Coming up: the WOK LOBBY and WOK ONLINE beta !!

All about the online version of classic WOK games.

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gm_al
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Coming up: the WOK LOBBY and WOK ONLINE beta !!

Post by gm_al » Wed Nov 10, 2004 10:48 am

Im happy to announce today what many of you have been waiting for, and a few expected that it would never happen: WOK ONLINE is almost ready to hit us !

The latest WOK iteration has to be seen within a much bigger scheme of things though. We are not just talking about putting an old game (in our case WOK4) simply online, but about changing the face of the WOK universe for good.

It all started a while ago with the successful relaunch of the WOK site. Back then the true vision of how the community would evolve came to light. For the first time we saw that we possibly could bring all players, all GMS, all Clans and all games under one big, unifying framework. The ideas of a WOK LOBBY and a KAOBASE V2 were born. Today we are just one step away from these visions.

So what can you expect ? A lot, frankly, so much in fact that you wont see everything right away. Talk about the following features:
- full user mangement (edit your profile, add a pic etc. - linked with the WOK forum settings)
- users can manage their account online (ie. sign up for games, view turn reports, send messages to other players etc.)
- full online GM support, including running turns, auto-coloring and displaying maps etc.
- Clan management online (every Clan gets its own little area to present itself and recruit etc.)
- Map Central and map mangement online (upload/download maps etc.)
- Gatekeeper support (ie. display all current/past scores and track all ratings etc.)
- WSC support (vote on subjects and open issues etc.)
... and more !

Dont expect to have everything happen over night though. The first features you will witness will be very "basic" and require some testing from your side. It also means WOK ONLINE will need quite some testruns and beta games, but I am very optimistic that within short time it can and will replace the "old" way on how you all played your WOK4 games. The possibilities to make X-games are incredible, almost any WOK4 value can be tweaked for the fun of it. Kudos again to Chris and Rune for their tremendous work - you guys ROCK !

So into a new era of WOK gaming we go.... here is a first teaser link for you :)

http://www.kaomaris.com/wok4online/view ... p?GameID=8

(you can also use GameID=7 for some tests)

PS: in preparation of the upcoming WOK LOBBY release I call upon all Clan Heads to provide Rune with the following:
- a 120x120 logo of your Clan (jpg or gif)
- a standard 468x40 banner your Clan wishes to use for advertising (jpg or gif)
- a short paragraph about your Clan, outlining its goals etc. (300 words max)
I expect all serious Clans that look to stay "in business" to support this release and provide us the required material asap.

Take care everyone, and welcome to the new dimension of WOKking !

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Post by Brykovian » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:18 pm

Cool. Go boys! 8)

-Bryk
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Re: Coming up: the WOK LOBBY and WOK ONLINE beta !!

Post by Saladin » Wed Nov 10, 2004 5:51 pm

gm_al wrote:Talk about the following features:
- full user mangement (edit your profile, add a pic etc. - linked with the WOK forum settings)
- users can manage their account online (ie. sign up for games, view turn reports, send messages to other players etc.)
- full online GM support, including running turns, auto-coloring and displaying maps etc.
- Clan management online (every Clan gets its own little area to present itself and recruit etc.)
- Quick access to online McDonalds ordering.
I'd like two McChickens and a Large chocolate Milkshake please.

Oh and get something for yourself as well, you guys are doing a great job!
"Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity."

"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves."

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Post by Donut » Wed Nov 10, 2004 6:45 pm

Hate to be the bearer of bad news...
>> ORDER 5655100 <<
You only have 12 armies to attack with!
Province 55 is not a neighbour! Order invalid.
55 is a neighbor of 56. INI maybe?

Otherwise good work guys.

Donut

P.S. - There's no 'u' in Neighbor :P
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Post by korexus » Wed Nov 10, 2004 8:38 pm

Yes, thankyou Josh. I am aware that the programme doesn't run properly yet, I've just been without net connection most of the day... :(

Oh, and there may be no 'u' in 'neighbor' but there is one in 'neighbour'. I learned classical English, unlike that strange dialect you seem to have picked up! :P

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Post by Donut » Wed Nov 10, 2004 8:55 pm

Whatchyou talkin bout Willis?

Just for that:

Problems I've found: (yes I'm aware that I've already told them to you)
1. Won't transform POP; claims I must enter a number below 50 even when I do.
2. As stated before; neighbors
3. When viewing TR, doesn't show leaderboard.
4. I think that when you click "Submit orders" or "View TR" it should pop up in a new window so the map can still be viewed.

More to come... I only had 20 minutes.

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Post by gm_al » Wed Nov 10, 2004 9:34 pm

*LOL* welcome to the world of coding Chris, where the code slaves hardly get any nice words but rather tons of requests and "ideas" :D

Here is one from me - display the turn reports by default in a font like Courier New so the spacing is regular between each letter/number. Otherwise players will have a hard time reading through their turn reports.

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Post by Donut » Wed Nov 10, 2004 11:38 pm

I've given him plenty of nice words... just not that the public can see. :P

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Post by TK » Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:50 am

Donut wrote:I've given him plenty of nice words... just not that the public can see. :P
Are you two, erm, together? :oops:

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Post by Donut » Thu Nov 11, 2004 1:34 am

Hmmm... Yep. Walked right into that :(

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Post by Duke » Thu Nov 11, 2004 8:25 am

lol!!

About the topic, too exciting to even put words on. Being the addict that I am I crave new peaks and this will do the trick.

Keep it up! :lol:
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Post by korexus » Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:57 am

Donut wrote: 1. Won't transform POP; claims I must enter a number below 50 even when I do.
2. As stated before; neighbors
3. When viewing TR, doesn't show leaderboard.
4. I think that when you click "Submit orders" or "View TR" it should pop up in a new window so the map can still be viewed.
Donut
1, 2, 3 done. 4 Will be done before we go to beta (I need to change the interface anyway.)
GM_Al wrote: display the turn reports by default in a font like Courier New
done.

