~/* Witchhunt Game 2 Signups *\~ A Farewell to QTs

Hey guys. Welcome to... the future!



Moscone now has an integrated communication system, something between a forum, a chat, and twitter. This has been built from the ground up as an ideal platform for mafia, specifically Witchhunt. The game logic has full control over the various chats, including who can view them, who can post in them, and automated "mod-messages" that bridge the game between the discussion and the game log.

Not only are all players properly governed by this new system, but the mod and anonymous spectators as well.



But it's not just designed for the game on the backend. In addition to highlighting posts made by yourself or the mod, Players can enable colored filters that highlight the posts of players of known team affiliations. (such as Witches highlighting posts of their coven-mates) The game logic meticulously maintains these new view permissions for each player, and all players are given full access at the game's end as shown in the screenshot above. (Which should make for fascinating re-reads...) Filters exist for team affiliation, role allies (King/Queen/Duke, Inq/Henchman/Oracle), and Court membership.



You can additionally use the @ symbol to direct your post to a specific other player, highlighting the post on their view and notifying them. Also, including certain hastags (#vote, #unvote, #watch, #unwatch) with appropriate parameters will automatically issue those game commands, in addition to being bolded automatically.

Speaking of, tags for bold, italics, and underline are accepted. I couldn't decide whether to use HTML or forum tags, so it accepts them interchangeably.

The copy button generates a notepad-friendly textdump of the current window's entire log. The search button lets you search for posts with a string, specify a post range, posts by author, or posts by target. (@) The post count is automatically displayed in all views.

The search is client-side, which means it is instantaneous with no server-constraint limitations, unlike a forum.
The messages are stored permanently, so the history is absolute and universal, unlike a chat.
A message preview can be rendered immediately straight into the message view, unlike a forum or a chat.

The moderator can specify an anti-spam time limit for making more than 2 posts. ("You have to wait X seconds/minutes from your second-to-last post.") This can encourage players to make fewer, bigger posts, without being restrictive and preventing EBWOP. In other words, less rigid than a forum, more structured than IRC, and totally customizable either way.



Of course, games don't have to use this new chat. Games can continue to use a traditional forum thread if they so choose, and just use these new private chats as a replacement for QTs. I am looking to run at least one game of each type, as well as games of various sizes, across participating forums in the near future.

All players have their own personal chats for notes as well, and the mod can access any of these. (As well as the general public once the game is over.)



Additionally, there are several new features beyond the chat. A whole lot of code relating to Pagans and various other roles has been re-written to have fewer potential problems, and various other backend bugs. On the front end, new game log search features exists, as well as vote confirmation dialogue boxes.

There are also some modest changes to the game itself, which I will detail in the first reply.



With the fine folks of DLP, I am looking to run a relatively fast game in the very near future, like say now. A preamble to other impending games, if you will. Signups start now, and the game may start as soon as tomorrow Night with 48-hours cycles.

I am intending to run a 16 player game with at least 2 replacements. More players are welcome (the max is still 30) but this is intended as a smaller, faster game for active players.

Signups are active on Moscone.

The idea here is that the more active players can go ahead and get involved with this and enjoy the new features while Lungs finalizes his game and gets it off the ground.

-----------------

Game changes as promised:


So, some stuff changed! It's a lot of small changes, and while honestly they are almost all smaller than they seem, collectively they make for some pretty interesting differences. Thanks for being such good testers and facilitating such fast progress.

The King's Court now only kills on even Nights. This is the biggest change, and means that the Witches get 40% of the kills, up from 33%. Note that the informational and leadership advantages of the Court for town are unchanged.

The King now selects his targets at the end of Night 1, and has no penalty for failing to do so. The Queen activates at the end of Night 1 as well, accordingly. This change has a trivial impact on the game in theory, but in practice should make it much smoother for everyone involved. (The previous change makes this possible.) This has the happy side-effect of cleaning up and simplifying all interactions with the Duke.

The Gravedigger now gets his information at the start of night. This just makes more sense in terms of both gameplay and theme. It does make Witch gravediggers slightly better.

Cupid now learns who the Village Lovers are at the start of Night 1, and only protects them on following Nights. This precise Cupid/Lovers nerf solves a lot of their degenerate interaction with the King's Court.

