Need for Speed...

[Moonknight]

Any one want to play a speed game today (Dec. 12th)? I am in Central time zone, available from 1-3 or so...

Looking for a group of people to do speed games in the future too, might be easier to set a date a few days away that works...

I can't stand this waiting around!

[ezras]

Yeah the waiting around is torture, 8+ days between games.. argh. I would be up for a speed game with some notice. But I would also be up for playing a turn at a set time every day. So Player A plays at 1pm, B 2pm, C 3pm, etc. etc. But there speed games as they exist now are tough, sitting at my computer for more than 1hr is not feasible. A middle ground would be nice.

[nurple]

maybe we could make some smaller maps to facilitate a short game. prob couldn't have more than 2 or 3 people realistically...

[piranha]

Yea most people love to create a epic map that is using the whole map available. We need some fast 1v1 maps.

[KGB]

For me that's because the bigger the map the less role luck plays in determining the winner.

Games on smaller maps are decided more often by the luck of allies with a hero, one lucky battle result (or an unlucky one) etc.

Plus on smaller maps you need the map to be closer to a mirror map to ensure it's well balanced. On larger maps you don't have to be quite as careful because there is time and sheer numbers of ruins/cities for things to even out.

Of the newly created maps in Beta3, the best 1-1 map (or even 4 player FFA) for fast game play by far is the High Seas Combat map created by SnotlinG. It's fun, fast paced (thanks to everything moving at ship speed), wide open (again thanks to all the ship movement) and fairly well balanced.

KGB

[ezras]

KGB,

How far off, or how difficult is it to run bots? So two people could play a big map with computer opponents? I don't know much but I image the programming is tough. Speaking of which why not have a donate button on here somewhere?

[KGB]

Ezras,

Don't ask me, I'm not developing it.

I'd say a *long* way off because that would be the last thing written after everything else was complete because the game is primarily designed for MP.

KGB

[piranha]

Ezras: I would like to have an AI but everything is taking so much time so I have a feeling we wont see an AI unless there is someone else rather than me or snotling who makes it. When I look forwarward on our todo list and our ideas list I get the feeling that we could work on this for years. There are so many fun ideas that could be done with this.

Perhaps we should have a contribute / donate button. Haven't thought about that. Maybe in Beta4 .

[KGB]

Piranha,

I could potentially do an AI. I've done one in Warlords IV and I have the code for DLR to look at the AI there as well for a second AI example.

But a lot depends on how the game code is structured and what access the AI could get to all the game data (it literally needs everything about all players, units, cities, map etc).

The other thing is that I am sure players want an AI that is playing turns *immediately* and not on a 1 hr or 1 day turn around. Since everything runs on your server if you got 4-5 players playing online each with an AI it would probably bog it down to a crawl. So the AI would have to end up being run locally on a players machine and connect back to the server like a player does so that the CPU used was on the players machine. That of course means either a Java or javascript based AI.

KGB

[Versace]

I am willing to play at least 6h from this moment on. I created a game "fairgame2", join if you feel like playing!

I have played xxx hours of Warlord2 back in the day, I am new to Warbarons but I played the tutorials and read Wapredia and forums. I think I will be a decent opponent. If you wanna play some other map that is fine with me too.