FEWS Game application configuration

In the application configuration, global settings for the FEWS Game which are valid for all scenarios can be specified.

Schema definition

The structure of the XML-schema for the application configuration is as follows:

Explanation

The keys in the XML-schema are explained in the figure above. Some of the keys are explained in more detail here.

• The value of the key Locale must be a 2-letter abbreviation of the language in which the game will be played (e.g. EN for English or NL for Dutch).
• Historical scenarios may be familiar to the players of the game. Therefore it is possible to hide the year of the scenario in the FEWS Game by setting the flag HideYear to true.
• The key FewsExecutable must contain the (absolute or relative) path to the FEWS executable, which is usually located in the bin-directory of a FEWS release. On the Linux platform, the FEWS executable is the shell script fews.sh.
• The key FewsRegionDir is the (absolute or relative) path to the so-called region directory of FEWS. The region directory contains the FEWS configuration (the Config-subdirectory) and the global properties for the FEWS configuration. The FEWS Game is generic and can be played with an arbitrary FEWS configuration.
• The system time in FEWS is controlled by the FEWS Game. The frequency for updating the FEWS system time is specified by the key FewsSystemTimeUpdateInMinutes.
• Scenarios that can be played with the FEWS Game must be part of a scenario database. The key ScenarioDatabasePath contains the (absolute or relative) path to the scenario database.
• Events in a scenario can be associated with a file that is executed during the scenario. For example, a pdf-file can be associated with an event to simulate an incoming e-mail or an mp3-file to simulate telephone calls. In the section FileAssociations, programs can be specified with which files with indicated extensions must be processed. Default file associations are used if nothing is specified here.
• Communication between FEWS and the FEWS Game is handled by the so-called FEWS PI service. This service requires a port number that must be specified in the section FewsPiPortNumber. This port number must be in the range of port numbers that is specified in the FEWS configuration in Explorer.xml in the directory SystemConfigFiles, e.g.

  <piServicePortRange start="8100" end="8200"/>

• The FEWS Game can also be played in a combined setting developed for the Dutch storm surge warning service (SVSD). In such a combined setting, the hostname and the port number for connecting to the combined game must be specified in ServerHostName and ServerPort, respectively. In a stand-alone FEWS Game these keys are not relevant.

Example

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <Config xmlns="http://localhost" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://localhost ../../../../../xml-schemas/application_config.xsd">
   <Name>Example of application configuration</Name>
   <Locale>EN</Locale>
   <HideYear>true</HideYear>
   <FewsExecutable>..\..\FEWS\bin\FewsNoordzee_SA.exe</FewsExecutable>
   <FewsRegionDir>..\..\FEWS\FewsNoordzee_SA</FewsRegionDir>
   <FewsSystemTimeUpdateInMinutes>1</FewsSystemTimeUpdateInMinutes>
   <ScenarioDatabasePath>ScenarioDatabase</ScenarioDatabasePath>
   <FileAssociation extension="pdf">C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe</FileAssociation>
   <FewsPiPortNumber>8100</FewsPiPortNumber>