Pagans can now *only* go off at their "optimal" intended time. This is more of a rules clean up than anything. No one really understood why the "immediate" option existed, so it's gone entirely.

The Twilight Pagan cannot go off Day 1. Stating this explicitly just clears up so many things. This and other roles have also had lots of general rules text cleanup to improve clarity.

The Vigilante role has been changed to "Whenever the King's Court successfully kills a member of your team, you may kill a target the following Night." The new Vigilante is basically Batman. He comes out strong when your side is taking hits, which lets him seem extra powerful without being as condusive to winning as one might expect.

The Thief has been removed. And replaced with...

New role: Entertainer--"The first Night at least half the players are dead, you may select three other living players. If they are on different teams, the odd-man-out is killed. If not, you are killed." The Entertainer is an alternate flavor of Hunter that does a lot of good things for the game. At face value it seems like a random gamble for town, but in practice players almost always go into the mid-game with some good ideas of suspect dichotomies. As long as the Entertainer can be "right enough", they wield a "smart-kill" that homes in on an enemy.

The role ordering (which roles are included at various size games) has been shaken up dramatically in the 15+ range. Basically, the King and his Court now show up in smaller games, Spies are properly aligned with Oracle/Henchman, and some powerful Villager roles like Martyr and Cupid have been pushed back significantly.

That's it! You can review the example game logs in Moscone if you are curious about anything. Or just ask!

Current Player List:
1. Ollie (Gambit)
2. Eidolonic
3. Aekiel
4. Castiel
5. Bill Door
6. bob99
7. Sesc
8. klackerz
9. Kalas
10. Uncle Stojil
11. guljons
12. Ashaya
13. KaiDASH
14. Menace
15. StrikerLee
16. dhulli
17. Geabe
18. Moridin

Replacements:
1. jwlk
2.

 

FUUUUUUCKING IIIIINNN

 

16 players, quick game...

I normally can't stand 24 hour days, but if the right playerlist happens, yeah, alright.

I'm in.

 

Yeah, this looks awesome. In.

 

In.

/tenchar

 

Count me in.

The only problem I can see with this is the lack of mobile accessibility. I don't know about everyone else, but a lot of the time I check up on the thread and QTs on my phone when I'm not at home for a large part of the day. And since moscone runs on flash I can't do that. But there isn't really anything you can do about that.

 

[12:58] <Eidolonic> the problem I have with the chats in the client
[12:59] <Eidolonic> is that people can't just chat in QT's from mobiles and stuff
[12:59] <Eidolonic> but it's a minor thing I guess
[13:00] <ChocolatePi> yeah, but this is a big stepping stone to a mobile version
[13:00] <ChocolatePi> like this infrastructure was the big thing that had to exist
[13:00] <Eidolonic> fair enough.


So it sounds like he's working towards making the game fully mobile in the future somehow. Which would be pretty neat.

 

I'll get in too.

 

I am in. Let's hope it goes better than the previous one for me.

 

I will play every game Eid is in until I get to take scum Eid down. Sign me up!

 

Oh god.

I'm the worst scum, seriously. Still haven't won a game...ever... as scum.

 

Registration is active on Moscone.

Oh, and the cycle will probably be 36 hour Days, 12 hour Nights. Activity patterns in previous games suggested that 12 hour Nights are more than acceptable. (especially given Court changes and again for a smaller game)

The sad irony is that while this messaging system was a critical step towards any mobile Witchhunt application, it does mean that the current web version is exclusively Flash-based. That means no iOS access, and Android will have trouble with the expanded size.

As always, players are free to contact me with both temporary or chronic access issues; I will do what I can to make sure you can get your stuff in.

 

I let it default to the max with the intention of changing it as we get close. 16 is a general target moreso than a limit; if there's enough of an interest (including replacements) to get 17 or 18, that's fine.

 

Registered. I will have a little less time than usual, but I'll be active.

 

Maaaaan. You picked the absolute worst time to make this game :l.
I really wanted to play, but I won't have access to a computer this week, only my phone.

 

Would you like to be a replacement then, pending a timeframe that works for you?

 

Sounds good. Looking forward to this.

 

Yah, I would. Actually, thats what I was going to post in that post, but I guess I got side tracked D:

Please sign me up as a replacement