score graphs
 

Guys,

Can someone tell what is that mod or whatever that changes the score graph to little banners? I've seen it in some AAR screenshots but for the life of me can't find this thing. Thanks.

Krool

Re: score graphs
 

Might be Dom I. Did you like it?

Re: score graphs
 

yeah, sounds like you've been reading Dominions 1 AARs without noticing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I've seen those screenies too, and like it. While it doesn't show history like line graphs, it shows the current relative quantity better. At least, I think so.

Re: score graphs
 

I guess it was an AAR for Dom1, as I had never played that.

I like both I suppose. The icon-type graph seemed a bit more easier to get precise position, but the histogram provides some important facts about the past and the relative direction things are going.

At least that explains why I couldn't find it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Krool

Re: score graphs
 

Dom2 has a switch called --scoredump which creates a score.html showing how everyone compares. It shows it in straight numbers, but only the one turn. No history data.

So for Online game scores we have two choices. A comparison of everyone for that one turn, or a screen shot of each score graph from inside the game.

I have a request in the "3rd Party Apps Request" thread for someone to write a program that collects those and builds chart data from it. There are many free apps which will create the scoreboard we see if we can feed it those numbers. Or even something else like bars or piecharts. I could ALMOST write something myself to do it if I put some time in it.

Re: score graphs
 

I was asked for an example and realised I had both. http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion/RyanzEye

Im thinking that something that just collects the numbers and puts them in a format that a program like GNUplot will accept could be created to put score graphs into a web dir on linux. It could be added to Mosehansons game webboard

[ July 23, 2004, 04:36: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: score graphs
 

I wanted to revive this thread if only for a second now that I've got more experience (although not much).

I think perhaps that the current score graphs lend people to turn them off because they are too revealing on how powerful someone is in any particular area, often times likely leading to a "gang up on the big guy" mentality.

The old Dom I score graphs, while revealing general position in a certain area, is likely not as damning to a player doing well.

Quick edit: I guess what I am saying, in an abstract sense, is that the old score graphs are like a 1 to 10(?) scale on how someone is doing while the new graphs, comprised of a histogram approach, reveal much more closely the general well-being in a given Category, which poses risks during MP.

Thoughts on this?

Krool

[ August 05, 2004, 04:35: Message edited by: KroolDeath ]

Re: score graphs
 

Personally, I like being able to get some idea of how I'm doing, but do agree that the current graphs mess up MP games something awful.

IMO, the graphs could be improved by showing your relative ranking just as it is now, but with no way to identify the other nations.

Or - there could be spells for determining the relative strengths, one for each area of the graphs. "Scry Research", "Scry Dominion", etc : people could learn the information, but at the cost of a mage's time, and magic gems.

Or, somewhat a la the HoMM series, have a tavern / thieves guild / etc that you could build in your capital. Each one built would give you more information, thus making one decide whether or not to invest the money in it.

But the current mechanism could certainly do with some improvement - while it's good and useful to know that your magic research is by far the lowest in the game, it isn't so useful (in the MP sense) to know _who_ has the best magic gem income, provinces, etc.

Re: score graphs
 

Something that would be very useful - and not hard to implement I would think - is the option that makes the graph color corresponding to every _other_ nation into the same grey (and removed the option to toggle graphs by clicking the flags).

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.

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.