Thanks Fizzer for your work. I'm desperately broke right now but if I keep playing and everything goe$ better, I'll come to the ladder and make your games as tough as ever ^^

I'd have some development suggestions which would help making it better, I guess. I don't know if you plan spending more time on it, but still ; and there you may have other feedbacks about my (probably already brought to you) ideas :

*It's not that easy to communicate between players, you have to do it in game chats and it would be so much more comfortable to find players with a search toolbar and having a implemented mailbox system between players...

*What about open games with possible spectating ? Like agreed practice games where any other member than the players could see what happens, even if it's cheat-friendly ? I mean, if it's practice and players don't mind trusting each other about this, that would be entertaining.

*History management : that would be great to have the option of seeing the game as one given player actually saw it, instead of only the full picture. That feature would be a Major improvement for reviews.

*About that : having one player shuffling in the history of a game while other ones could observe and all comment, and possibly share control (like in online chess, go, etc.), would open a whole new mode of review.

What about this all, buddies ? What do you think, Fizzer ? :o)

Anyway, thanks for reading.
WL is great ♪♫
Mian

Wow good ideas!

I would suggest to create/find these ideas in the Feedback page of [UserVoice](http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features)

I do agree that a centralized chat option would be nice (like AIM, or MSN, or Gchat like) but implementing a whole chatting option is probably pretty tedious and finding a plugin might be easier.

I like the way you proposed the spectating option. Given the conditions of a Practice mode where one side isn't wanting to win but more along the lines of learning the game and wanting to get it better. We can call this Coaching Mode where the spectator can see both sides and coach the other players on what moves they should think about in each scenario. I think most veteran players would love to do the coaching position (me included).

The revamp of the History window would be great to see as well. I know when watching games and studying, I really try and understand what the other opponent was thinking so that I can learn from them. This tool would make it a lot easier.

I think putting these enhancements on UserVoice will give them a better chance to be implemented but on these forums it's a good way to promote it.

Well I didn't check yet what UserVoice was, and I guessed letting them here would bring extra comments about it ('like' or 'doesn't matter', for starters ^^).
I'll do it soon enough, then.

Oh yeah, I forgot :

*Finding lists of archived games for oneself and possible any player, in a table (with name of the game, players involved and maybe ladder levels, date, number of turns ?). Chronological or custom (to be arranged according to the order of any column). With the already available database, the transition seems to be fairly easy, technically. I'm not demanding anything, I'm just throwing some ideas which may or may not be further used !

Best regards.

yeah no problem. I'd probably do the same to see if i could get some traction on the ideas.

As for your last idea there. I think someone could create an API to make that table because those API's can pull game data...although it looks like it may only be for ladder games? or a member thing? I'm not sure, i'd have to read the blog on it.

All excellent feedback!

You should vote for these on UserVoice - this site lets you vote on the ideas you want. This makes it a lot easier for me to tell what people really want me to spend my time on since I can just count votes rather than trying to decipher it from forum threads.

Don't you find you can figure out how the other player saw the game from the history as it is?

@x : no, it's not that crystal clear. Of course you can spend time imagining it, but it is not so helpful, seeing the full picture, to compare variations, especially discrepancies between, for say, The Impaller's move and what you would have played instead, contemplating only a given one-sided situation and past turns from that PoV. At best, it's just not that easy to think "hey, this move is just non intuitive".

@Fizzer : as I said, I'll do it soon enough. I hope it will help you and the community !

But with real time games that would be impossible, since you'd remember much of the game from your perspective anyway.

I don't really get your last note, x. Whether real-time or multi-day, a review would come afterwards, not necessarily from your own games, and the pace of the game wouldn't make any difference at this point. Of course you remember the flow of your own games from your game experience, and if you do a review right after the play, you don't need to rely on one-side replay. If you have good memory, same for older games. Generally speaking, it would help a lot, though. It could even open to the introduction of "problems" with exceptional moves as proposed examples of solutions... Well this is a very chess-oriented thought, but with time it could be great to find some puzzles like this coming with a little tutorial ("Attack, Defense, Deception : An Introduction to WL" ^^).

