It'd be cool if you could do something like this for diplo clans. You use this exact idea on a larger scale (More people in a game with randomized map for diplomacy with custom scenario).

This is also a great way for diplo games to not have trolls, afkers, PE's (People that mess up diplo games) Aren't you able to pull people out of the 'experiment'?

So you will get active diplo players that play properly.

Im down for that ;)

Just an idea, but I know i would love this.

Edited 12/10/2015 06:46:26

Yep, that's definitely on the roadmap. I feel like finding diplo players (especially reliable ones) is harder- and if we could get rid of the 2-3h long wait for real-time diplos, that would be perfect.

The only challenge is that this would only work with single-start templates because there's no way to programmatically add/remove players from games (using just the API) so if you have someone in slot A and they decline, you can't simply replace them.

That would be a problem..

Not necessarily. There's some pretty good single-start templates out there (like Kingdoms & Castles on Apollo's British Isles map)- I personally think they make for better diplos and are less likely to result in imbalanced boot-to-win games. We'll just have to gather such templates and then I can get that running too.

The system is going to have to be opt-in, though, because Declines/disappearances are going to be very, very hard to manage once a player's already added to the game.

We might just have to wait for Optimum's PhantomWL project to finish so we have a more fully-featured API to work with.

Edited 12/10/2015 06:59:27

True.. That's one of my favorite diplo game/map.

Slots help a lot, saves a lot of time. starting from one place and trying to complete a country feels a lot different to having it as you start. Maybe its just me...

I can handle single-start though. Not a massive issue.

This would just be harder to work with since (without manual supervision/correction) a game would have to be remade with a new roster every time someone disappears. Still going to decrease wait time though.

I dont know how difficult this would be to make but what about before the game you are given, information, you are sent a mail or something saying a diplomacy game will be held at this time at this date. You can then opt in or out. If you say no you are replaced until you find someone who can.

or

You make use of the auto- game if online function, you are invited to a game just before the game starts and if you decline that game you wont be invited to the actual game but if you accept it you are invited.

Don't think its possible to do these one but just putting it out there.

Edited 12/10/2015 07:11:30

What is the wait time right now?

Edited 12/10/2015 07:17:41

There's two streams running- a large one and a small one (for elite clans), with the large one having a ~5-6min (up to 10) wait and the small one updating each minute at the most. I forgot to put Blitz in this time. :/ I could start a third stream with Blitz and a few other clans if you'd like- one with 2-3min updates.

if you forgot about putting blitz in how did i get a game then?
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=10025705

Just kidding. Thought your clan ID was 30, not 20. You guys are in the small/elite one. That one updates pretty fast, although I expanded it so not as fast as I said it does earlier. Timing it again.

i think it's kinda ok, you don't want to play, the game go away soon.

The bad thing is, you can be online (like now for me) but can0't play, beacuse you are just checking MD games and go offline in 2 min.

It sound like a good idea, but maybe need a little of tweak

This is really awesome! It's a shame that my first opponent just went offline :(

The only challenge is that this would only work with single-start templates because there's no way to programmatically add/remove players from games (using just the API) so if you have someone in slot A and they decline, you can't simply replace them.

Normally that would be the job of the game host, right? Is it possible with the API to designate one of the players as host/creator, so they could manage this themselves? Just a thought.

The bad thing is, you can be online (like now for me) but can0't play, beacuse you are just checking MD games and go offline in 2 min.

Yeah, I'm trying to see if there's any way to detect that sort of situation. Right now, I'm just having it delete the game (if it hasn't started yet) if either player has been seemingly offline for over 15 minutes. (WarLight doesn't give me any finer data or I'd set a much lower threshold).

This is behind a lot of wasted games and inefficiency (especially with wait time) right now, because I have to go through and find out who's actually interested. Maybe once an opt-in system is in place and people know about the games before they get invited, this might be a little bit easier to work with.

Another issue is that I'm currently not tracking game creation time- so if one people is busy (but still online/active in other games) and doesn't do anything for a while, their opponent is stuck without a replacement game until one of them goes offline. I can fix that trivially in the next test iteration though.

(Thanks for the feedback!)

Normally that would be the job of the game host, right? Is it possible with the API to designate one of the players as host/creator, so they could manage this themselves? Just a thought.

Sadly, no. It's just the creator (me) who's going to have to be host- which won't work unless I'm available to manually supervise the game.

The Warlight API is ludicriously limiting when it comes to actually doing things with the game. It's decent for reading (some) games but that's really about it. Pretty disappointing.

Edited 12/10/2015 07:54:20

The other annoying issue is boots. I'm seeing situations where people join, their partner doesn't notice, their partner joins, but they're gone/busy elsewhere by that point and end up getting booted.

Taking out 5min autoboot for sure in the next iteration. I hope practice games don't count for boot rate. :(

Edit: I think I can also resolve the slow detection of offline players with some careful multithreading. It'd be so much better if [NL] ARand0mPlayer got a new game as soon as it was possible to tell The Koala went offline. Maybe a new organizational paradigm would work better here.

Edited 12/10/2015 08:00:36