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1

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: January 05, 2017, 09:56:53 am »

It's time for a post mortem on how we did on the top issues for this forum:

Thank you all for the posts!!! I counted over 50 distinct ideas and I've recorded every one. Even though they may be known, the prioritization is useful. I've organized them by the number of distinct posters who supported them (unscientific I know but better than nothing.) Based on that, here are the top 10 (or so):

1. Always-visible game logs (on non-mobile)

YES, this was put into 2.0 for non-mobile. (#8 on the new features list)
https://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?7889-Exiting-Open-Beta-Sunset-of-Goko-Site

2. Automatch

YES, the seeking feature in 2.0. (#6 on the new features list)

3. Kingdom cards on 1st page (esp. if ruins, bane)

YES, in 2.0 the number of displayed piles was upped to 12 for a wide screen resolution from Goko's 10. (#7 on the new features list)
In 2.1 it was further increased to 14 piles. The Ruins pile was relocated by the Curses so it didn't take up a kingdom slot. Some piles such as prizes were consolidated into a single pile
https://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?10154-Release-Notes-v-2-1-with-Adventures

4. Real kingdom generation

YES, in 2.0.41.
https://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?7785-Release-Notes-v-2-0-41

5. Better reconnect

YES. This was improved over multiple releases of the 2.0 beta and overhauled in 2.0.47.

6. Button options instead having to drag

PARTIALLY, for example using the trigger resolution dialog added in 2.1. This was a work in progress.

7. Support Adventures set

YES, in 2.1.

8. VP Counter

YES in 2.0, with updated seeking options in 2.0.46.

9. Blacklist

NO. This (and other social features) would have been released in late Spring 2016, but we heard the license news and had to shut down development.

10. Prevent misclicks

YES in 2.1, when key buttons were relocated to address this.

11. API

NO, because we deemed this less important after a mod was released. It seemed sufficient in the short run to just make sure no code was obfuscated.

12. Who-goes-first adjustments

NO. Again, it certainly would have been implemented in 2016.

13. Rematch

YES in 2.0. (#9 on the new features list)

So we'd managed to get as far as 9.5/13 of these particular requests. Thanks again for all your input.

2

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: May 29, 2015, 02:32:18 am »

if you are interested in joining the closed beta test...

I'll accept people and email them details on Monday.

Or you could just wait, because in a couple weeks we'll open up the beta for everybody to test. :-)

I've posted a summary of our roadmap here:
http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?6715-Version-2-Coming&p=34309#post34309

3

Goko Dominion Online / Re: 2.0 Closed Beta Begins

« on: May 29, 2015, 02:27:21 am »

If you are interested in joining the closed beta test...

I'll accept people and email them details on Monday.

Or you could just wait, because in a couple weeks we'll open up the beta for everybody to test. :-)

I've posted a summary of our roadmap here:
http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?6715-Version-2-Coming&p=34309#post34309

4

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: May 28, 2015, 09:00:43 pm »

Alright!!  Can't wait to see the new and drastically improved online dominion!

Funny thing to say, because (for example, if you read my posts at the beginning of this thread) the drastic improvements are exactly the ones you won't be able to see. The rewrite of the backend will make things more stable and faster. The rewrite of the front-end will get us to more platforms, but the platform releases will be staged, so that won't matter to you for a while. And both rewrites will mean that we'll actually have a code base we can manage and make rapid improvements to in the future.

Count me in as well.

We have a limited number of slots for this test, because it's distracting to keep up with. However, (repeating what I just posted in another thread), if you are interested in joining the closed beta test, you promise to keep it secret, you have an email+password login on your account (not Facebook/Google+/Twitter for right now), you're playing on Windows, MacOS, or Linux, and you'd find it interesting to play on a feature-incomplete system, please message me this info: your name, your email, your Dominion Online login (if different from your email), your Making Fun forum name (create one if you don't have it), and what OS you are on. I'll add the first 25 complete replies.

Or you could just wait, because in a couple weeks we'll open up the beta for everybody to test. :-)

Right now we are only testing Windows, MacOS, and Linux native builds. We'll start focusing on finalizing the web builds in mid-June and then move on to finalizing builds for tablets.

