FUN WITH FLAGS - game mode - description

[dicsoupcan]

As far as i know it is not a public beta yet.

[Menszu]

Looks awesome, reminds me of the Settlers 7 star system, can't wait to play it ! I love such sophisticaded rules. In far future it would be awesome to have additional panel for all this info, and perhaps build in options in the multiplayer lobby for turning certain flags on/off. This way you could develop more variety of flags. And perhaps even more content. (For instance some kind of flag rewarding going all-trade - for example simple counting of traded off goods, starting from 300-up or something more complicated)

[Siegfried]

First of all: a big thank you to my testers. It was so much fun to play this agains real humans. All of your provided feedback is much appreciated.

We played a game on the map today, with Siegfried, Lewin and Krom, and I must say it was really, really fun !
It is a really well-thought game mode in which you always find some goals and you're happy to reach them even if you lose in the end.

Thanks for the kind words.

You've already given a good summary of what happened. But there's one thing that I must stress once more: I just loved that Krom was able to come back after he was almost defeated by Shadaoe in the first few minutes. It was one of my goals to make this possible. And it worked

There were a few ideas given during the match. I write them down to not forget it:
- reveal map after end
- find a solution to the problem that you can demolish your own houses to deny other people the forechecking-flag

- Mark the "instant death" line outside each player area with a row of small rocks or some other object which doesn't block movement/building, so it's clear how far you can walk

That's actually a good idea.
@Shadaoe: may I be so blunt and ask you to try this idea? That would help me so much. (time troubles on my side)

- Do you have ownership/permission to use all the sounds? (that's required to have it included in the Remake)

Well, all of the used sounds are licensed under creative commons. So we are able to use and distribute them without royalty. However, we must give credit to the original author. Currently, I've included a license-file into my map directory where I do this, so this is covered and we're safe. But it would not hurt if you would add some lines to the installer which state that parts of the remake are licensed under CC credits are given with the acutal maps/graphics/sounds etc.

- At exactly 1:30 countdown, the timer shows the wrong thing for the color code: http://i.imgur.com/SMNfEFI.png

Thanks for the screenshot. I've actually noticed it before, but with my usual x3 it's there only for 1/3s, so I've never been able to see what was happening. Thanks to the image, it's fixed by now, like is the negative countdown.

- I think the way final flags are shown is a bit confusing.

Good idea. Added.

Would it be ready to include in the Remake by late next weekend (Sunday or Monday)? We'd love to include it!

I will give my best, but no promises here. My schedule was very unpredictable lately, so chances are 50/50.
Well, the mode won't be completely finished anyways (missing a better GUI), so I think of preparing a v1 that might be updated to v2 with the next release.

- simplify the numbers in [ ]. and show the player how is he compared to the leader

almost all of your suggestions - these and the ones you made during the match - are noted and planned to implement. The text GUI has already been shortened quite a bit. 768 should be possible.

- I kept on referring to FAQ on flags meanings, but I guess thats unavoidable )

Well, I'm playing this map for more than a month now, and still I have to look up things, too. But I don't plan to change this, because I love the complexity of the flags.

Sorry maybe I´m just blind, but how to download and test this nice script masterpiece ?

It has not been released yet, because it still contains too many bugs. I want to fix them first.

Looks awesome, reminds me of the Settlers 7 star system

In fact, the description of settlers 7 was one of the major sources of inspiration for this, although I've never even touched settlers 7 due to that cruel DRM. I just read the description and imagined how it would play.

[Lewin]

We'd rather only have files in map folders with the name of the map, like Fun with Flags BETA.*. Is it ok if the license is like that? (Fun with Flags BETA.LICENSE.txt) Or maybe it can be merged into the description if it's not too long ("Sound effects licensed under Creative Commons:"). I'm not sure.

One idea to prevent people destroying their houses:
When you get OnHouseDestroyed, check if the house is damaged (during that procedure you may check properties of the house, it gets destroyed after the procedure). If the house is already damaged, and aDestroyerIndex = States.HouseOwner(aHouseID), then penalize that player somehow for destroying a damaged house (so there's a rule that destroying your own houses while they are damaged gives you a penalty). Players can always repair coal mines before destroying them if necessary to avoid the penalty, but if your house is being destroyed there's nothing you can do about it. I'm not sure what the penalty would be, it could be to remove some points/percentage on from a few different popular flag types (needs to be broad enough that it affects most strategies). But then again, you don't want it to be too harsh a penalty in case a player doesn't know about that rule yet or forgets when he destroys a coal mine in the valley which got damaged earlier. You just want to make sure that the player who was attacking the house feels like he lost something by preventing him access to the Forechecking flag.

Maybe eventually if we have some way to check when a house is under attack you can monitor which player last attacked the house, and award the score to them when they house is destroyed (only if it's currently damaged). That would be a less confusing rule.

We're also not 100% certain that we'll be doing the new Remake release on Monday, it depends if we get the last few bugs fixed and how many translators get back to us by then.

[Shadaoe]

- Mark the "instant death" line outside each player area with a row of small rocks or some other object which doesn't block movement/building, so it's clear how far you can walk

That's actually a good idea.
@Shadaoe: may I be so blunt and ask you to try this idea? That would help me so much. (time troubles on my side)

I will of course try this, as it is a nice idea :p Will keep you up to date !

