A Diary of Scattered Thoughts

[uncledarkseid]

Games that require more players, rather than fewer players, tend to take more time to fill up.

For example, one 12 player game of Alamaze equals:

Two 6-player games of Alamaze.
Three 4-player games of Alamaze.
Four 3-player games of Alamaze.
Six 2-player games of Alamaze.


On game type that Alamze offers on its Game Creator screen is Slugfest (20 Player, No Dispersed, Single Victory).

QUESTION: I am curious, but is 20 the most number of players that any game of Alamaze can hold at the same time?

12 is

[Maximus Dominus]

On game type that Alamaze offers on its Game Creator screen is Slugfest (20 Player, No Dispersed, Single Victory).

QUESTION: I am curious, but is 20 the most number of players that any game of Alamaze can hold at the same time?

12 is

Then why does the Game Creator page list 20 for Slugfest games of Alamaze?

   

[Wookie Panz]

On game type that Alamaze offers on its Game Creator screen is Slugfest (20 Player, No Dispersed, Single Victory).

QUESTION: I am curious, but is 20 the most number of players that any game of Alamaze can hold at the same time?

12 is

Then why does the Game Creator page list 20 for Slugfest games of Alamaze?

I've never seem a slug fest game.  It must be outdated.

[Maximus Dominus]

While Rating one of Wookie Panz's postings, today, in order to increase his Reputation on the Alamaze forum, it dawned on me that using the rating system could be an easy way to help identify postings that are good tutorials for how to do things in Alamaze.

Click on rate, and then in the Comments section beneath where you give a numerical score to the rating that you are making, just write TUTORIAL - followed by what it's a tutorial for.

Here is a visual example of how to do it:

   

[Wookie Panz]

While Rating one of Wookie Panz's postings, today, in order to increase his Reputation on the Alamaze forum, it dawned on me that using the rating system could be an easy way to help identify postings that are good tutorials for how to do things in Alamaze.

Click on rate, and then in the Comments section beneath where you give a numerical score to the rating that you are making, just write TUTORIAL - followed by what it's a tutorial for.

Here is a visual example of how to do it:

So what can be done with all of those rating points?  Can they be traded or redeemed for something?

[Maximus Dominus]

So what can be done with all of those rating points?  Can they be traded or redeemed for something?

They are basically points to increase or decrease your reputation on the forum. Most forum users here don't use them, but over time, they can be a reflection of how well liked or how helpful that you have been. It's just another measure of your presence and your impact upon the forum and with your fellow Alamaze forum users.

It would certainly be nice, if they could be traded in or redeemed for something, Dan. But then, wouldn't you need to start over at zero - in effect, all of your current points would be deleted.

Or, I suppose, points and their redeeming could be tracked manually, somewhere, and future redeeming of these points could simply be tracked and counted for the last time that you redeemed them.

If you could trade them in or redeem them for other things of value, then forum users might simply begin to give and "trade" these Reputation points, in a bid to game the system.

[Maximus Dominus]

Alamaze, in its current form, is a game of build-up.

One consideration for going forward is to also offer some variants where kingdoms begin at the apex of their power, at the apex of their historical greatness, so to speak.

Additionally, Alamaze could, I think, benefit from the instilling of a greater degree of randomness. Randomness is not inherently anti-strategy. Why? Because randomness helps to emulate the fog of war, by increasing the unknown factors in play. Players "fear" the unknown, especially in wargames. Factors beyond the players direct, immediate control.

Players, as a side effect of being human, invariably strive to figure out the inner workings of games that they play. They're like dwarves, in that they ever and always continue digging deeper and deeper into that mountain (the game that they love). Unknown factors are like goblins, cave trolls, and balrogs that lie in wait, somewhere (and at the most inopportune of moments) in the mountain that players are digging their way through. If experienced Alamaze players are already in possession of a lot of the internal numbers of the game (which reveal unto them keys to playing the game better, compared to those players who don't do the math and who don't know the numbers), how do you rein that back in? How do you get the horse back in the barn, after he has already fled? By injecting randomness with a certain degree of precision (even though randomness and precision are typically at odds with one another).