5

Goko Dominion Online / Re: 2.0 Closed Beta Begins

« on: May 28, 2015, 08:51:41 pm »

Hi,

The reason for the beta test is to get testing and bug reports/feedback. The reason for it being private is it's not ready for being public. You know, still alpha, feature-incomplete, in-progress. It doesn't help anybody to have mountains of forums discussing how much features X and Y suck when we know X and Y are only half done. It's actually a big distraction from development. Better to get a bit further first. This is also Donald's view, and most likely, you probably first read the Adventures cards when he previewed them after the game was manufactured.

That said... we are trying out this crazy idea of getting testers involved in the process as soon as it is possible. Right now there are a limited number of slots, because processing all the feedback takes time away from development also. If you are interested in joining the closed beta test, you promise to keep it secret, you have an email+password login on your account (not Facebook/Google+/Twitter for right now), you're playing on Windows, MacOS, or Linux, and you'd find it interesting to play on a feature-incomplete system, please message me this info: your name, your email, your Dominion Online login (if different from your email), your Making Fun forum name (create one if you don't have it), and what OS you are on. I'll add the first 25 complete replies.

Or you could just wait, because in a couple weeks we'll open up the beta for everybody to test. :-)

Right now we are only testing Windows, MacOS, and Linux native builds. We'll start focusing on finalizing the web builds in mid-June and then move on to finalizing builds for tablets.

6

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: May 02, 2015, 07:08:22 am »

This has been on my mind a lot, but if Events end up on page 2, it can be super easy to forget they are there or even to check for Events. My suggestions is to shrink the border size of Events so they are the same as the other cards, cropping out part of the picture. However, when people click on the Event, they can see the full-size thing.

How about this:

For PC users, just use the entire screen.  Fit everything.

For mobile users, put ALL cards on a separate screen, and have the primary screen be your play area, hand, trash, other players, etc.

From the latest version that I saw, the installed app for PC lets you play on a fixed, full-screen or in windowed mode. I was testing some things, so I used windowed mode so that I could go to my document and then the game without issue. In full-screen, if I tabbed away to another window, the game minimized. I was running on a split screen (which worked great) so with my large monitor, the game was fine in windowed mode.

...and did everything fit on one page?

I only had access to the basic set, so there were no stacks on a second screen. Everything else looked good. Edit: I guess it also depends on what you mean by everything. Just card stacks? Card stacks and logs? I don't want to incur the displeasure of Lord Humanton, so I'll leave details for him. And I'm sure once the first round of beta starts, word will get out.

We plan to open the beta-test up to members of this forum in ~3 weeks.

7

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 29, 2015, 05:38:31 pm »

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but has Linux support been confirmed yet? I would have no way of playing otherwise.

At the very least you should be able to able to play in a browser, because we'll target Unity 5's WebGL build, which just needs any browser supporting WebGL and asm.js.

Incidentally, ignore anything you read about the Unity webplayer and Linux, because that's old tech. It's based on the Netscape plugin API which is being phased out in browsers these days due to the security holes it creates.

Sweet!  The post I read about you guys using webplayer was months ago, if you've decided to step up to WebGL that's great news for us Linux users!

Correction: I found out I was mistaken about one thing. Internet Explorer 11 supports webGL and asm.js, but doesn't support the Web Audio API that the Unity webGL uses. Therefore, if we want to support IE, we might have to additionally support the old webplayer, at least until IE steps up or gets replaced entirely by Spartan. The webplayer itself won't run any longer in Chrome as of this month:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/chrome-42-npapi

So... we have to play in Firefox?

You'd have to play in either Firefox or Chrome (for the webgl build) or IE 11 (for the webplayer build), unless your operating system happened to be Linux, OSX, or Windows, in which case you could use a native build.

8

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 29, 2015, 11:28:03 am »

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but has Linux support been confirmed yet? I would have no way of playing otherwise.

At the very least you should be able to able to play in a browser, because we'll target Unity 5's WebGL build, which just needs any browser supporting WebGL and asm.js.

Incidentally, ignore anything you read about the Unity webplayer and Linux, because that's old tech. It's based on the Netscape plugin API which is being phased out in browsers these days due to the security holes it creates.

Sweet!  The post I read about you guys using webplayer was months ago, if you've decided to step up to WebGL that's great news for us Linux users!

