save info is overwriten and replaced each turn with the current save info. Any observers coming in would not be able to recreate a game as they do with a normal game because the save info needed to recreate the saved game has been overwritten.
How are the decks shuffled?
When a deck is shuffled it is put through the following steps:
- The deck is dealt into five piles round-robin style and then reassembled. This is repeated 5 times.
- A random number is generated based on the number of cards in the deck. Each card is picked out of deck based on this random number, creating a new deck. A new deck is generated this way 5 times.
The Select Game slider keeps kicking back an XML error. Why?
You are probably running Proxomitron or a similar pop-up blocker or HTML filter. Add ccg-workshop.com and ccgworkshop.com to the 'Bypass' list, or simply disable them when running gatlingEngine.
What port does the engine use?
You can choose to connect to the gatlingNet server via either port 8080 or 49152.
How do I get the gatlingEngine to run with Norton Internet Security?
The Conflict List has instructions to enable Ad Blocking while running gatlingEngine.
The gatlingEngine crashes every time I try to run it!
Spyware removal could destroy your IP settings. If you use spyware removal software, here is some software you should have anyway:
When I try to load a game I get "Error retrieving gML.." or something similar.
It's possible the gatlingML files stored locally on your hard drive are corrupt. Open <InstallDir>\cache and delete all the *.cmp files you find there. Then try to reload the game.
I got kicked out of the engine and now I can't log in!
For some reason, your TCP/IP connection did not drop cleanly with the server. gatlingNet will remove your account from the server after a few minutes and you will be able to log in again.
When downloading images, it takes a really long time after each graphic file is downloaded before it starts downloading the next one. Why ?
After each image, your gatlingEngine creates three additional local copies of it by rotation. When done, you have 4 copies of each image, each rotated to the major compass points. If you're running Seti@Home, shut it down. Watch the CPU column in your Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Task Manager, sort by CPU usage). gEngine should take almost all available CPU during the download. If not, something else running on your machine that is taking cycles away from the gEngine and making it slower! The progress bar is a visual clue to what the engine is doing.
