2010
Progress Report – 28 February 2010
The site has been really humming this week. It seems the changes I made last week are having an effect am I am seeing new players getting straight into games. I usually try and have three or four two player games set up with open invites waiting for new players.
The Halberstadt CL.II – that’s the German fighter with an observer – is now available, taking the game to July 1917. The next batch of planes for August 1917 will include the Red Baron’s Fokker Dr.I and Biggle’s Sopwith Camel.
Otherwise there has not been a great deal new to show this week. I am working on a couple of things in the background.
I want to give players their own profile pages with records of their accomplishments – a listing games completed, wins and losses, and a place to compare your performance against those in your friends list.
I am also looking at revamping the way the Blue Max game reports the results of turns to players. The current system works but it is a bit clunky. By default you are always shown and advanced to the game turn waiting to be completed. To see the outcome of the turn just played you need to rewind the game a turn. The plan is to have notice come up at the start of each new turn showing you a summary of what happened in the turn just gone. When you go into replay mode this notice will not interrupt you unless you explicitly open it. I also want to have this summary display with a bit more than just plain text. This is will be a fairly big change, so it may take a while before you see anything change on the site. Right now I am still thinking through the structure of the data I need to record.
Hi,
There’s a game, #123, that shows “Friendless” as signed up when I look at Open invitation games, but he isn’t shown as having a plane selected after I click on Join.
Also, I think the addition of open invitation games is a great addition. Before, when it was necessary to invite other players, it was very hard for new people like me (MaxMM Schlecht). Especially since there was no master list of players to select from and it was necessary to search without knowing who to search for! I could get names from the Finished games list or just do random searches but that was less than ideal. So, in addition to the Open invitation, I think a master list of players and some indication of how active they are or when they last logged in would be nice.
One game feature that would be nice is to not have games in which you are still waiting on a Tailing clue show up in bold print on one’s gamelist like games that you need to make a move in.
Overall, great site. Thanks for you efforts. I like the graphics and plane selection option (more liveries for each type of plane please) but I am so used to youplay.it that I still miss some of the features there that you don’t have.
Craig
Craig, Thanks for the feedback.
I think you will find that in game 123 Friendless has yet to select a plane and starting position. Maybe he is waiting for everyone else to finish selecting planes.
I’m glad you like the open invites. You have highlighted the exact reasons I included it. And yes the planes need more liveries, and the site needs to show user activity somewhere. All on the to do list – a list that grows faster than I can keep up!
Are there any other features you especially miss?
Hi Justin,
Regarding game #123, I didn’t think one could hold a spot in the game without at least selecting an aircraft. I’ve forgotten to select a starting position a couple times, so I know that isn’t an absolute necessity, but I had thought selecting a plane was. I guess that does not apply to the player that created the game.
In one of my other games, #93 – a 4 player game, I was a bit surprised when the fourth player was allowed to sign in as a third Allied pilot leaving the poor german pilot to face 3 to 1 odds. I had expected that there would be something in place to enforce a balanced (2 against 2) game. I’ve seen some notes when selecting a plane that say a German(or Allied) plane must be selected, so I know there are some restrictions but what are they? Was this 3 against 1 game a glitch or is that normal?
In setting up games, would it be possible as an option to allow the game creator to select all of the planes (but not the liveries) for that game thereby effectively creating a scenario rather than simply letting everyone pick whatever plane they want.
What’s polling on/off do?
The main feature I like on youplay’s version is the automatic pop-up display when the pointer is moved over an aircraft. Your feature of viewing previous turns does a similar thing as the pop-up display, but not as smoothly. I need to move the pointer to the back arrow button and click it then look back at the game display to figure out what move was done (possibly for multiple planes at the same time), then go to the forward arrow button to get rid of the last turn’s aircraft images and return to the current turn so that I can make my move. The youplay pop-up display is automatic, shows one plane at a time, the player, the last two moves for the plane (including the move notation = number+direction+speed/fuel so I don’t have to figure it out), and damage boxes (that aren’t that useful except for my plane) and disappears automatically when I move the pointer away. I don’t need to do extra clicks or change my focus to different parts of the screen. I use the pop-up a lot on youplay and I still find myself moving the pointer to a plane to see what move was done last turn. It’s just a really useful feature.
I also like the in-game “event box” that has a handy summary of recent game events. It’s nice but I can live without it. Same for the “ranking box” (points summary…displays kills too). I’d like to see the previous turns combat events displayed on the current turn so that I don’t need to go back to the other turn and back again just to see what happened.
I like the in-game message box, because it allows some communication with the other players. While it does open the possibilty of inappropriate chatter (“Hey Max, do a 12S2” or “let’s get Max first”, etc.) I haven’t seen much of that on youplay. It is really useful for setting up another game or letting other players know you’ll be away for a few days, etc.
I forum would be useful too. It allows for some pre-game organization such as squadrons and tournaments but also lets players post questions or issues with games that others can see and possibly comment on. At one point they tried a chat room, but it didin’t work because, I feel, it wasn’t implemented right. Players had to leave the main page to go to the chat room. It would have been better if all those logged in could see and respond to chat messages and if the chat room was embedded on the main page that showed available games, your games, recent movers, etc. so that you didn’t have to just wait around for someone else to enter the chat room. That’s probably a lot of work to do, though!
Stats can be fun, but can also be a source of frustration and contention. Youplay’s player stats go from day 1 to present day. Maybe great for the veteran or very active player, but frustrating for the new player who isn’t going to crack the top 100 list for a long, long time, if ever. (“What? I’ve got to win 500 games just to break the top 100! Yeah, right!) If you do implement stats, I’d suggest tracking career stats as well as recent stats (say last 50 or 100 games). That gives the diehards something to shoot for (career) as well as the newer players too (recent).
Sorry to be so long-winded. I guess I just like Blue Max alot and it’s exciting to see another variation of it online! Thanks for all your efforts. Looks great so far!
Craig aka MaxMM Schlecht
Wow, thanks for that.
The development is at a point where I am reasonably happy with the implementation of the game mechanics, now I want to spend a bit of time focusing on improving the interface. Feedback from real users is invaluable for this as I am generally too close to my creation to see all its faults.
You still have questions about invites and plane selection so I wrote a post about them here. Hope it helps.