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Some Host-specific ideas:

I host a lot of games, and I've come up with these ideas:

1) When hosting, the host should have the plugin tab available
It's crazy that guests in my games can see what plugins I have active from the pregame screen, while I, as host, cannot! Rediculous. I have to go to options to check. The host should be able to check settings without leaving the pregame screen.

2) Check the lobby without leaving the game
How many times have we had to send someone out to the lobby to see if so-and-so is still on? Let's be able to check right from the pregame screen, and even possibly initiate a chat with a person in the lobby. At the least, it would be nice to see if the person we're waiting for is actually still on pmnet, or whichever server the game was on.

3) Lock a specific person out of a game (PermaBoot)
Occasionally some real a-hole joins a game I'm hosting and begins screaming obscenities and insults in all caps (sound like anyone you know?)

It's possible to t00b the guy, but he can come back. I can lock the game, but then no one else can join. So: it'd be nice to be able to lock a specific person out of a game from the pregame screen. Not as final as a .wank; if I were to rehost the person could rejoin.

This would also be good when hosting tournament match games when non-tournament people keep joining the game. Having random people join continuously can prevent the game from starting on time, or it may fill up the game and keep legitimate tournament players from being able to join.

4) To fully wank a person from the pregame screen
For that matter, it would also be nice to be able to fully wank a person from the pregame screen. Though I've only ever wanked one guy -- Placid2, for exactly this kind of behaviour (spelling for you English readers ) -- having to dump the game, wank him, and rehost was disrupting to the game.

5) Check player logins in the pregame screen
For all those times when you want to see who so-an'-so really is... whether out of curiosity or to verify identity for tournament matches.

[editing this in:]
6) Being able to see more than 8 measly players in the list in pregame
Hey, seeing more players is kinda nice, isn't it? Myth has a tiny window (I can fit about 6 of them on my monitor). People had smaller monitors when Myth came out; now I see no reason not to be able to see more than 8 players. See the screenshot a few posts down.[/edit]

Frumius wrote: 1) When hosting, the host should have the plugin tab available
It's crazy that guests in my games can see what plugins I have active from the pregame screen, while I, as host, cannot! Rediculous. I have to go to options to check. The host should be able to check settings without leaving the pregame screen.

And where will this tab be? That space is taken up by button for the host...

Myrd wrote: And where will this tab be? That space is taken up by button for the host...

Good point, there is no room for a plugin tab for the host. However, the host's screen does have those buttons... it could be a button, such as in this mock-up showing the plugin options without leaving the pregame area:



Perhaps the Plugin Button would say "Plugins" when you were in regular Pregame view to indicate that pressing the button would switch to Plugin view. It would then toggle to "Pregame" or another word when you were in the Plugin view to indicate the button would switch the screen back to normal Pregame view. This is a detail that can be worked out for a feature that would be useful.

Ideas Using Tabs
(These are ideas for the Host's pregame screen)

This image shows one possibility for showing the main game options:




This is how it might look displaying the active plugins (I also expanded the game window to allow room for the other ideas from my post above):



My other wishlist items above would also require interface tweaking for the options of checking the lobby (#2 above), wanking (#4 above) and the "PermaBoot" of blocking someone from joining just the currently hosted games (#3 above).
Checking the player login (#5 above) might be the same as checking when you're out in the lobby: a double-click.

weeeeell I sound like a broken record....he he he
colourmap with more resolution?

even oak's preview of sharpness to colour map looked great...

less lag with bigger unit sprites?

How come your player list in-game is so long Frum? Mine's only 8 players down

Not only that, he has 2 down arrows on the far right!

But on a practical note, not having the start game on the far right is displeasing, to me anyway...

Though a plugins tab would be convenient for the host, I don't see how it would add any particular functionality. A list of currently active plugins is already just 2 clicks away. Sure you have to leave the game chat, but it doesn't clear or anything. Some of those other ideas could be pretty handy though...

-DA

Baron LeDant wrote:How come your player list in-game is so long Frum? Mine's only 8 players down

Wait, is this the wrong forum? OMG, I see -- you're using the old version!

Btw, is this my Dant I'm speaking with? Fellow Imp?

DA wrote:Not only that, he has 2 down arrows on the far right!

Choice is a good thing!

---

Heh, seriously, it's just a mockup. I made it a year or two ago because this incredible bunch of players happened by on that Imp Night and I couldn't fit them all in with a reg screenshot! I never noticed I left the two down arrows! How funny. We need an update!

By pure luck, the thing just happens to have that extra area beneath the map's splash screen that would be ideal for my ideas for text info or chat.