Correction: I found out I was mistaken about one thing. Internet Explorer 11 supports webGL and asm.js, but doesn't support the Web Audio API that the Unity webGL uses. Therefore, if we want to support IE, we might have to additionally support the old webplayer, at least until IE steps up or gets replaced entirely by Spartan. The webplayer itself won't run any longer in Chrome as of this month:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/chrome-42-npapi

9

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 26, 2015, 01:50:49 pm »

crlundy, I just posted a list of rules issues:
http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?6501-Known-Discrepancies-between-Dominion-Online-and-the-Official-Rules&p=33111#post33111
It's actually a bit off-topic for this thread because the game server/AI is the one area of the system we are not tackling for the version 2 release.

I've got 15 items, including Band of Misfits + Herbalist. Someone please tell me what I forgot (ideally with a link to another forum discussion!) and I'll add it.

Hermit should not trigger (to become Madman) if you bought a card with Black Market. Currently done wrong by Dominion online: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=11911.msg480415#msg480415

Thanks. I've added this.

10

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 26, 2015, 01:42:07 pm »

There should be (or maybe there already is and I just can't find it) a list of known rules bugs, not pages of forum-style bug reports to search through. Whenever Band of Misfits/Herbalist shows up, I think, do I risk it? I wonder if they've fixed this...

crlundy, I just posted a list of rules issues:
http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?6501-Known-Discrepancies-between-Dominion-Online-and-the-Official-Rules&p=33111#post33111
It's actually a bit off-topic for this thread because the game server/AI is the one area of the system we are not tackling for the version 2 release.

I've got 15 items, including Band of Misfits + Herbalist. Someone please tell me what I forgot (ideally with a link to another forum discussion!) and I'll add it.

Thank you for compiling the list. That's great!


The last bug is not quite right. You don't trash to the discard pile, for one (I'm guessing that's a typo). Trashing is atomic, so you trash all the cards at once, however your opponent can see every card you trash regardless because the trash is public information. So the real difference is that all the on-trash effects should trigger simultaneously, nothing to do with what your opponent can see.

Discarding to e.g. Torturer, however, you should be able to choose your two cards and then discard them together so your opponent can only see one. I think the way to do this is to have people click on things which go up into a box on the top and then have a button to discard/trash them all at once. If they want, they can rearrange things in this box (for discarding), but they aren't forced to choose an order every time (because you almost never care). They could also click on things in this box to move them back to hand (so they haven't committed to anything until they hit the trash/discard button).

Oops, I've corrected this. It got convoluted because the originally ticket was about being able to select multiple cards with trashing. The ultimate fix should change trashing, discarding, and putting back cards, but it's only discarding that applies to this particular list.

11

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 26, 2015, 04:00:57 am »

There should be (or maybe there already is and I just can't find it) a list of known rules bugs, not pages of forum-style bug reports to search through. Whenever Band of Misfits/Herbalist shows up, I think, do I risk it? I wonder if they've fixed this...

crlundy, I just posted a list of rules issues:
http://forum.makingfun.com/showthread.php?6501-Known-Discrepancies-between-Dominion-Online-and-the-Official-Rules&p=33111#post33111
It's actually a bit off-topic for this thread because the game server/AI is the one area of the system we are not tackling for the version 2 release.

I've got 15 items, including Band of Misfits + Herbalist. Someone please tell me what I forgot (ideally with a link to another forum discussion!) and I'll add it.

12

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 26, 2015, 02:35:45 am »

It would be nice if the Estates stayed by the other Victory cards in Platinum/Colony games.

Not a biggie, but this one will be in the new version.

There should be (or maybe there already is and I just can't find it) a list of known rules bugs, not pages of forum-style bug reports to search through. Whenever Band of Misfits/Herbalist shows up, I think, do I risk it? I wonder if they've fixed this...

Okay, I will compile a single list and post it.

13

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 25, 2015, 12:11:45 am »

I disagree: I think it would get very complicated. Suppose that instead of a Horse Traders, B had a Secret Chamber. While B is deciding his reaction to Margrave, A goes ahead and plays his next action, which is a Smugglers, gaining a Gold.  ...

