Test Game (pre-beta)

[Lord Diamond]

Fall of Rome is very, very, different from the current site. You right click on your actual character and choose what to do with them. Even dragging across the map. You don't have to use half a dozen different tabs to determine what to do. You can also tell what to do and what your available resources are at a glance. You also don't get every conceivable option for any character, just the options available for that character.

I do worry about the various spells, but perhaps one of the sub menus can have the spells that wizard can cast while the main drop down shows commin actions.

I hate to hurt your feelings, as I don't want to stifle your enthusiasm. This is just a lot more work and it is much harder to keep track of what you are doing. Something at the top of the screen showing resources and remaining orders would be outstanding. As would some sort of note section.

I feel like an old fart rejecting new technology, but new tech rarely causes MORE work. I am not resisting just because it is different; I am okay with different. I am very concerned that I am not able to enjoy the game as much.

[Ry Vor]

Fall of Rome is very, very, different from the current site. You right click on your actual character and choose what to do with them. Even dragging across the map. You don't have to use half a dozen different tabs to determine what to do. You can also tell what to do and what your available resources are at a glance. You also don't get every conceivable option for any character, just the options available for that character.

I do worry about the various spells, but perhaps one of the sub menus can have the spells that wizard can cast while the main drop down shows commin actions.

I hate to hurt your feelings, as I don't want to stifle your enthusiasm. This is just a lot more work and it is much harder to keep track of what you are doing. Something at the top of the screen showing resources and remaining orders would be outstanding. As would some sort of note section.

I feel like an old fart rejecting new technology, but new tech rarely causes MORE work. I am not resisting just because it is different; I am okay with different. I am very concerned that I am not able to enjoy the game as much.

LD, I really think just give it more time.  Mike has said this is an intermediate step on the way to an interactive map (GUI), but I have to reiterate, Fall of Rome was the first PBEM with that kind of interface, and I think maybe 11 years later, still the only one: it was very expensive. 

To me, finding where the order you are looking for here in the early stages takes some getting used to, but once you have that, you don't need to worry about syntax, or even the order number.  It should pretty much eliminate player errors and also keep in mind, it is still under development - again, a lot of "stuff" to get to where it is.   Whether its design or coding, its a lot harder than it looks to get it to work right.

I'm actually still not sure after the alpha and the few turns in this test game how all the design changes will mesh.  To me, it somehow feels like ALL positions are stronger, and all far more unique, but it will still take longer to develop a powerful position than in 2nd Cycle.  Sort of a cool nervous tension at this point.  And sometime soon we will start a beta, so still time to work out some kinks.

An objective has been to reduce the barrier to entry for new players for Alamaze.  I think this order entry goes a long way in that regard, and looks better to boot.   Yeah, the players who know the system don't "need" it, but for us to expand the player base which is good for all concerned, we need to bring those barriers down.

[Madmardigan]

There's actually a brief timeout period by the browser while it waits for the user to enter two consecutive letters so if you wait a couple of seconds before pressing the second letter, the dropdown list will move to the first entry of the second letter instead of what you want. So type fairly quickly and you shouldn't have an issue with it.

I'm a bit sad at hearing that people don't like the new site's dropdown lists for assigning their actions. Fall of Rome operated in the same manner. Instead of clicking on a menu-tab, you click on an icon on the top row (for political, covert, ...etc). The page then displayed the listing of kingdom assets in that category to choose from (emissary, group, ...etc.) and the user then selects their action from a dropdown list.

Alamaze is a more sophisticated game so you have more dropdown lists to choose from. The upcoming interactive map will replace the map coordinate dropdown lists but just about all of the others will carry forward into the next version. Fall of Rome operated in this manner like many other online games. Now Alamaze is more than halfway there and people want the older version to manually enter everything again. Just can't win nowadays

The new order checker took a few turns to get used to, but now I can not see going back to the older version.  It does seem to prevent the simple mistakes.  

[Frost Lord]

There's actually a brief timeout period by the browser while it waits for the user to enter two consecutive letters so if you wait a couple of seconds before pressing the second letter, the dropdown list will move to the first entry of the second letter instead of what you want. So type fairly quickly and you shouldn't have an issue with it.