Also fixed numerous other bugs, the game now seems to run without problems apart from in the spying phase, although I'm sure you guys can find some more errors for me! :P


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Post by Donut » Thu Nov 11, 2004 3:33 pm

Haven't had a chance to look again today yet.

Did you fix, the move orders and the Level yet?

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Post by Xarfei » Thu Nov 11, 2004 4:36 pm

Most of the tech trades don't work properly,
150 TEC trade sets the number of spies in provinces with POP to 2 instead of adding 2, i.e. existing spies are lost.
200 Tec trade gives "The level in province 61 is raised to provinces[61][ARM]" and no visible level bonus to any troops
250 Tec trade works, but the message says "Your Eff is now Array[EFF]"
same for Tec 100 trade ("...to Array[DEF]")

Level workers increase Level in the absence of any troops. if troops are moved in correct level results.

also I have fired quite a few missiles (about 200) and it appears to me that I killed a lot fewer armies then I should have.

Apart from that most of my attempts at finding bugs were unsuccessful (using a negative amount POP to make armies gave the message "province 0 is not your province").

Good work!

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Post by korexus » Thu Nov 11, 2004 6:37 pm

Xarfei wrote:Most of the tech trades don't work properly,
150 TEC trade sets the number of spies in provinces with POP to 2 instead of adding 2, i.e. existing spies are lost.
200 Tec trade gives "The level in province 61 is raised to provinces[61][ARM]" and no visible level bonus to any troops
250 Tec trade works, but the message says "Your Eff is now Array[EFF]"
same for Tec 100 trade ("...to Array[DEF]")
Fixed 'em.
Xarfei wrote: Level workers increase Level in the absence of any troops. if troops are moved in correct level results.
This didn't really matter I guess, but I've fixed it for neatness. And added a message in the turn report when you LEV in a province which has no armies. (Only if there's workers in the province though...)
Xarfei wrote: also I have fired quite a few missiles (about 200) and it appears to me that I killed a lot fewer armies then I should have.
I can't see any reason for this in the code, it could be random fluxuation but I'll take a closer look.
Xarfei wrote: Apart from that most of my attempts at finding bugs were unsuccessful (using a negative amount POP to make armies gave the message "province 0 is not your province").
:shock:
Interesting idea, but the code actually treats the entire order as one integer and then splits it so I think we're pretty safe from people trying that sort of thing. :)

Now, there's a couple of issues with province DEF when attacking that I know of. Anything else from anyone???
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Post by Xarfei » Thu Nov 11, 2004 7:01 pm

Ok, another few bugs:

When you invade a province you get a short table with the province data. For some reason
the name of the province is always missing but all the other info is there.

I was able to do more than three POP>ARM transformation, although the set up that specific game might intentionally allow that (ID= #37).

I tried some spy options that can only be done on neighbours (e.g. sabotage defence) at long
range. It failed but there was no message whatsoever but the spy was used up.

I've tried using numbers for non-existing options, e.g. "4" for transformations. The program
seems to just ignore these (good!) but shouldn't there be a message of some sort?

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Post by korexus » Thu Nov 11, 2004 7:37 pm

The province name thing I know about, it's very strange but I'm not too worried as the name shows up at the end still (using the same lines, so there's no real reason why one should owrk and one shouldn't...)

POP:ARM conversions is now limited to 3 per turn unless defined otherwise.

Spies shouldn't be removed, I'll grab that now.

I can set a default case to give an error message for wrong options, I guess...

Anyone who's playing, note that you now need to specify a player ID when loading the page so the links are of the form http://www.kaomaris.com/wok4online/view ... PlayerNR=1
this is more like what a player will see in a real game. Also, TRs now come up in a seperate window (my pop up blocker's fine with this, let me know if it causes problems for anyone else.) And you can now get back to the game page after submitting orders by a button instead of hitting back twice...

Oh yeah, and players no longer have to ability to run turns :twisted:
If you really want to play use
http://www.kaomaris.com/wok4online/GMvi ... ?GameID=46 - the file that will become the GM's control page...
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Post by gm_al » Fri Nov 12, 2004 12:47 am

Uhm... looks like Chris can cope with all the bugs we throw at him - how about a new challenge then - make the Turn reports in HTML output.... that way everything could look so... crispy... sweet... organised ! (and it wouldnt look so much like it looked back in 1999)

If you want to stick to plain old text (think again !) here 2 suggestions/remarks:
- when stats are displayed, the "MI" and "SP" columns are always way to the right, miles away from the "DEF" column
- please display army level always in the same format, namely x.xxx (ie. "1.000" and not just "1"

So - how about picking the WOK site theme and using it for the Turn reports, hmmmm ? :P :twisted:

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Post by korexus » Fri Nov 12, 2004 1:23 am

Chump...

The TRs *are* in html, I just started with a basic version because there's no point making things complicated for no reason. :P

I just updated the engine again, now the Reports are generated without all those gaps before tables, much better. Here's an example. http://www.kaomaris.com/wok4online/view ... 3&player=1

Did you have any particular requests for how to make it Crispy, Sweet and Organised? Colour co-ordinating the high score maybe?

Regarding level, I'm happy with it the way it is! :wink: If I get bored I may update the display, but it sounds like more effort than it's worth. For me the MIS and SPY aren't way over to the right, it must be your crappy browser! :lol:
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Post by Donut » Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:38 am

I think I'd like some clean up with some spacing in like the attack section... but I agree the TR's are readable.

Despite my efforts, Chris has fixed everything I've thrown at him. Good work loser :P

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