Interview with tobi: saving a Diplomacy website

We interview tobi, who saved vDiplomacy. Plus we celebrate Christmas and discuss our games.

Intro

• The guys introduce the show, their drinks and tonight's venue (0 mins 15 secs)

Interview with tobi

• The guys introduce today's interview. Tobi is a developer who saved the day when vDiplomacy ground to a halt. Even if you're not on vDip, there's still some lessons here for other Diplomacy sites (3 mins 50 secs)
• The interview starts although Kaner didn't turn up. They begin by looking at what went wrong with vDip and how it relates to other Dip sites (5 mins)
• Tobi talks about his skillset developing and applying it to Diplomacy websites. They talk about going live into production without full user acceptance testing (12 mins 45 secs)
• Amby asks about with the upgrade to vDip using webDip code, whether any webDip functionality is in, or will be added to vDip soon. They also discuss tobi getting in touch with Oli and what came out of discussions (19 mins 45 secs)
• They move on from the tech talk to discuss how tobi first got into Diplomacy before talking about the German hobby (27 mins)
• Amby channels his inner Kaner and asks tobi which country he likes to play and why (33 mins 30 secs)
• Amby goes onto to ask why tobi tends to play at vDip and what variants he likes to play. They discuss 1066, his thoughts on big variants and different features (35 mins)
• They begin wrapping things up by talking about the community at vDip (41 mins 20 secs)
• Kaner and Amby are back at the bar and discuss their thoughts about the interview (43 mins 30 secs)
• Amby talks about the wind muffler added to the Zoom recorder (48 mins)
• Kaner discusses what would be needed for a variant to run a Bourse game automatically on a Diplomacy site (50 mins 30 secs)

Diplomacy chat and Around the grounds

• They get some more drinks before giving our listeners an update on how things have recently changed here with Covid (58 mins)
• Amby discusses losing in the Mongolian cloak and dagger game (playing as the Caliphate) before they turn to Christmas and presents (1 hr 4 mins 20 secs)
• Kaner asks if Amby is doing well in any games (1 hr 7 mins)
• They talk about one of Amby's Europa Renovatio games, High Renovatio Jackpot and Yellowstone Honey (1 hr 11 mins)
• Next up is his Divided States game, No name-11 (1 hr 14 mins)
• He wraps up with Dawn of the Enlightenment and the need for another black eye (1 hr 18 mins)
• Amby asks about Kaner's games and they discuss playing out an alliance vs stabbing (1 hr 22 mins 40 secs)
• They grab more drinks and decide to start wrapping things up, with a brief chat about PoppyCon (1 hr 24 mins)

Venue: Maya Mexican, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

Kaner: Estrella lager from Spain

Amby: Gage Roads Sidetrack XPA and Rusden Driftsand GSM from the Barossa Valley, South Australia

Just a reminder you can support the show by giving it 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher. And don't forget if you want to help pay off the audio equipment... or get the guys more drunk, you can also donate at Patreon, plus you get extra podcast episodes!

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Thanks as always to Dr Dan aka "The General" for his rockin' intro tune.