I'm a bit sad at hearing that people don't like the new site's dropdown lists for assigning their actions. Fall of Rome operated in the same manner. Instead of clicking on a menu-tab, you click on an icon on the top row (for political, covert, ...etc). The page then displayed the listing of kingdom assets in that category to choose from (emissary, group, ...etc.) and the user then selects their action from a dropdown list.

Alamaze is a more sophisticated game so you have more dropdown lists to choose from. The upcoming interactive map will replace the map coordinate dropdown lists but just about all of the others will carry forward into the next version. Fall of Rome operated in this manner like many other online games. Now Alamaze is more than halfway there and people want the older version to manually enter everything again. Just can't win nowadays

The new order checker took a few turns to get used to, but now I can not see going back to the older version.  It does seem to prevent the simple mistakes.  

What kind of errors are you getting in the old system that the new system is preventing?  The verification button is what's preventing simple mistakes and you get that with both tools. 

[Frost Lord]

Fall of Rome is very, very, different from the current site. You right click on your actual character and choose what to do with them. Even dragging across the map. You don't have to use half a dozen different tabs to determine what to do. You can also tell what to do and what your available resources are at a glance. You also don't get every conceivable option for any character, just the options available for that character.

I do worry about the various spells, but perhaps one of the sub menus can have the spells that wizard can cast while the main drop down shows commin actions.

I hate to hurt your feelings, as I don't want to stifle your enthusiasm. This is just a lot more work and it is much harder to keep track of what you are doing. Something at the top of the screen showing resources and remaining orders would be outstanding. As would some sort of note section.

I feel like an old fart rejecting new technology, but new tech rarely causes MORE work. I am not resisting just because it is different; I am okay with different. I am very concerned that I am not able to enjoy the game as much.

LD, I really think just give it more time.  Mike has said this is an intermediate step on the way to an interactive map (GUI), but I have to reiterate, Fall of Rome was the first PBEM with that kind of interface, and I think maybe 11 years later, still the only one: it was very expensive. 

To me, finding where the order you are looking for here in the early stages takes some getting used to, but once you have that, you don't need to worry about syntax, or even the order number.  It should pretty much eliminate player errors and also keep in mind, it is still under development - again, a lot of "stuff" to get to where it is.   Whether its design or coding, its a lot harder than it looks to get it to work right.

I'm actually still not sure after the alpha and the few turns in this test game how all the design changes will mesh.  To me, it somehow feels like ALL positions are stronger, and all far more unique, but it will still take longer to develop a powerful position than in 2nd Cycle.  Sort of a cool nervous tension at this point.  And sometime soon we will start a beta, so still time to work out some kinks.

An objective has been to reduce the barrier to entry for new players for Alamaze.  I think this order entry goes a long way in that regard, and looks better to boot.   Yeah, the players who know the system don't "need" it, but for us to expand the player base which is good for all concerned, we need to bring those barriers down.

Rick:  UM is not saying that this is an intermediate step....he is saying that if you want to play 3rd Cycle, you have to use this tool.  Today is the first time that this was made clear.  I mean, there is even a link to the old site in the new site and I remember a selling point for all of this was "If you want to use the old site, you can"...

[Frost Lord]

Do not get me wrong, I think that I can see some benefits for new players as the order checker clearly lists out all of the characters and groups available to the player’s kingdom and lists all orders possible to issue for each of those resources.

The problem is that some of those lists of orders are a little overwhelming to scroll through.  

For example:
• Each Political figure has 17 options to choose from
• Priestesses have 19
• Agents have 30 menu options each
• Groups have 38 options
• There are 23 Kingdom choices
• 28 on the “Other” tab
• And there are currently 99 Spells to choose from for each of the Wizards.

That is 254 possible menu options to scroll through.  This is not counting the additional parameters needed after an order is selected.

For example:
My Fool can issue 1 order, but he has 17 to choose from
My level 1 agent can't issue half of the options available in his drop-down
And my Adept can only use 1% of his menu.
etc...

