A turn tracking utility and dedicated portal for smac games ?

[vLabz]

Hi,

I'm web developer / windows developer. Years ago I started writing a web site to create multiplayer games with dominions 3. Dominions 3 is a great Simultaneous Turn based fantasy game. Alpha Centauri (which I much prefer) is not simultaneous, but the classic features of game hosting remain the same.

I designed an architecture to support online game hosting and ease players everyday life, making multiplayer turn based gaming a more fluid experience. However, even though I spent quite a lot of time on this project, I did not finish this project, I abandoned it half-way (it was almost functional).

Today, I feel more motivation for finishing this portal in order to host alpha centauri games, because I like this game much much more.

Enough talk, here *would be* the targeted features :
A dedicated web portal :
 - a web site to create online games, publish rules options
 - each game has a status, and a proper lifecycle
 - permissions layer for participating in games
 - each game has a turn tracking "thread" with comments
 - options for public / private games / team games
 - a messaging system for ingame communication
 - when a game is finished, all communications are optionally made public (or not ! but this is nice for roleplay games, when you write it, you know it may be published some day, that can make good multiplayer AARs)
 - a referee (arbiter) profile with permissions that can watch anything going in a game (live AAR)
 - ability to replace a player
 - players stats
 - league and competitions
 - notifications settings

A Windows client to assist players (optional to play) :
 - small icon in task bar to notifiy player when a turn is ready to be played
 - turn file is automatically downloaded
 - game launcher
 - when the game is quit, a popup screen asks if the turn has to be uploaded
 - optional comments for game thread


That would remove the need to go back and forth to the forum in order to play regular turns. That does not intend to remove the communication between players, it is just not a forum, but something similar. Take this as an autopublishing multiplayer game. By no means it would remove the need for this great forum. I've just always thought a forum is not designed for hosting games, hosting documentation, FAQs, Wikis...

Since files are hosted in a dedicated server, we may later on add some processing to analyze ongoing games. I have no knowledge of the alpha centauri  .sav format, but with help or proper specs, it may be possible to extract useful data and stats to display at the end of a game, a final stats screen for example.

Warn 1 :
I voluntarily put down everything I had in my mind, as a teaser, in order to get feedback, but I'm no Alpha Centauri multiplayer player (yet), I need ideas to match alpha centauri multiplayer gaming needs. If you tell me all this is useless I won't do anything.

Warn 2 :
I can't garantee any result, I'm a bit busy with my work, this would be on my spare time, but fits with my professional objectives.


I'd appreciate your feedback...

[ete]

The client to automate turn up/downloading and giving notifications seems like it could speed up games a lot, and reduce the bother factor for players massively. Web portal stuff also sounds pretty cool, though for now there's few enough games that having a CMN handle those things is not too bad. Still, more automation saves them effort which is positive.

[Vishniac]

I left the SMAC community a long time ago because it was impossible to get people in MP to play their turns not only in time but even at all. I never completed a single MP game.

Now I am playing Dominions 3 MP. 7 games completed already and 2 in progress. Fine.

The thing is, even if SMAC is not a simultaneous turns game, its MP badly needs a mechanism similar to Dom3 where, if someone doesn't play his turn during the given time, the turn is automatically processed and sent to the next player.
I don't know whether it's possible or not but at least a tracking of where is the turn and since how long so the CMN can act fast.

[Yitzi]

I left the SMAC community a long time ago because it was impossible to get people in MP to play their turns not only in time but even at all. I never completed a single MP game.

Now I am playing Dominions 3 MP. 7 games completed already and 2 in progress. Fine.

The thing is, even if SMAC is not a simultaneous turns game, its MP badly needs a mechanism similar to Dom3 where, if someone doesn't play his turn during the given time, the turn is automatically processed and sent to the next player.
I don't know whether it's possible or not but at least a tracking of where is the turn and since how long so the CMN can act fast.

Tracking could just be done in the game thread so the CMN can play it for the player.  Having the AI play the game for the player would be harder, but it might be possible to make a way to do that.  Having the AI track the time would probably be more work than it's worth, though.

[Vishniac]

Tracking could just be done in the game thread so the CMN can play it for the player.

One of the games never resumed because nobody knew where was the turn despite the thread. I received 3 times the same turn: the Groundhog Turn !!
A sad story...

[Yitzi]

One of the games never resumed because nobody knew where was the turn despite the thread.

Why wasn't it posted in the thread?

[sisko]

that's because the players usually have the choice of posting the turn in the TTT or email it.

on the Polish civ site the TTT is automated. the players only have to upload the save and the forum software will email the turn to the next player in the turn order, calculating the average time used by each player to play the turn. this is a nice feature which i want to see implemented here but i don't have the time/knowledge to code it.