[Suggestion] MG calendar

[biel]

Hi again, as you can see in-game, it's difficult to play an online game with more than 2-3 human players without waiting for hours in the lobby. We could add a "Scheduled games" section in the main page that contains an interactive calendar showing at what hours will be games to get there and play together. It is done sometimes by creating a thread or  a new like "Multi-player sessions this weekend".

Also, you don't have to code the calendar as i'm sure that doing a quick search like "PHP Interactive Scheduler" you can find lots of calendars already coded. And you can use google calendar too (easiest way XD).

Also, making it visible in-game or making the calendar send dynamic alerts to the clients would be a point too.

[Omega]

While I fear a calendar is not a strong long-term solution for multiplayer (rather, we need publicity!), it may help on the short term. However, a schedule would probably be a more space-conservative and versatile way to implement this feature instead of displaying a full calendar somehow.

We could have an XML hosted online which stores two things for each entry: a date and time (in UTC) and a description. The multiplayer lobby would then display a short list of upcoming events which have not yet completed (say, no more than an hour past the date and time in the XML). This would prevent the need to edit this file too frequently (since the game itself opts not to display old events). The displayed text is simply the stored description in that XML file.

For example, the XML file might look like:

Code: [Select]

<events>
<event>
<!-- 1 January 1970 at 12:00 -->
<when>
1970-01-01T12:00
</when>
<what>
A game for time travelers only
</what>
</event>
<event>
<!-- This Friday at 18:00 -->
<when>
2013-08-23T18:00
</when>
<what>
Multiplayer megafest!
</what>
</event>
</events>   
As we can see, the date is formatted in ISO 8601. We could either assume all dates are correctly formatted (in which case, we could use regex or even explicitly character positions to parse the date and time), or we could throw out invalid dates.

In game, we'd just have a small column near the IRC chat (possibilities include embedding it directly into the chat, a rigid column with scrollbars, or a collapsible box). This example would simply display:

2013-08-23 at 18:00:
   Multiplayer megafest!

The older entry would be ignored, since we're well past the Linux epoch by now. It would be preferable to display the date and time in-game in the user's timezone instead of UTC, to avoid confusion. Otherwise, we should explicitly state "UTC" on the date and time. Optionally, we could also rewrite the date for recent days. For example, for an event that happens on the current day, we'd simply say "today". The next day would say "tomorrow". We could even say things like "This Friday" for days that are in the current week. Options could allow for the user to tweak the display format (we could let them choose their own format in a strftime compatible string).

[biel]

Yes, making publicity is the way to go, but think about a new user. A new user that enters megaglest.org for first time:

• Reads game description
• Downloads the game
• Look at the options in the menu
• He think: It can be played online!
• Enters the lobby
• Hello?
• -No asnwer-
• Anybody here?
• -No asnwer-
• Closes the game
• He forget about the game. It becomes another useless software for him.

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

[-Archmage-]

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

For a lot of us the multiplayer isn't very fun.. the reason Megaglest isn't growing anymore is cause the content is the same, and each engine release is bringing less and less noticeable changes.

With a community as small as MG's a calender should help a lot.

[biel]

I think the same as you. I've posted suggestions related to this in the forum: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=9081.0
The problem its currently a great part of the strategy in-game is being fast doing "click" instead of the real strategy.
Anyway, this is offtopic.

Tanks to be agree with me!!

[MoLAoS]

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

For a lot of us the multiplayer isn't very fun.. the reason Megaglest isn't growing anymore is cause the content is the same, and each engine release is bringing less and less noticeable changes.

With a community as small as MG's a calender should help a lot.

Well most commercial games have the same content as they started with, too. Like Broodwar. Of course it has a huge player base and tons of great custom maps, too.

[-Archmage-]

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

For a lot of us the multiplayer isn't very fun.. the reason Megaglest isn't growing anymore is cause the content is the same, and each engine release is bringing less and less noticeable changes.

With a community as small as MG's a calender should help a lot.

Well most commercial games have the same content as they started with, too. Like Broodwar. Of course it has a huge player base and tons of great custom maps, too.

MG's content isn't of very high quality though, especially in the field of animation. (no offense to the creators) The gameplay is encouraged to be short and rather un-epic, and the techtrees don't expand any further than original Glest. My friend played Glest a bit and he got addicted for a little while, then I tried to show him MG and he thought it was just weird, completely lacking the tone of original Glest. Obviously something's different.

[biel]

Yes but the commercial games do lots of publicity and get more players very fast, especially if the game is free.

Where have you seen "Megaglest 1.8 released on December 2013" or something like that?. Most commercial games get notices eveywhere in the web.

[MoLAoS]

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

For a lot of us the multiplayer isn't very fun.. the reason Megaglest isn't growing anymore is cause the content is the same, and each engine release is bringing less and less noticeable changes.

With a community as small as MG's a calender should help a lot.

Well most commercial games have the same content as they started with, too. Like Broodwar. Of course it has a huge player base and tons of great custom maps, too.

MG's content isn't of very high quality though, especially in the field of animation. (no offense to the creators) The gameplay is encouraged to be short and rather un-epic, and the techtrees don't expand any further than original Glest. My friend played Glest a bit and he got addicted for a little while, then I tried to show him MG and he thought it was just weird, completely lacking the tone of original Glest. Obviously something's different.

The thing about original Glest is that its not historical strategy, and ancient history games are perhaps the most common of all RTS. And also its art assets are massively higher in quality than any of the mods. They are somewhat comparable to 0AD minus the texture stuff 0AD has. If all the assets were of similar philosophy and quality, even having MG level graphics wouldn't necessarily be an issue, but its extremely jarring to see Glest assets in the same game as Megapack ones.

[-Archmage-]

And that's rhe reason of the limited number of players in Megaglest. Think about it.

For a lot of us the multiplayer isn't very fun.. the reason Megaglest isn't growing anymore is cause the content is the same, and each engine release is bringing less and less noticeable changes.

With a community as small as MG's a calender should help a lot.

Well most commercial games have the same content as they started with, too. Like Broodwar. Of course it has a huge player base and tons of great custom maps, too.

MG's content isn't of very high quality though, especially in the field of animation. (no offense to the creators) The gameplay is encouraged to be short and rather un-epic, and the techtrees don't expand any further than original Glest. My friend played Glest a bit and he got addicted for a little while, then I tried to show him MG and he thought it was just weird, completely lacking the tone of original Glest. Obviously something's different.

The thing about original Glest is that its not historical strategy, and ancient history games are perhaps the most common of all RTS. And also its art assets are massively higher in quality than any of the mods. They are somewhat comparable to 0AD minus the texture stuff 0AD has. If all the assets were of similar philosophy and quality, even having MG level graphics wouldn't necessarily be an issue, but its extremely jarring to see Glest assets in the same game as Megapack ones.

I agree, the factions don't mix together nicely at all. This is something I hoped to fix with megaglest refit, but alas development on that is currently frozen.

[tomreyn]

What was this topic about again?

[-Archmage-]

It started as a suggestion to help MG multiplayer be more friendly and now we've branched out into other reasons.

[biel]

What was this topic about again?

Look at the first post ^^