WarLight has just been updated to version 2.02.0! This update brings an official clan system to WarLight, as well as a few bug fixes.

Clans!

WarLight now has an official built-in clan system! This allows players to form clans, which puts an icon next to each clan member’s name and gives clans ways to communicate easier.

Each clan gets a clan page, which works somewhat like a player’s profile page. They can upload their own image and enter the details they’d like to present. You can view all clans on the new Community -> Clans tab.

When you create your own clan, you have full control over who is allowed in your clan. There’s no limit to the size of clans, and you can remove anyone at any time.

Clan Icons

Instead of requiring clan members to change their name to insert their clan tag, when using the built-in clan system, clans can upload a small icon (21×15) to display next to all clan member’s names everywhere throughout the game.

This is better than using name changes for several reasons:

• Since it’s an image, and not just text, it gives clan creators a lot more flexibility in what they can put here. You can design your own icon to which can stand out more. Of course, you can just use text in the icon if you want, but since it’s an image you can use different colors or fonts as well.
• Players might not be eligible for a name change when they want to join your clan, so they may have to wait before inserting your clan tag.
• It’s possible to remove people from your clan, which may be difficult to do if the person you’re removing isn’t eligible for a name change or isn’t cooperative.
• Trolls can’t impersonate your clan, since there’s no way for them to get the icon without your consent.

Clan Forum

Each clan gets their own private forum where they can communicate. This works just like the public WarLight forums, except that only clan members are allowed to read or write to the clan forum.

Clan members can access the clan forum by visiting your clan page and clicking Clan Forum.

Clan Titles

As a clan creator, you can set a title for each clan member. These titles are displayed next to each clan member on the clan page.

For example, maybe you want to set your own title as “Leader” and assign an “Officer” title next to special clan members. Since it’s a free-form text field, you can enter any title you want for any member.

Clan Managers

Clan managers can edit the clan page, invite new players, remove players, set titles, and add/remove other managers. When you create a clan, you will be a manager by default. However, you can add more managers to assist in managing the clan.

You should be careful to only add managers that you trust 100%. Since managers can do anything to the clan, they could even remove your manager rights if they wanted to take control.

This also gives a way to hand off control of a clan if the leader retires. The current leader can make the new leader a manager, who then can take over managing the clan from that point forward.

Creating Clans

It costs $15 to create a clan. This is a one-time fee — once the clan is created, there are no more fees. This helps ensure the clan creators are serious. Without any barriers to entry, you’d wind up with thousands of clans, since people would create one just to put an icon next to their name. This would diminish the meaning behind clans, and make it difficult for clans to become recognized when there’s so many.

Having a barrier to entry also ensures that trolls won’t create clans that impersonate well-known clans and other such nonsense.

To get started creating your clan, visit the create clan page!

The future: Clan Wars?

I’m very interested in adding a way for clans to declare war on each other. Do you have any ideas on how you might like this to work? Let me know by posting on the clan wars brainstorming thread.

Other Changes

There are a few other fixes that aren’t clan related in this update:

– In games with lots of chat (particularly real-time games), public team chat will now prune older messages from the chat box. This helps keep it from slowing down when there’s a lot of people chatting. It will always keep the most recent 30 messages, and it will only remove messages older than 5 minutes. If you want to see something that was removed, just click the “View older chat” button. Nothing will be pruned after the “View older chat” button is clicked, so you can be sure you’re seeing everything.
– If someone is booted into an AI, they will be prevented from being booted again immediately after for 60 seconds. This gives the AI server a chance to calculate the orders for that player. This fixes the issue where someone would get double-booted and not get a chance to play as an AI.
– Fixed a bug that made surrendered/eliminated/booted players show as having income in the lower-right popup.
– Two-team double-elimination tournaments can’t be created anymore (they were bugged if you tried anyway).