To do it perfectly would be very complicated, but the low-hanging fruit is what's important. I got a bit carried away with a more complicated example, but the important thing is what happens often, like waiting for three people to discard sequentially. You can go on the safe side all the time, and then start making exceptions for that which matters the most (and still isn't too hard to do).

With your Smuggler example, when a list of cards possible to gain is created that perhaps isn't returned until some kinds of events on the queue are gone. There could be more of less complicated rules looking at the queue to see if there is anything there that might empty the Gold pile, but there could also be a general simpler rule "oh, you want to gain a card? that's so complicated so we should have an empty queue except for harmless events of types A, B and C" first.

Emptying itself can be pretty complicated to foresee. Maybe when player A plays a Bishop, I choose to trash my Feodum because there are 10 Silvers in the supply and I'm the only one who has Feodums. But then I find that the 3 players before me each trashed a Hunting Grounds, chose to gain Estates, and then revealed a Trader for each Estate.

But I didn't mean to imply that emptying a supply pile is the only complication with allowing player A to continue playing cards. For example, in this case with the Bishop, player A might next play a Graverobber and what he sees in the trash will be vastly different without all those Hunting Grounds in there. IRL we play a little loose with the rules (who would insist on making the next player wait because they haven't finished their clean-up phase?), but I think even IRL, I wouldn't let player A continue playing all his action cards while the rest of us are still dealing with our reactions.

14

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 24, 2015, 11:40:38 pm »

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but has Linux support been confirmed yet? I would have no way of playing otherwise.

At the very least you should be able to able to play in a browser, because we'll target Unity 5's WebGL build, which just needs any browser supporting WebGL and asm.js.

Incidentally, ignore anything you read about the Unity webplayer and Linux, because that's old tech. It's based on the Netscape plugin API which is being phased out in browsers these days due to the security holes it creates.

Sweet!  The post I read about you guys using webplayer was months ago, if you've decided to step up to WebGL that's great news for us Linux users!

Due to your guys' interest in this, we tried creating a native build for Linux for the first time today. It works.
theblankman, if you would like to beta-test (really alpha-test) the Linux build, please message me with your email.

15

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 23, 2015, 02:43:38 pm »

As long as we're dreaming, I also have a wish that I think would mean a major overhaul of things that are supposed to stay the same in this new version, but that would lead to a much more streamlined experience especially when playing multiplayer,

Simply put: Allow stuff to be done beforehand when possible.

A simple example would be when player A plays Militia and players B and C have to discard. Let them discard simultaneously so C doesn't have to wait for B to discard. Of course things should really happen in the order they should happen. The interface would just in many cases to act beforehand in a way that would only be seen by themselves until it's time for it to actually happen.

If C doesn't want to discard until after they've seen if B discards Tunnels that's possible by just waiting, but B have to discard before getting to know what C discarded.

The attacker A on the other hand could go on with their turn without having to wait for anyone if they don't want to. Not until everyone has discarded this actually happens.
Of course it can be important to know how the other players react. In those cases it might be good to wait, but at other times you can just continue playing quickly.

It can be a bit tricky, but I don't think this would have to be very complicated. There would be a queue of things that have been decided but that haven't actually happened yet, where each player can have one event where they have to decide something. As soon as everyone has seen the first event on the queue it actually happens, etc.

A more complete example with A, B and C and it's A's turn:

1. A plays Village. No interaction, so nothing special.

2. A plays Margrave. Playing an attack is a possible interaction so now things are different. Let's say B has a Horse Traders and thus has to decide if setting it aside. There is a status text "B chooses a reaction" or something like that.

3. A executes the Margrave, getting 3 cards and 1 buy, but this happens only for A for the time being. Also C (who has no choice) draws a card, and then has to discard, but only in "C's reality".

4. Now all three players have something to do. A can play a new action, B still has to decide if setting the HT aside, and C has to discard cards. The status message is still about B (and the clock is on B) and A and C might want to wait to see what happens, but can also act.

Suppose A is first and plays a Masquerade. As before A immediately draws 2 cards in "Reality A". No one else notices anything about this.