Well this all has sense if the game keeps good popularity, of course. Development time must be worth it...

Confirmed : I do love this game ;oP

You wouldn't be able to 'contemplate a one-sided situation and past turns from that point of view' if you remembered your point of view, is what I was saying. Although if it was someone else's game, or multi-day, or you replayed it a while after it finished, what you're saying could work, and I agree it would be good to work as a tutorial for new players.

we've had a server wide chat before, twice implemented via IRC. IT was canceled because no one ever used it.. I think the highest member count I ever saw was 5 people on it.. the main problem I see is how it is inserted into the game.. and It'd be difficult to get it well populated without forcing people to join it, but I think that would be a better idea then a dedicated IRC page which has to remain open.. 'I personally already have enough tabs without having to dedicate one for a WL chatroom'

I'm sure Fizzer has good reasons for having decided both times *afaik* to implement it via IRC instead of in another manner..

Instead of it being a irc type chat, I think it would be better to have it more like the private message system, so you cna leave messages for each other rather than have to have realtime conversations.

I thought what Mian meant was to be able to private message individual players outside of games. The same sort of private messaging as there is during games.

Yes, this would be nice. Ideally it would be like a blinking tool you may click on to open a pop-up 2-player dialog window, though I'm aware it's not that easy to implement.
Anyway, not being able to find people and even leave short messages to them when you don't have common games with them or they don't appear in ladder rankings hurts the community aspect of WL in a big way.

I really like both of the history management ideas, a lot. I think the most effective teaching tool for this game...something that hasn't been utilized yet to my knowledge...is to go back through the history of a game you played and explain the thought processes you made as you make each move, while other people watch and listen. I feel like that is an infinitely more useful way to teach someone than to just play a game against them and expect them to learn from it. Realistically, both would be the best way to do it, but at any rate, I think history management tools like that would be awesome and could lead to good opportunities for teaching.

All good ideas. Especially the ability to chat outside of games.

I also added the following to uservoice...


Quick link to show territory picking stage.

"I often find myself hitting the history button and rewinding to the start to see where wastelands are, especially in ladder 1v1's. It would be nice if there was a quick way of overlaying the turn 0 state of the map for quick reference."

Please vote for it if you agree.

I believe there already is a quick key to turn 0... home maybe? whenever I have num-lock turned off and I type in numbers I accidentally end up at the beginning of the history again...

FYI, I Uservoiced all that stuff.

@The Impaller : +1. imho, sliding through the history of a game with observers would be the new key to teaching and understanding WL and its mechanics.

@bombee : I was surprised to learn many players just don't think about it. A good way to go would be to mention it's possible to apparently new or weaker players. I sometimes do it myself, it's easy advice.

One more suggestion I'd like to bring to you.
Final game is mostly a Russian roulette where the one feeling the right way to overload a stack on one side and retreat another one has the edge. Stack play may appear to be a boring aspect of battles, especially in multi-attack modes as stacks wander until they eventually and most randomly meet each other, and I'd think about an alternative way to deploy troops : local bonuses, in a way you couldn't load your whole +50 on one only spot of the map (not to mention +1000s in Big NY etc.).

Let's explain it with an example : Medium Earth, you get your basic +5 and you complete Europe to have a +5. there. Basic 5 could be added anywhere on the map ; on the other side, the European +5 could only be added in Europe ; and so on for any other bonus. In a way, this would make sense. Bonus-bound troops wouldn't be that heavy on making stacks, and it would allow a new model of slow game which could be terrific to practice tactics, especially with a cap regulation (no point either to make stacks just with 10 turns instead of 1...) and maybe a larger basic income to be still able to play some overloading charges.

mian - the army cap option prevents stacking to such large amounts. while what youre saying would solve the stacking problem it makes every other aspect of the game much more difficult.

bombfrog - one button (home) takes you to the first turn, and one click takes you back to the current turn. it couldnt be easier.

one thing id like to change about history is when clicking through moves, the screen bounces around to the area the next moves was played. sometimes i just want to see the moves made in a small area, to see how an opponent outplayed me. this is a problem iin large games or team games. there could be a box which, when checked makes the view static when moving through history.