Post
by Hannibal » Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:02 pm
Great stuff so far, Kor. I hope you're not tiring, or losing the will to live. We've almost got the site right for a push on recruitment, so that we maximise conversion when people DO check us out, rather than lose them forever after 5 mins of looking .....
OK, here's suggestion #12. You haven't actually done or rejected #11 yet, but they might be tied together ..... and we just might have someone willing to take some of the php-coding load off you over the next two weeks (T.?), so it would be a shame to miss that window .....
#12 is this:
Even apart from the easy-improvement of #11, (ie simply change "Han does nothing" to "Han re-organises/does nothing visible"), the commentary at the top of each turn is effective and functional, sure, but is not exciting, not very clear, and not very easy to follow.
When people that I/we recruit to take a look come visit, I'd like them to understand and be enthused by the current games they take a quick look at.
Apart from the poor "Hannibal does nothing", we also have the less-than-ideal "Hannibal attacks 24, 25,28, 29 but fails". Sure, WE understand it; but for new visitors?
Idea #12 is that we recode all that, to make it clearer and more interesting.
By:
1) Saying WHOSE province is being attacked (it's darned hard to see who's doing what when you don't know whose prov it was, or whether it was just a neutral, and you can't flip back to the previous map the way you, Kor, used to do so well when you GM'ed in the old way). That would surely make the game clearer to any watcher or visitor? I'm NOT asking for "view last turn's map", not so important, but I AM asking for whose prov each attack was against ....
2) Colour-code the commentary references to players, just to save the hassle (who bothers to?) of scrolling down to the legend of players and back up to the map and the commentary. As GM's in the old way, both you and I used to manually colour-code our references to players in our commentaries (I got the idea from you), to make it easier for watchers to follow the action. Surely some clever coder (T.?) could code that to be automatic?
3) Change the wording a bit, to make it clearer and more interesting.
So, net, net, instead of
"Hannibal attacks 24, 25, 28, 29 but fails."
we get:
"Hannibal [the name appears in yellow] attacks Korexus's #24 [ word Korexus appears in orange], and wins; attacks neutral's #25, and wins, attacks Trewqh's #28 [word Trewqh appears in HIS colour], and wins; attacks Trewqh's [colour] #29, but fails". Obviously, the colours are automatically taken from the legend of players on the scoreboard ... should be codable rather than manual? And if the current commentary can say ",and fails", surely it can say ", and wins", yes?
If you want to add a flourish, you could ALSO, at the same time, go with your own pet wish to add in a bit of variety and tone by randomly alternating, say, the terms "and wins", "and takes it", "and conquers it", "and gets it", and "and succeeds" (etc.). And you could even add in a bit of "extraneous" commentary, such as "That had to hurt" or "Tough luck" (after "and fails"), or "That was a long run" or "Way to go!" after a couple of victorious attacks, automatically, and randomly choosing between the valid alternatives for variety and the semblance of human commentary...
Talking of which, I think my 4) would be:
4) A way for the human GM to amend, or at least add a paragraph to, the auto-commentary. Eg, in "Duel", I could accept the above commentary AND add a first para, eg., "One collision on Turn 1, and Trewqh comes out ahead" (sorry, Kor!)
IMHO, points 1-4 are way more important than the extra flourish of extraneous comment, but the ideal would be both. Not only to make the players enjoy their commentary more, but to get visitors to LIKE it, and new players to enjoy the experience.
And we may have someone with 2 weeks of free time, and php, to give it a try ....
'Nuff
#13 and #14 are, er, bigger, or more contentious, but THEN we're ready for it to be worth bringing new players along to check us out; I don't want to push my club-members, or my PBEM-friends, this way to check us out, until the site is optimised for them to be likely to want to play .... and stay.
Cheers,
Han
There are two ways to write: Short-hand, and Long-Han'ed. ~ Han
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs"......... it's probably just that you're the last person to appreciate the enormity of the catastrophe about to