Once you have the Joy Of Hex application up and running, the first step to starting a new game where you are playing against a human opponent by email requires that you move the cursor into the application menubar, and select the New... menu item from the File menu. Of course you could have simply used the quick-key combination of Cmd-N to do exactly the same thing.
Having told the Joy Of Hex application that you want to play a new game you must first select the scenario that you want to play. This requires the use of the standard open file dialog to locate and then open the file with the scenario that you want to play. Notice that at this stage the only files that you can open are files that have been created by the Joy Of Hex Editor.
After selecting the file containing the scenario that you wish to play, you must then set a variety of options. Since we're trying to play against a person by email, we check that the radio button for the Opponent is set to Local Human. We can also set the game's Difficulty level and the Side that we wish to play on.
Notice that when we have two players that the side that we select (side 1 or side 2) shall be the side that starts the scenario, and that the difficulty setting shall be applied to the person who has the first planning stage. So if the game starts with the side set to side 2, and the difficulty is set to very hard, then the person who gets the first planning stage shall be side 2 and have play at a difficulty setting of very hard - on the other hand, the second player will plan for side 1 and play at a difficulty setting of very easy.
After the computer reads through the scenario data and does a whole bunch of calculations that it needs to initialise a game, it will eventually display a game window. Since the game has just started, the game window shall be black (hiding the hex map and other details) and the following dialog will appear asking for the first player's password:
Try to be creative and come up with a password that is not easy to guess, and is neither so hard that you'll forget it latter. The password is only there to stop your opponent peeking a look at your own units. Notice that at this point you are setting the password for the first time - for everytime after this, player 1 shall have to enter his password and have it compare exactly with the one that he enters at this point.
Notice that at this point the game no longer needs the original scenario file as it stores all of its data in the play by email file that it works with during the following sequece of events. From here on whenever you need to restart a saved game you use the familar Open... menu item from the File menu and use the standard open file dialog to open that file.
This places us in the planning phase of the first turn for player 1, and once player 1 is happy with his plans, he can move the cursor to the application menubar and select the Execution menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, he could have used the quick-key combination of Cmd-E.
When player 1 selects the Execution menu item, he will be required to give the name of the file that he wants to save. The familar save file dialog shall appear to handle this:
If everything has gone well, then a quick little dialog shall appear and tell player 1 that the play by email game has been saved to file:
Once player 1 has reached this stage, all that he'll have left is a black window with which he can do nothing. To free up some memory he should simply close the window.
At this point player 1 has a play by email file saved to disk and this file should now be emailed to the person that he is playing against. Remember, this file is a binary so you might need to convert it into a text format like StuffIt's .hqx before emailing it. Alternatively, some email programs deal with binary file attachments themselves and do all the text encoding and decoding automatically, and there are simply too many such programs for me to mention them all. When you find someone to play against, it is up to you to discuss the exact method that is needed to exchange the play by email game files.
When player 2 recieves the play by email file and has it in the original binary form, he goes to the Joy Of Hex application menu and selects Open... from the File menu:
After selecting the Open... menu item he then must use the familar open file dialog to select the file that he wants opened:
After selecting and opening the play by email file, he must then enter his password for the first time:
This places us in the planing phase of the first turn for player 2, and once player 2 is happy with his plans, he can move the cursor to the application menubar and select the Execution menu item from the Phase menu. Alternatively, he could have used the quick-key combination of Cmd-E.
When player 2 selects the Execution menu item, he will see the battle animation for the first execution turn. If there were battles to report he would then find himself in the position of reading various After Action battle reports. Once he has finished reading these reports player 2 can use the application's File menu to switch to the planning phase. This will mean that player 2 can now plan for the second turn.
When player 2 selects the Execution menu item, the game will be saved to file. If everything has gone well, then a quick little dialog shall appear and tell player 2 that the play by email game has been saved to file:
Player 2 must now email this play by email file to player 1.
Now that everyone has set their passwords, a familar pattern takes over:
a player receives the play by email file by email he opens the file with the game he enters his password he watches the battle animation from the previous execution phase he can read the After Action battle reports from the previous execution phase he switches to the planning phase for the present turn he makes his plans and executes he watches the battle animation from the present execution phase he can read the After Action battle reports from the present execution phase he switches to the planning phase for the next turn he makes his plans and executes the game is saved to file the player emails the game to his opponent who runs through the same steps
It should be noted that whenever the game tells you that is has saved the game to file and should be emailed, then that file requires a password to open. On the other hand, if you are playing a big battle and you can't do it all in one sitting and do a Save using the file menu, then this file is not password protected, so don't email files that you have saved manually - only email those files that you have been told are ready to be emailed. In other words, keep playing until the Joy Of Hex application tells you that it's time to email the play by email file.