[unclemike]

Well, Alamaze has a lot more options to choose from than Fall of Rome so that's why the lists are bigger. To reduce the size of the lists, I could add an initial "pre-sort" list that separates the categories further: like emissary actions from king actions, battle spells from regionals, and so on. But that'll be another list to contend with to first choose emissary/king or battle/regional before displaying another list of the subcategory to choose from but that will only slow things down that much further.

[Frost Lord]

Well, Alamaze has a lot more options to choose from than Fall of Rome so that's why the lists are bigger. To reduce the size of the lists, I could add an initial "pre-sort" list that separates the categories further: like emissary actions from king actions, battle spells from regionals, and so on. But that'll be another list to contend with to first choose emissary/king or battle/regional before displaying another list of the subcategory to choose from but that will only slow things down that much further.

The number of menu options is not the main problem here, it is the number of relevant menu options. 

And you cannot compare the new order checker to Fall of Rome...it is 100x more closely related to the old data entry method than it is to Fall of Rome.  With Fall of Rome, you had a one-stop-shop for everything you needed to do your turn.

- No excel worksheet needed
- No pen and paper
- No calculator
- No external map to update
- No copy of the rule book by your side
- No PDF list of orders to execute
- No external copy of your kingdom setup
- No tool to help you calculate group movement
- No counting areas to see if your emissary is in range
- No collecting other players contact info, because there was in-game messaging between kingdoms
- You did not even receive a separate turn report via email every few days, because it was ALL included in the one tool that you logged into...

And even though there were multiple tabs across the top of the Fall of Rome screen, you could enter all of your orders right from the map itself (the first thing you see after logging into a game) by right-clicking on a character, group, PC, etc. without navigating to any of those tabs.  

[Frost Lord]

Well, Alamaze has a lot more options to choose from than Fall of Rome so that's why the lists are bigger. To reduce the size of the lists, I could add an initial "pre-sort" list that separates the categories further: like emissary actions from king actions, battle spells from regionals, and so on. But that'll be another list to contend with to first choose emissary/king or battle/regional before displaying another list of the subcategory to choose from but that will only slow things down that much further.

BTW, the way that the menus are organized is not the only issue causing the entry process to be slower.  Other factors include the forced use of a mouse, inconsistent tab stops, no next/previous page button (that we can tab to and enter key execute), orders spread over multiple pages, and sub-menu options that do not work properly with the keyboard.

Keep in mind that I am doing my turn in Excel and updating my map all before I even log into the order entry program.

Previously, I would have my Excel open on half of my monitor and the entry program on the other half and I would log in and tab through the 4 fields at the top:
ACCT#, TAB, NAME, TAB, ARROW DOWN (to select game), TAB, TURN#, TAB.

Then I start entering orders:
150, TAB, 1AN, TAB, TAB, 3, TAB TO THE NEXT LINE
330, TAB, AR, TAB TO THE NEXT LINE
720, TAB, 1AN, TAB, AA, TAB, BB, TAB, CC, TAB TO THE NEXT LINE
etc...

I have done this so many times that it is less than one (1) minute from login to submit (including a quick review of the verify text).

It is not a one (1) minute process with the new tool.

[Ry Vor]

I think some of this is Mike and I have a different approach to rolling out development than maybe the traditional method.  We're kind of on the fly rather than spending much more time behind the scenes and so with that traditional method everything taking much longer to see the light of day.  So again, there was a heck of a lot of late nights for Mike to get this where it is, not to mention coding all the design changes to 3rd Cycle. 

Further issue is Mike is hustling to get us much done as he can before he gets (mostly) swept away by a 9 month independent contract gig.  That starts December 2, so we only have a couple days to get quite a bit done, development wise.

When I said the new order entry was an intermediate step, I meant between the 2nd Cycle one, and something similar to Fall of Rome with the interactive map.  He can do the spliced menus, given the time, which we presently don't have.  Meanwhile, I got used to it in a couple turns.  I can move the slider and get to where I want in maybe a second more than what it would take to type it in, and for the record, I still have to check order numbers with 2nd Cycle.  Now I don't have to.