RB Demogame IT and Tech Issues Thread

[Lewwyn]

Just to be clear I paused the game (since I'm still in the states atm and have a desktop with a pause button :neenernee) until... the pirates form captain planet?

[pling]

I'm a little confused - I thought the pause was if Pirates needed one on their (next?) turn?

[plako]

Long term health of the game.

At the moment I'm unconvinced they have any sort of plan on how to work together going forward, or are indeed involved in this game in any coherent way. As far as I can tell, this kind of situation can repeat itself next week. Or even tomorrow.

I don't mind a reload for a team that fell victim to an "act of god" chain of events.

I will not grant a reload to a team that's checked out of the game and collectively doesn't seem to give a fuck.

Is this really true and Pirates have checked out of this game? Isn't there anyone in the team that could take charge in case Dave is too busy? If not then we need a replacment player/players to start running the show. I suggest keeping game paused until this gets sorted and in case Pirates find an organization that works I think reload is in order.

[scooter]

The lack of response from Pirates members right now is not super encouraging.

[HitAnyKey]

I have a feeling it might have been a better idea to be a bit more spread out on who joined which teams. I seem to recall back in the beginning that there were a GAZILLION people joining TEAM, which probably has dozens of active members, whereas our team and apparently Pirates don't have many active members.

[thestick]

Is this really true and Pirates have checked out of this game? Isn't there anyone in the team that could take charge in case Dave is too busy? If not then we need a replacment player/players to start running the show. I suggest keeping game paused until this gets sorted and in case Pirates find an organization that works I think reload is in order.

From my perspective, it seems that most of the core players have checked out...

[pling]

I dunno, the rosters for the teams in the first post of the sign-up thread look fairly even in numbers & every team includes a few people who are very active members of the forum as well as people who're more of the lurker or newbie sort. I don't think there could've or should've been better organisation of the teams - particularly as one of the points was to encourage people to join a team they wanted to work with (after the lessons of PB6 about what happens when you lump "the leftovers" together). I'd guess it's more about not being able to predict whose real life/other games/whatever is going to jump up & eat their time for this game ... and it sounds like two teams had bad luck in this

(Crossposting with thestick, this is a reply to HitAnyKey's post)


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Re: scraping CivStats for end-of-turn. The thing that does indicate the turn has ended is that the timer increases rather than decreases, that's how I've been guessing when/if we're up if there's no notification. So a script could look at the timer at regular intervals, compare with the last time and sent a message to the "next team" if the time left NOW was higher than the time left THEN. The problem is you'd have to be checking it very frequently (once a minute? once every 30s?) to be sure you didn't miss a turn during this stage of the game where the actual time taken to play a turn is pretty short, and I dunno at what point that tips over into "too much traffic". (Edit: Not sure it works when the game is paused tho Time left seems to be gradually increasing or at least oscillating up & down at the moment.)

[Gaspar]

Not for nothing but nobody should be surprised that a normal speed, sequential turns game would advance past the summer into the fall and beyond. While I understand some unexpected stuff comes up the likelihood of many, many players having this happen to them is well... unlikely. If you signed up for a role of responsibility without considering it, well... I, for one wouldn't be bothered if some folks wanted to migrate from their current team to one of the less active teams to ensure we have a more even distribution of engaged players.

[scooter]

I think the main problem now is you need clear leaders to prod people into participating. If I'm not mistaken, Oledavy and Pindicator are the 1A and 1B leaders, but neither of them are particularly active right now. If they're gone temporarily, somebody step up and get things in order. Your roster reads like this:

- pindicator
- waterbat
- Shoot the Moon
- WarriorKnight
- kp
- luddite
- Mardoc
- Jkaen
- SleepingMoogle
- Nakor
- Xanes
- thestick

There's 6-7 pretty experienced members with a few others that are getting there. That's pretty good. Clearly you guys need to have a bit of a group chat and reorganize yourself. If you need another day to do that, fine, we can wait if it means the mysterious absence problem goes away. Pick somebody who is always responsible for turns and is never absent without having somebody cover for them, and pick two more people who can play them if they are around. Pick somebody who plans your movements and writes them out in advance so turn playing is trivial. This is key. With so few units right now, turn playing should be the easiest part! Login, follow instructions for ~2-3 units, hit enter. Pick somebody who does your diplo. Pick somebody who has a support role on a couple jobs (diplo, backup turn player, etc) maybe. I have no idea how you're organized, but take a look at some past demogame teams who have been successful and figure out how to organize yourself in a similar fashion. THen once you're organized, don't wait for discussion, but initiate it. Who cares if you spam your threads a little, it breeds discussion.

If you're on a struggling team and you're trying not to say too much because you just default to deferring to those with more experience, don't! I've really enjoyed this game because (on our team anyways) several people with no real RB experience have jumped in and been awesome contributors. If a leader is inactive, take over his role either on a temporary basis or more permanent. Above all though, post post post. If you have a thought, say it. It encourages others to do the same and is the best way of preventing your team from going silent. I'd also recommend adding your teammates on chat and making a point to chat frequently if that's your thing. Make a team chatroom even. Lots of ways to do this.

Alright, Pirates. That's my best shot at a pep talk . Sort things out and you'll be fine. (same goes for Menagerie if they're struggling too which HAK is indicating they are)

[darrelljs]

I, for one wouldn't be bothered if some folks wanted to migrate from their current team to one of the less active teams to ensure we have a more even distribution of engaged players.

Not speaking for the Trolls, but I agree. I trust people not to bring bias or misuse illicit information.

Darrell