5. Next suppose C discards down to 3 to the Margrave. Then C will se A draw cards and play Masquerade, since there are no new decisions for C to do before that. Similarly A will see C discarding cards immediately. Only B is stuck on where the game "actually" is. These are the events on the queue that haven't really happened yet:

• A draws 3 cards and gets 1 buy (seen by A and C)
• B should act out their part of the Margrave (has not happend at all)
• C draws 1 card and discards some cards (seen by A and C)
• A plays Masquerade (seen by A and C)
• A draws 2 cards (seen by A and C)
• A should pass a card (A's current decision)
• B should pass a card (still unknown)
• C should pass a card (C's current decision)

Suppose that B continues to be the slow player. As soon as A and C have passed cards A can continue; maybe trashes a card, plays a bunch of Treasures and buys a couple of cards. In A's and C's reality it is now B's turn while B is still stuck on that Horse Trader.

Finally B sets the Horse Traders aside; gets to see everything happening, drawing, discarding, and passing a card, and then quickly it is their turn and everyone is in synch again.

But there can be information leakage!

Yes, that's possible. C may chat "uh oh, I didn't expect a Masquerade" which will warn B before B discards. You could argue that you shouldn't get to see chats before you are in synch with the chatter, but I think a better solution is simply to wait for the others when you want to do something like this. The important thing is to avoid unnecessary waits when it really doesn't matter to you how what the others do.

It can be tricky!

Indeed. Suppose A's first buy in the example was a Province and B has a Fool's Gold. Then A should see whether B trashes it before buying the next card (maybe Noble Brigand!). Then we must have A start waiting after that first buy since there is no way to know what B will do or even if B will pass Fool's Gold to C. If the reaction that B is thinking about using for the Margrave is Secret Chamber instead there's even less knowing if Fool's Gold will be in any hand.

But fortunately most of the time it will not be that complicated, and it does not have to be complete at all. Just having some logic for doing like this can come a long way from unnecessary waits that you wouldn't do if playing afk. Also some of the complications will only happen when specific cards are in the game. When Fool's Gold is in the game some things have be done more by the letter. When Caravan Guard is in the game some other things have be done more carefully, etc.

I disagree: I think it would get very complicated. Suppose that instead of a Horse Traders, B had a Secret Chamber. While B is deciding his reaction to Margrave, A goes ahead and plays his next action, which is a Smugglers, gaining a Gold. Now B plays his Secret Chamber, triggering a shuffle and drawing random two cards into his hand, one of which happens to be a Tunnel, which he chooses not to top-deck. Now player B has to discard down due to the Margrave and he discards the Tunnel. However, after revealing it, he can't gain a Gold because the Gold pile is empty -- player A just took the last Gold with his Smugglers!

This can't be allowed to happen, because player B should have had the first chance to get that Gold. Somehow the game server would have to figure out that it was theoretically possible for the rules to be violated and disallow A's action. I'm sure it's possible to do this for all possible cases with a complicated enough set of logic; however, if this were implemented it be both confusing to the players. For example, player A can't play that Smugglers in this case, so he'd be scratching his head wondering why.

A much more manageable idea, which has been kicked around before, is just to allow players to start to respond to attacks (and Masquerade) out of order, even though the responses will be re-played in order. It certainly would be nice people if everybody could just start discarding their cards or revealing their Moats, as people often do IRL. This still has complications. For example, if player B and C can both discard and reveal a Tunnel, player B must be allowed to get the last Gold. (in which case player C will probably decide to keep his Tunnel in his hand anyway for his Upgrade) So there'd need to be bullet-proof rules set up for when asynchronicity would be permitted.

16

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Gokoins/payment discussion

« on: April 21, 2015, 04:30:47 pm »

I think a subscription model would be a better model, especially as MF has to maintain a running system for thousands of paying customers who have never actually paid anything to MF; however, I think this is the reason it's not going to happen:

It's worth bearing in mind that for all the people who already paid for the existing cards for apparently unlimited time, asking for anything more to keep that would be a disaster.

17

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 19, 2015, 04:45:33 pm »

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but has Linux support been confirmed yet? I would have no way of playing otherwise.

At the very least you should be able to able to play in a browser, because we'll target Unity 5's WebGL build, which just needs any browser supporting WebGL and asm.js.

Incidentally, ignore anything you read about the Unity webplayer and Linux, because that's old tech. It's based on the Netscape plugin API which is being phased out in browsers these days due to the security holes it creates.

