Re: score graphs
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That would make it a mass of rather indifferentiable gray lines.

A more interesting feature would be a gray line matching the highest one, so you get a graph of what the maximum value was for the entire game, and where you stand relative to that, but the actual line does not represent any single player, but a composite of all players. Obviously, if the gray line is on top of your line, the player currently setting the line is you. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah yes, this is better. Actually, showing two gray lines - the minumum and the maximum, would be just about perfect.

Re: score graphs
 

Or three - the maximum, the minimum (and if that line is on top of yours, heh heh heh), and either the average or the median. They wouldn't need to be gray - say bright red for the maximum, dark blue for minimum, gray for median, and white for you.

Re: score graphs
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why does everything always have to be a patriotic American red, white, and blue? Be bold. Go for the retro-nostalgic combo of cyan, magenta, and yellow! If anyone questions your taste in colors (or sanity), you can tell them you're being considerate towards the minority of color-blind strategy gamers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

-- Arryn, founding (and sole) member of the National Association for the Advancement of Retro Colors (NAARC)

Re: score graphs
 

I like the idea of a maximum(composit)-line, it doesn't give away too much specific player info, but at the same time it provides some usefull info.

The minimum-line might not be that interesting, since it would just be zero after the first player is dead. One could make it the minimum of all non-zero player-stats, but then it would just show the stats of the current almost-dead player.

The average/median-line would be a bit odd as well. You could average over all non-zero values and it might just work. But it would make some funny jumps whenever someone close to dying finally bites it.

All in all I would still prefer this min/max/average approach to the current all or nothing system.

Another idea would be to use the current system but only update the scores every Xth turn, where X is some player-controlled integer. This way you would get a snapshot of the values once in a while, but you wouldn't know if the different stats are rising fast or slowly decaying etc.

With the --scoredumb command all these ideas should be possible to code, including a feature that enables the host to distribute the computed info to the players in some usable format. Might even look nice, and I would certainly give praise to the person (YOU ?) who completes this little exercise.

[ August 05, 2004, 20:25: Message edited by: Ivan Pedroso ]

Re: score graphs
 

Great replies, glad I brought this thread back up...

I guess it occurred to me that maybe something could be tweaked. During my first MP game, when I noticed a couple of the nations really climbing fast in the land grab and became rather concerned. It can, almost, drive your own strategy seeing things like this (this is a newb approach of course, but it could cause reactionary strategy like you were in some type of footrace!).

Krool

Re: score graphs
 

A variation Ivan’s suggestion of infrequent updates with the current system would be to time shift the graphs so that the “present” time of the graphs is actually N turns ago, where N is settable at game creation.

This way, by the time a change appears on the score graphs things have already moved on somewhat. The land grabbing player may have had time to consolidate his position, or the player who lost a large army may have recovered a bit.

A player with a good idea of what is going on in the game and scouts all over should be able to extrapolate from the graphs and knowledge of what has happened recently, whereas a turtle in the corner would be less likely to be able to make decisive use of the information.

Re: score graphs
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Red, white, and blue, are hardly purely American colors. As examples which immediately spring to mind, both the French and British flags are composed of those same colors.