[Krom]

Forgot to ask, after the mission is won, are flags keep on counting or they are locked?

[Shadaoe]

I believe they keep counting, when we played I think I saw that Lewin took the flag I stole after Siegfried's win :p

[Menszu]

Are you going to playtest today? I'm so hyped after watching the replay. Shame the map is a bit unbalanced, even more with you playing random locs. I mean, Lewin was in the best situation when it comes to fighting and claiming middle resources. I already think about a perfect map for this gamemode.
Edit: my bad about the 'v' ; D

[Lewin]

Are you going to playtest today? I'm so hyped after watching the replay. Shame the map is a bit unbalanced, even more with you playing random locs. I mean, Levin was in the best situation when it comes to fighting and claiming middle resources. I already think about a perfect map for this gamemode.

I think the map works well for it. If we chose locations you could make it more balanced. It was only unbalanced that time because we set it to random locations.

[Menszu]

I mean not only you were most isolated, but the map should be cross shaped to prevent players from beeing in between, while some have their back protected by a map edge. Imagine if you have to build your epic redoubt from both sides : D btw it was hilarious. So I think about someting like union jack shape for 8 players. With two crosses joined in the middle - with it one might think about adding simple control the crossroad flag.

[dicsoupcan]

menszu has a point, but i do not think it is a major issue.

[Shadaoe]

It was imbalanced just because we set locations to random as Lewin said, and if you're between other players you can still do great things.
Btw did you notice something ? The top and bottom locations (which have the advantage of only one side of the valley to defend) have a harder time going to the additional iron and gold in the valley, which is quite balancing thing.

[pawel95]

It was imbalanced just because we set locations to random as Lewin said, and if you're between other players you can still do great things.
Btw did you notice something ? The top and bottom locations (which have the advantage of only one side of the valley to defend) have a harder time going to the additional iron and gold in the valley, which is quite balancing thing.

Hahaha "offtopic", Lewin/Krom just as I read this post from Shadaoe and I thougth about that before. Is it possible to make a script, that when you go to the south, there isnt any edge but come out to the north, like it is at some rts games? Just interesting if that would be possible, so like advantages could be fixed or funny things at campaigns could be built it

[Krom]

Offtopic: That would be an excessive amount of work, but yes, it is well possible to circle the maps (like Civilization does this) or even play on a sphere (like Populous)

[Siegfried]

We'd rather only have files in map folders with the name of the map, like Fun with Flags BETA.*. Is it ok if the license is like that?

That's possible. There's no real rule how the license file has to be named. I will send you a suggestion together with the map.

One idea to prevent people destroying their houses:
When you get OnHouseDestroyed, check if the house is damaged (...)

I thought of an idea that might be simpler to implement. But it looks like this is impossible with the current functions - like your idea because I'm missing the DamageDoneByPlayer-function.
My idea would to modify OnHouseLost. I need a check if the house is demolished by its owner (this part is missing). If yes, then I would return the (x,y) and check if that's inside the valley. If yes, then I'd subtract 2 points from the players forechecking value.
2 points because of the following: forechecking does +# destroyed - # of lost houses. So if the enemy destroys a house, he gets +1 and you get -1. To make it even, you get -2 when you demolish your house.

I will of course try this, as it is a nice idea :p Will keep you up to date !

Cool Will you then agree to enter the script-competition as a team? I'll ask Menszu if you still refuse

Forgot to ask, after the mission is won, are flags keep on counting or they are locked?

The flag calculations continue even after a winner was declared. It's just the victory condition that isn't calculated any more. But now that I think of it, maybe freezing the flags would be nice, too.

Are you going to playtest today? I'm so hyped after watching the replay. Shame the map is a bit unbalanced, even more with you playing random locs. I mean, Lewin was in the best situation when it comes to fighting and claiming middle resources. I already think about a perfect map for this gamemode.

There will be at least one more playtest. I hope that I can join this playtest so I can get live feedback. If I don't manage, I'll probably ask Shadaoe to do another playtest (I guess Lewin and Krom are too busy working on the new release right now).
If you're online at that moment, you will be asked to join the playtest.

There should not be other tests because I asked everyone that received the map to give a promise and not share this map. Partly becase it's missing the license, but more important that it still had known bugs that I want to fix before a broader release seems appropriate.

So all I can say for now is: stay tuned. But don't expect the next beta before mid/end of this week.

So I think about someting like union jack shape for 8 players. With two crosses joined in the middle - with it one might think about adding simple control the crossroad flag.

The final script will be released under GPL with the explicit wish that people adopt the script to other maps. In fact, the whole script has been designed in such a way, that map-specific parts are separated from the gamemode-mechanics. So an adoption to a new map should not cause too much trouble. I'd love to have more than one map working with it.

There's just one thing that was not mentioned up to now - because this topic is dedicated on florescence (the name of the game mode), not on 'fun with flags' (the name of the current map): to prevent that the traditional "build-recruit army-destroy eneme town completely" is possible, there are death zones at the entrance of your base. If an enemy troop enters these zones, they will die. So it's guaranteed that you can develop your economy inside your base.