18

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 19, 2015, 03:40:27 pm »

One item that hasn't been mentioned much because most people here play little multiplayer: when someone resigns or quits in multiplayer, the game should not end. Instead, the best bot should replace the player who resigned/quit.

In fact, more people here might play multiplayer if this were changed.

I would say replace them with the bot closest to them in rating (or perhaps the one with the lowest rating higher than theirs).

This has certainly been suggested before. On the plus side:
1) Everybody's time isn't be wasted if there's an interesting battle, but one player is a jerk or has connection problems.
2) It takes away king-maker power, e.g. if one of the remaining players is building up an awesome engine while another is just buying VP cards

I think it's a good feature, but also has some issues:
1) Replacement would work a lot better if there were a real variety of bot strengths, but right now, that's not the case. There is basically only Serf Bot who plays like a beginner, and the rest who play like experienced middle-of-the-road players. (Really Lord Bottington is supposed to the best, as the others are dumbed down in certain ways, but in practice, that only comes into play on certain types of boards, like when Village Bot is buying a millions Schemes because it makes him happy.) So, I like this whole idea better when there's a much better bot (btw I can do very easily as soon as I get time) and better variations on dumbing it down.
2) Ratings may be involved, which is a catalyst for making players very upset, especially if they see something unexpected. In this case some will see a bait-and-switch on their opponent: "I had a great strategy geared to that opponent and then a bot stepped in playing differently and it ruined my plans and made me lose rating points." And rating the game at the time of the quit doesn't fix this, because a player will be unhappy that he got rated as a loser when he ultimately won the game. So I like this better for unrated games.

Also, can we keep the alchemy discussion elsewhere? We've definitely had this conversation before and I would prefer the MF people not have to wade through it to see feature suggestions.

Okay, I had a lot to say on that topic, but I'll keep quiet. :-)

19

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 18, 2015, 02:01:31 pm »

But Automatch and Autokick are crap compared to a seek graph or even a simple seek command and formula-based challenge system like ICC has.

Yeah, I'm familiar with the seek graph, and helped on the design of it, which occurred in the 90's while I was writing an ICC interface. Since then it has been copied by most other serious chess servers, such as Chess.com and Chess Cube. Incidentally, I was the Director of Technology for the ICC for over six years and during that time we invented some cool alternate designs for this, as the seek graph is a bit overwhelming for newbies.

For automatch UI, consider "what would Hearthstone do?", because Blizzard has a keen design sense. In Hearthstone, the flow to play a competitive game is: select play from the menu, select Ranked (equivalent to Goko's Pro; as opposed to Casual, which does not display rankings), click Play. You are then matched and put into a game. That's it--no other step.

Expect something much more like Hearthstone for the first iteration. Blizzard did an excellent job with Hearthstone and set a very high bar. (It's a nice position to be in to have many thousands of employees and literally spend billions of dollars a year.)

20

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 18, 2015, 01:33:21 pm »

I find the match found alert system really useful in the automatch settings.
As it lets you browse away while you wait for a match.
I also think having a "its your turn to do something in game" alert would be a great feature.
Ideally audio plus tab highlighting.

Regarding browsing away and tab highlighting, it's just a guess, but I suspect a significant portion of the regular Dominion players will prefer to use an app compiled specifically for their OS rather than continuing to go through a browser. Anyway, there'll be that choice.

21

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 18, 2015, 12:37:17 am »

Thank you all for the posts!!! I counted over 50 distinct ideas and I've recorded every one. Even though they may be known, the prioritization is useful. I've organized them by the number of distinct posters who supported them (unscientific I know but better than nothing.) Based on that, here are the top 10 (or so):

1. Always-visible game logs (on non-mobile)
2. Automatch
3. Kingdom cards on 1st page (esp. if ruins, bane)
4. Real kingdom generation
5. Better reconnect
6. Button options instead having to drag
7. Support Adventures set
8. VP Counter
9. Blacklist
10. Prevent misclicks
11. API
12. Who-goes-first adjustments
13. Rematch

22

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 18, 2015, 12:21:50 am »

Consider another couple months more on version 2 and at least three more on Adventures.

So, five months total, or two months for re-launch, then one more month till Adventures releases?

I meant five. If it weren't for version 2, we'd be releasing Adventures this month.

