I have been tinkering with the code of phpDiplomacy and I have a patch that will allow for the maximum time per round to be set to a value other than 1 day. Would this be of interest to the developers? If so, where should I send it?
As an aside, I read in the FAQ on the main site that the rules are not quite the same as the official Diplomacy rules. If I were to correct any of these differences, would the developers be interested in these patches as well?
Thanks for this software. I found it while looking for something that would help me run some games for friends.
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I'm not a developer on this project, so I can't help with getting this patch into the codebase, but I would be very interested in the patch myself as I have just been looking into adding this functionality myself. Could you email me your patch?
Thanks
Tom
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Just when you are talking about game speed a newbie question if you please?
Just what do you mean by 24 hours/phase??
Is it like
example 1
autumn 24 h
spring 24 h
or
example 2
spring 24 h
retreat and disbanding phase 24 h (if necessary)
autumn 24 h
retreat and disbanding phase 24 h (if necessary)
gaining and losing unit phase 24 h (if necessary)
I just started a game and it seems more like example 1 but say if we have a
24 hours/phase, How many hours for retrat and gaining phase?
what if they are not necessary?? Could you then when creating a game choose
if they should always be there or not?
Also I think I saw a countdown clock but now I cannot see one?
I hope you have some time to answer my question....
/MensSana
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I can't accept any patches you've made recently unfortunately, because I've been working on phpDip myself and the changes made for 0.8 have affected just about everything in some way.
I am thinking about adding an option for variable phase length myself, but if I did I would make it so that you could only choose normal or extended length, where extended length is, say, 3 days long.
This way the difference would be clear both to the game creator and the people joining the game.
Anything more flexible than that would impact on usability, which isn't a tradeoff worth making.
Let me know of any modifications you make after 0.8's release! Regards,
Kestas
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I'm curious as to why you think it's a tradeoff not worth making. It would make it easier to get players together for a speedy game if the turn limit were set for 60 minutes, and for people who are going on vacation/travel a lot/etc up to a week might be appropriate (it would also go well with people who are used to playing diplomacy by mail). I think having a selection list with choices like:
1 hour } Or just one option
3 hours } for ninety minutes
6 hours
12 hours
24 hours
3 days
7 days
Obviously you could just get a group of people together who voluntarily get their moves done earlier, but having an option displayed on the game page helps players interested in these games find each other, and I think that's part of the purpose of phpdiplomacy.
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> I'm curious as to why you think it's a tradeoff not worth making.
If you're new to phpDip it's easy to think how a blank box in the "new game" form is going to be intimidating, and it'd be hard to know what the generally accepted values for it are.
phpDip used to support this feature, but so many people would enter in unrealistic times and just create games that would only get deleted soon after. A simple dropdown menu of sane values will stop users making mistakes and make it easier for members to choose game length when joining. Also three options would be easier to represent with icons than a numeric option
If you want turns that are shorter than 24 hours you should get players to finalize their orders quicker. First off having less than 24 hour turns means you need additional scheduling; if a turn is processed every 6 hours what happens if a turn ends just after you've gone to bed? If it's processed every 1 hour then you're really screwed. 12 hours doesn't really seem like that much of a benefit; either users will miss turns or they'll be finalizing within 12 hours anyway.
For over 24 hours 1, 3 and 7 days seem like reasonable values to me, and that's probably something like what'll be implemented.
Regards,
Kestas
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I notice that the actual implementation only allows for between 1 and 3 days.
Two questions:
a) Is there a reason you decided that 7 days was too long?
b) If I downloaded the code and ran it on my own server, is getting the longer phases simply a matter of increasing that limit in gamecreate.php, or are there more changes that I would have to make?
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> a) Is there a reason you decided that 7 days was too long
Not really, reasonable defaults were chosen in the context of the existing sites we have.
> b) If I downloaded the code and ran it on my own server, is
> getting the longer phases simply a matter of increasing that
> limit in gamecreate.php, or are there more changes that I would
> have to make?
As far as I can remember it's all done in gamecreate.php . You should also check out pD_Games.phaseLength in the database; that datatype will have limits which won't allow "extreme" values without modification. The cut-off may be 256 hours or something like that.
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Regardless of how long is "too long" and how long is "too short," wouldn't it make sense to allow a user to specify shorter time limits for the retreats and unit-placing phases?
For example, perhaps it makes sense to have a game that has a 24-hour main phase, but only a 12-hour retreats phase, and then a 12-hour unit-placing phase. Ideally these could be set to be shorter, such as a 1-hour or half-hour retreats phase, but even 12-hours would help speed the game along.
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It's hard to think of a way of doing it nicely within the current interface (so that people aren't confused by what the different time-outs mean), and also the idea is that in the shorter phases people finalize and the game continues instantly
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* End of phase: 23 hours
* Winner-takes-all
* Diplomacy phase: 24 hours; Retreats phase: 0.5 hours; Unit-building phase: 0.5 hours
* Pot: 1378
* Players:
o Kainer (135) as England (Finalized): 3 supply centers
o ag7433 (300) as France (Not Finalized): 6 supply centers
o BlackKnight (643) as Italy (Not Finalized): 5 supply centers
o TheWizard (924) as Germany (Finalized): 6 supply centers
o mapleleaf (855) as Austria (Finalized): 5 supply centers
o Dunecat (501) as Turkey (Finalized): 4 supply centers
o DingleberryJones (3250) as Russia (Not Finalized): 5 supply centers
* Open game
I'm also suggesting we implement phases shorter than one hour. :D
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I have been tinkering with the code of phpDiplomacy and I have a patch that will allow for the maximum time per round to be set to a value other than 1 day. Would this be of interest to the developers? If so, where should I send it?