An example to help illustrate the point? Sure, not a problem. Let's use agents as an example. When you hire a new agent, right now, that agent will arrive the following turn. No chance of failure of that agent showing up, as far as I am aware. That aside, when the agent automatically shows up the following turn, it will be a Level 1 agent. No exception to that consistent rule of thumb. What if a new agent that you hire was subject to randomization? What if it could be a new agent with a range from a No Show Jones (for those George Jones fans of you out there) up to, say, a Level 5. You may get your new agent, or maybe that agent absconded with your gold that you had used to hire him with. Agents are, after all, a rather shifty and devious lot, are they not? Same basic way that the game works, now, with a few of exceptions:

1. Your agent never shows up after being hired.

2. Your agent that you hired hold loyalty to another realm (and your new agent shows up in their court, instead of yours, the following turn.

3. Your agent got lost or delayed on the way to your capital. They either end up showing up in one of your other population centers, instead of where you thought that they would show up, or they get delayed, and when they would finally show up could be several (or a couple of) turns later.

4. Your new agents shows up, as expected, but could be anywhere from a Level 1 agent to a Level 5 agent (just as an example to illustrate the idea).

Players in wargames find comfort in knowing the numbers beneath the hood of the game's engine. So, give them the numbers, if you like - but just give them ranges of numbers, instead of hard certainties. Certainty is the most elusive of all things in war. Less predictability in a wargame is not an inherently bad thing.

[Maximus Dominus]

In some games, such as Warcraft 2 and 3, players could play campaigns.

Has any thought been given, especially at length, to crafting campaigns for Alamaze? Nor as a single player experience, but rather, as a multi-player experience that builds across playing the same kingdom over multiple different games?

The first game of a campaign could feature normal starts for the kingdoms. If you do well in that game, then your position is enhanced and strong, when the second game in the campaign starts.

And so on, and so forth (though the population centers or regions that you start additional games in the campaign may very.

[Maximus Dominus]

I try to jot some of my thoughts that come to me about Alamaze and Alamaze possibilities, because experience has taught me that some thoughts or ideas don't cross my path more than once.

To that end, what popped into my mind, tonight, deals with possibilities to make money with Alamaze, yet not resort to the old subscription model embraced by Alamaze's previous owner. John (BREKK) bought Alamaze, but as I have mentioned to him, before, Alamaze isn't just a game. It is a game engine.

But in actuality, after further thought on the subject, I would say that Alamaze is more than a game, and it is also more than a game engine (in the sense that John can build out more games, as well as more variants of Alamaze), using the underlying Alamaze programming.

What is also a possibility is the renting, leasing, selling of use of the Alamaze game engine to third parties. I don't know enough about programming to know if it's possible or feasible to allow third parties to use the Alamaze game engine to create and run their own games own. If this is a viable option, then perhaps individuals would simply be limited to using whatever programming is currently in place for use on Alamaze. Possibly, revenue generation could be increased by releasing new programming updates going forward, which would leave it up to each third party lessee to decide how much or how little of the Alamaze game engine to incorporate into their own game. Does this make any sense to those reading it? Not sure how clear my attempt at a brief explanation turned out to be. If it's possible to restrict the source code, or to restrict who could do their own programming additions, then I think that there might be some untapped opportunity in this approach.

[unclemike]

In years past, I mentioned to Rick both privately, and publicly on this forum, that a way to expand the player base would be to offer multiple genres of gaming.

For one, I wanted to make a sci-fi game, perhaps, something similar to TSR's Star Frontiers or Gamma World RPG game. Or a basic and simple generic sci-fi game. That would work as well. So, instead of deciding which magic spell to cast against an adversary, players would select either to fire off a laser beam weapon, or use sonic disruption damage, or the regular projectile style of weapons, and so on. Also, have fleets of ships with various strategic advantages battling in deep space (and better than StarWeb which is archaic to say the least).

Rick mentioned that he wanted to do a WWII game, but there's already a number of PBMs of that nature around, and would be stiff competition. Perhaps, a futuristic WWIII game with advanced items would be better, but there's a number of PBMs of that type as well.

I think around that time was also when Rick brought up Amoricia. A game that people would play nations of Native Indians competing on a map of North America. I didn't really see the appeal of something like that to the masses, but he mentioned it and even design it a bit. The previous forum had a thread or two about Amoricia.

Anyway, I offered to configure the Alamaze game engine for several different types of genres, with the hope that some people may try out the other types when bored with what they usually play. It never took off...