6) Being able to see more than 8 measly players in the list in pregame
Hey, seeing more than 8 players is kinda nice, isn't it? (see mockup above). Myth has a tiny window -- I can fit about 6 of them on my monitor. People had smaller monitors when Myth came out; but I see no reason not to be able to see more than 8 players now with current display resolutions. Omg, it's Another Idea! I'll add it to my list in the above post. Making the Myth window large enough to see more players has the added benefit of making room for that handy text area in the middle of my mockup and even a couple new buttons...

DA wrote:But on a practical note, not having the start game on the far right is displeasing, to me anyway...

That's a matter of getting used to a new interface, but this is in no way anything other than a sketch to show what I was thinking. Buttons and things could go anywhere... but -- I did find that the tabs as they look now couldn't fit on the left side of that splash screen as they do currently for guests because it left too little room for the buttons on either side of the tabs. To include the tabs I had to shrink the existing buttons a tad and move them over to the left side.

Any of my other ideas in my list above, other than double-clicking to check identy (login), would require extra buttons, too, so some things would have to look different.

Death's Avatar wrote:Though a plugins tab would be convenient for the host, I don't see how it would add any particular functionality. A list of currently active plugins is already just 2 clicks away...

Ahh, but -- sometimes after checking the plugins or setting doing it this way, the host (meaning myself) will accidentally hit "OK" instead of "Cancel," which unchecks anyone in the pregame lobby who hasn't used Permacheck. This is enough of a hassle by itself, but if any of the now unchecked people were afk it can take some time to get going again. Yes, you can start a game with afk people, because they may have joined someone specifically so they could be afk and still remain with the game. I do this myself occasionally. In short, I think having the plugin info available right there in pregame would be useful.

PS I've edited this post this morning about 69.7 times!

Actually, most of the other things can be done if players had access to metaserver .commands from the game lobby. I investigated this, and it requires some big changes on the Myth side and also some changes on the metaserver side.

Given the sorry state of the metaservers right now (you can't even open a playmyth account), that's pretty much a no-go.

Still need more programmers, colormapers (must be highly skilled) and Dis mappers. Some of us have been at this for a few years and we need some help.

Also the biggest thing we are looking for right now is a HIGHLY SKILLED modelmaker/animator that makes all thier own stuff FROM SCRATCH. we have a lot of concept art that needs to be turned into 3d models, so we can make units out of them for myth.

in this thread ive seen a few people who sound like they would be good additions to the DEV team. ANyways if interested E mail us with links to your work or samples to:
DigitalPeaches@yahoo.com

-Renwood

well, you could do permaboot and plugins list with . commands
i mean, I know hidden commands are not ideal, they do work without adding to the interface.

Permaboot could just be all client side, and if the user tries to join again, they get a firewall error or something.

When viewing films, it would cool be if you could see only what one team was able to see. That way you would be able to tell if flanks snuck by far enough to not be seen or if the other team was too noob to look at map.
Also, the selected team would be the only team with caps lock working on their units, so you could easily tell 2 teams apart.

One thing that I always thought would be good is a way for players in lobby to "tell" players in game (or the host) something...and visa versa. Many a time a host is unaware that they have a limit on players, games full and you need to tell a player in there something important, ect ect. Perhapes even a way for us in lobby to see which game a specific player is in.

I also understand that this could have its downfalls such as annoying players yelling in a Mazz game "MAZZ SUX!" and stuff.

Roadwyrm wrote:One thing that I always thought would be good is a way for players in lobby to "tell" players in game (or the host) something...and visa versa. Many a time a host is unaware that they have a limit on players, games full and you need to tell a player in there something important, ect ect. Perhapes even a way for us in lobby to see which game a specific player is in.

I also understand that this could have its downfalls such as annoying players yelling in a Mazz game "MAZZ SUX!" and stuff.

You can now check the host, so I imagine checking the players is an achievable thing. To communicate in/out of games though...it gets asked for all the time and it's just never gonna happen.

The Elfoid wrote:

Roadwyrm wrote:One thing that I always thought would be good is a way for players in lobby to "tell" players in game (or the host) something...and visa versa. Many a time a host is unaware that they have a limit on players, games full and you need to tell a player in there something important, ect ect. Perhapes even a way for us in lobby to see which game a specific player is in.

I also understand that this could have its downfalls such as annoying players yelling in a Mazz game "MAZZ SUX!" and stuff.

You can now check the host, so I imagine checking the players is an achievable thing. To communicate in/out of games though...it gets asked for all the time and it's just never gonna happen.

Probably because of the whole "Lobby is on server" "Game is on host's machine" issue. That's sure not a coding task I would want to volunteer for.