As an aside, I read in the FAQ on the main site that the rules are not quite the same as the official Diplomacy rules. If I were to correct any of these differences, would the developers be interested in these patches as well?
Thanks for this software. I found it while looking for something that would help me run some games for friends.
I'm not a developer on this project, so I can't help with getting this patch into the codebase, but I would be very interested in the patch myself as I have just been looking into adding this functionality myself. Could you email me your patch?
Thanks
Tom
Just when you are talking about game speed a newbie question if you please?
Just what do you mean by 24 hours/phase??
Is it like
example 1
autumn 24 h
spring 24 h
or
example 2
spring 24 h
retreat and disbanding phase 24 h (if necessary)
autumn 24 h
retreat and disbanding phase 24 h (if necessary)
gaining and losing unit phase 24 h (if necessary)
I just started a game and it seems more like example 1 but say if we have a
24 hours/phase, How many hours for retrat and gaining phase?
what if they are not necessary?? Could you then when creating a game choose
if they should always be there or not?
Also I think I saw a countdown clock but now I cannot see one?
I hope you have some time to answer my question....
/MensSana
Hi Joseph,
I can't accept any patches you've made recently unfortunately, because I've been working on phpDip myself and the changes made for 0.8 have affected just about everything in some way.
I am thinking about adding an option for variable phase length myself, but if I did I would make it so that you could only choose normal or extended length, where extended length is, say, 3 days long.
This way the difference would be clear both to the game creator and the people joining the game.
Anything more flexible than that would impact on usability, which isn't a tradeoff worth making.
Let me know of any modifications you make after 0.8's release! Regards,
Kestas
I'm curious as to why you think it's a tradeoff not worth making. It would make it easier to get players together for a speedy game if the turn limit were set for 60 minutes, and for people who are going on vacation/travel a lot/etc up to a week might be appropriate (it would also go well with people who are used to playing diplomacy by mail). I think having a selection list with choices like:
1 hour } Or just one option
3 hours } for ninety minutes
6 hours
12 hours
24 hours
3 days
7 days
Obviously you could just get a group of people together who voluntarily get their moves done earlier, but having an option displayed on the game page helps players interested in these games find each other, and I think that's part of the purpose of phpdiplomacy.
> I'm curious as to why you think it's a tradeoff not worth making.
If you're new to phpDip it's easy to think how a blank box in the "new game" form is going to be intimidating, and it'd be hard to know what the generally accepted values for it are.
phpDip used to support this feature, but so many people would enter in unrealistic times and just create games that would only get deleted soon after. A simple dropdown menu of sane values will stop users making mistakes and make it easier for members to choose game length when joining. Also three options would be easier to represent with icons than a numeric option
If you want turns that are shorter than 24 hours you should get players to finalize their orders quicker. First off having less than 24 hour turns means you need additional scheduling; if a turn is processed every 6 hours what happens if a turn ends just after you've gone to bed? If it's processed every 1 hour then you're really screwed. 12 hours doesn't really seem like that much of a benefit; either users will miss turns or they'll be finalizing within 12 hours anyway.
For over 24 hours 1, 3 and 7 days seem like reasonable values to me, and that's probably something like what'll be implemented.
Regards,
Kestas
I notice that the actual implementation only allows for between 1 and 3 days.
Two questions:
a) Is there a reason you decided that 7 days was too long?
b) If I downloaded the code and ran it on my own server, is getting the longer phases simply a matter of increasing that limit in gamecreate.php, or are there more changes that I would have to make?
> a) Is there a reason you decided that 7 days was too long
Not really, reasonable defaults were chosen in the context of the existing sites we have.
> b) If I downloaded the code and ran it on my own server, is
> getting the longer phases simply a matter of increasing that
> limit in gamecreate.php, or are there more changes that I would
> have to make?
As far as I can remember it's all done in gamecreate.php . You should also check out pD_Games.phaseLength in the database; that datatype will have limits which won't allow "extreme" values without modification. The cut-off may be 256 hours or something like that.
Regardless of how long is "too long" and how long is "too short," wouldn't it make sense to allow a user to specify shorter time limits for the retreats and unit-placing phases?
For example, perhaps it makes sense to have a game that has a 24-hour main phase, but only a 12-hour retreats phase, and then a 12-hour unit-placing phase. Ideally these could be set to be shorter, such as a 1-hour or half-hour retreats phase, but even 12-hours would help speed the game along.
It's hard to think of a way of doing it nicely within the current interface (so that people aren't confused by what the different time-outs mean), and also the idea is that in the shorter phases people finalize and the game continues instantly
There are three phases, right? Diplomacy, retreats, and unit-placing.
So what if gamecreate.php had three text boxes instead of one for "Hours per phase:"?
Diplomacy phase length: ___
Retreats phase length: ___
Unit-placing phase length: ___
On gamelistings.php, a game might look like this:
King of Gunboat Autumn 1903, Diplomacy
* End of phase: 23 hours
* Winner-takes-all
* Diplomacy phase: 24 hours; Retreats phase: 0.5 hours; Unit-building phase: 0.5 hours
* Pot: 1378
* Players:
o Kainer (135) as England (Finalized): 3 supply centers
o ag7433 (300) as France (Not Finalized): 6 supply centers
o BlackKnight (643) as Italy (Not Finalized): 5 supply centers
o TheWizard (924) as Germany (Finalized): 6 supply centers
o mapleleaf (855) as Austria (Finalized): 5 supply centers
o Dunecat (501) as Turkey (Finalized): 4 supply centers
o DingleberryJones (3250) as Russia (Not Finalized): 5 supply centers
* Open game
I'm also suggesting we implement phases shorter than one hour. :D