23

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 18, 2015, 12:17:09 am »

That said I think it can't be stressed enough that we really want feature parity (by the use case definition) with current version plus Salvager, NOT just the current version.

Seriously, I'm willing to wait longer for you to implement everything Salvager currently does before releasing the new interface.

Obviously we don't want to break anything, including salvager features, but realistically, some salvager features are higher priority than others. I'm not going to tell someone that the only reason he can't play on his tablet is that we haven't added a Greeting Message feature yet. :-/ So we'll have automatch, game log sidebar, VP counter, animation speed tweaks, stacking duplicate cards... and be trying hard for a personal blacklist and kingdom generation (if we can't, then ASAP after)... while we're going to defer the greeting message, gravitars, notifications, common blacklist, isotropish ratings, extra logging... And some features become moot.

24

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 17, 2015, 07:46:05 pm »

Two suggestions:

Have an extensive private beta with lots of folks from these boards, and don't release it until it is feature parity with the existing online system.

This is pretty much the plan, actually. We already have the invite list for the first round, which we hope to start within a week. Then we'll post to open it up to people in these kinds of forums. Then eventually we'll make it a public beta and announce it on the site.

Feature parity is approximately the goal (although that's quite a big deal!) It's certainly true that our mission is to migrate onto a system that we can actually maintain and improve, rather than focusing on new features. That said, there is no point in re-implementing some of the bad stuff. For example, people want to generate kingdoms like the millions of Dominion picker phone apps out there do; they don't want to do it like Deck Builder. Another example is the awful room/table metaphor that was copied from the first version of the Internet Gaming Zone in 90's. So, if the launch is temporarily missing stuff, it will be because we're in the process of replacing it with something entirely new and better.

Especially with how badly the original Goko rolled out, profitable Online Dominion probably really can't survive another botched launch.

I think we agree, but it's a little bit apples-and-oranges. Goko wasn't trying to launch a game; it was trying launch a system for game developers to make their games in. Dominion Online happened to be one of the sample games. Contrast this to Making Fun, which actually is a game developer/publisher, and where the players are actually the customers.

Keep the existing Online Dominion up even after the new one is released. Let players "vote with their feet" to move over to the new system once they think it is better. If nobody is moving, then the new implementation isn't ready yet. Shutting down the current one prematurely would likely annoy current customers, and it is the current customers that are going to help spread the word of a new mobile release.

We will have both running side-by-side, initially with purchases only allowed on the version 1 system and migrated to the version 2 system. This won't last forever though, because the version 1 system is too expensive to run.

25

Goko Dominion Online / Re: Features Thread

« on: April 17, 2015, 06:10:32 pm »

I asked about this just yesterday actually, in response to a question on our forums. Here's what I was told:
Our first priority is getting the 2.0 version of the existing game out for web and then mobile. After those are live it will be a high priority to get Adventures live. "High", but not necessarily "highest". Adventures will be a major effort requiring substantial enhancements to the engine, AI and user interface, and we already have a long list of post-launch enhancements to the existing game.

So like half a year?

Consider another couple months more on version 2 and at least three more on Adventures.

I'm not clear on what you are actually doing: Are you rewriting the whole thing from scratch or are you using anything Goko made?

• We're rewriting Goko's backend platform from scratch. Goko's platform is something like 30 different kinds of servers running in a large distributed network, which handle most of what goes on with the site ...but none of which knows anything at all about Dominion. We're replacing it with a server written for Dominion with a DB schema designed for Dominion. The point of this is maintainability (and therefore stability) and performance.
• We're rewriting Goko's frontend client from scratch. The HTML5 animation library is actually pretty sweet, but we're replacing it with a Unity client that will work on tablets, run on personal computers natively, run on the web, and (later), run on phones.
• The only thing we're keeping from Goko is the backend game server, which handles what happens in-game (rules, AI, directions about game to UI). As has been pointed out in this thread, there are known rules bugs mostly in rare edge cases (I track 14 of them), but in the grand scheme of things, addressing these will not be hard when we aren't swamped by more serious bugs in the core system.

Also, i don't know how many people care about AI, are you sure this should be higher priority then getting Adventures out?

It's not a higher priority at all; it's part of getting Adventures out. A lot of users exclusively play AI.