Designing Games with Xconq - Game Module Organization

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## Game Module Organization

Each separate file is known as a game module or just module. A module has a name, displayed name, an advertising-style blurb, a version, and designer notes.

This is an example of an elaborately-declared game module with no actual content:

    (game-module "foobar"
      (title "Foo of Bar")
      (blurb "An exciting game with lots of cliffhanging suspense")
      (version "1.3")
      (program-version (>= "7.0.3"))
      ;; other properties?
      (complete-game true)
    )

    ;;; contents here

    (game-module (notes (
      "This is just a sample game."
      ""
      "It's not really as interesting as the blurb makes out."
      )))

    (game-module (design-notes (
      "This is commentary addressed to other designers."
      "Also a good place to mention things to work on."
      )))

The `notes` and `design-notes` could have been supplied with the first `game-module` declaration, but in practice, putting the player and designer notes at the end of the file keeps them out of the way. You can supply any number of `game-module` declarations in a file. Only the first need include a name.

The game module format is only loosely structured. In general, anything that you might want to reuse or combine in different ways should be a separate module. Good candidates include text generators and maps of real terrain. Unfortunately, they don't always mix-and-match as well as you might like!

The following are the generally preferred module names:

Terrain-only modules should be named `t-`xxx.

Lists of units should be named `u-`xxx or `ob-`xxx (for "order of battle").

Name generators should be name `ng-`xxx.

When supplying a year in the module name, use four digits, unless the rest of the name makes the century clear (WWII scenarios are pretty much guaranteed to be in the 20th century!).

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