Perhaps F has just started repairing WL - take into consideration that my project was different form most of the others in they way that it didnt offered anything new, instead it was only pointing that part of WL is broken and needs fixing (Past Games). Thus maybe it is the good time to sort such things out and make a list of few (maybe more then few) small, and rather easy to implement, issues and present them as the new, common project. If this gather enough audience it may succed.. ?

Lots of others were pointing out that Warlight was broken.

Likely trivial and quick fixes I remember form uservoice:

- enable clan name changes

- track vacations by # of days, not # of vacations

Likely trivial but not entirely quick fixes I remember:

- your suggestion

- add a category for clan management that has invite permissions, nothing else

- partial history

- internationalization (using Google Translate or similar services)

Either Fizzer has some real life issues, something super secret (and hopefully great) in the works... or he's just seriously neglecting Warlight.

Edited 7/10/2015 15:33:46

Knyte, did Fizzer piss in your cheerios or something? The hostility man. Eat a snickers or something.

I'm not being hostile; I'm just very disappointed in the level of development this game has. At the very least, Fizzer could just expand the APIs very slightly and allow other developers to improve the game if he's not willing to spend the effort.

It's 1 person doing the development of the game. He's doing things that aren't suggested all the time. Chill out. I've been here for a couple years now and nothing has changed about his pace or priorities lol. The things you call trivial are probably not as easy as you think. Are you looking at the coding for Warlight right now in order to know fully well how trivial or not it is.

Yes, you're being hostile.

Either Fizzer has some real life issues, something super secret (and hopefully great) in the works... or he's just seriously neglecting Warlight.

Is a hostile comment. Fizzer has made Warlight his main priority in his life. What's being seriously neglected? He's made consistently good updates to the game since I first arrived here. They just may not be the updates you WANT. (though we can pretend the bomb card never happened)

It's 1 person doing the development of the game.

And that's exactly the problem. There's a potentially sizable developer community on Warlight- just look at the activity of some people when it comes to CLOTs, the participants in the Warlight AI challenges, and the people doing analysis.

This wouldn't be easy (would probably take a week or so, maybe 2-3 or a whole month if done extensibly and thoroughly) but what I think Fizzer could do to completely solve the limitations that inhibit Warlight's development would be to open up its APIs (and, of course, create or publish usage caps; right now, based on the lack of limits on calling, it's very evident that Fizzer doesn't expect those APIs to actually be used and didn't design them with that expectation in mind). Here's a simple roadmap:

Create Game API: fix the parser (looks like there's a formatting error that throws an exception for perfectly-formatted JSON resulting from widely-used and nearly bug-free Python libraries; I figured it out a month ago or so- before I had API access, so I forgot about it but I'll edit it in when I find the exact bug again), remove the absolute restriction that keeps you from inviting players (replace with a cap of some sort) as it renders large-scale automation near-impossible especially when things like Order Priority/Delay require L43 and aren't accessible to most players.

Query Game API: remove restriction on querying games that you weren't a part of (outside tournament/ladder games) as it inhibits analysis; at the very least, make it possible for you to analyze games you hosted but didn't participate in... or let the host decline their own game (the easiest janky workaround here)

Game ID feed API: allow for reverse sorting (really cosmetic but still pretty solid), restrictions like "didn't end in a boot" or "not expired", etc.

Clan interface: make the APIs public; Fizzer says that fixing the clan management system isn't in his "immediate roadmap." That's understandable- it's just like reddit, for example, not fixing their moderation tools for years. However, the difference is that reddit opened up its moderation tools API and along came Toolbox- something the mod community has been fine with using for years; it's kept us from complaining too much about the shitty vanilla modtools, at least until the Paocalypse happened. Right now, I'm actually working on fixing this after reading Fizzer's response but frankly I suck at reverse engineering private APIs when anything more complex than simple HTTP requests is involved; if he made this public, give it a month and you have a much more robust clan management interface available as a browser extension or script.

Tournament interface: allow for tournament creation and inviting to be automated; this would allow, for example, the widely-operating leagues (Clan League, Promotion/Relegation League/etc.) to be automated without using the CLOT framework. Also allow for tournament querying beyond the Game ID feed API- for example, getting win/loss directly, getting final ranks, getting invites/declines, getting clans/etc.

These are not entirely without their pitfalls and, of course, would have to be done carefully. But just these four would do a whole lot. I understand that it's an investment to overhaul the APIs, but it's got dividends that easily eclipse that of virtually any other Warlight change that's just as simple or simpler to implement.

The things you call trivial are probably not as easy as you think.

They would still be trivial if the codebase is written in Java (which I suspect it is based on the errors that occur on some API calls being typical ones from certain Java libraries) and sensibly organized (which I suspect it is, because Fizzer clearly knows how to code based on his CLOT repository on GitHub).

Are you looking at the coding for Warlight right now in order to know fully well how trivial or not it is.

No, because Fizzer hasn't open-sourced the codebase or made it remotely easy for a developer to work on. Most of the public APIs are much, much more restrictive than WL's private APIs, sometimes to the point of being near-useless outside some very specific situations (I'm talking about the Create Game API outside CLOTs, for example). If Fizzer open-sourced Warlight, not only would it allow for quicker bug-detection but it would also basically lead to a massive amount of development on his platform and almost certainly make it last longer.

To be honest, if I had access to Warlight's codebase, I'd easily do the changes I'm suggesting without charge even though I've got a ton of other obligations to worry about, just because they're almost certainly not that hard. I'm betting that they're easier than what a decent 17-year-old programmer would implement in 24 hours at a hackathon.

What's being seriously neglected? He's made consistently good updates to the game since I first arrived here. They just may not be the updates you WANT.

I apologize if I'm coming off as hostile, but I genuinely think those are the three possibilities. I understand that Fizzer clearly updates this game regularly, but I simply don't understand why he adds things like the Bomb Card over the vast majority of sensible, simple user suggestions.

So what I'm saying is that there are people that would easily implement user suggestions for free if Fizzer just made Warlight developer-friendly. We wouldn't have to go through this uservoice "immediate roadmap" situation if people other than Fizzer just had the ability to actually do something to make Warlight better without expending the effort of reverse-engineering Warlight's APIs and then worrying about Fizzer finding out/caring that they did so.

Edited 7/10/2015 16:07:26

And if you're skeptical about whether developers would actually leverage an improved public API:

if it can happen to Yo of all things... it can happen to Warlight.

It's not gonna happen knyte, Warlight is not going to become an open source-type game, or anything near it. The developer has zero requirements to do anything to the game, he could shut it down today if he wanted and you would have no rights to it.

Saying that, at least I now know why the Kongregate game is so underdeveloped now. We're just going to have to accept it though. To be honest I was happy enough when Warlight came out as multiplayer, we should be happy enough that we have that...

^ Obviously, we have no claim to Fizzer's time. But that doesn't mean we should settle for less because raising our standards creates an incentive for Fizzer to do more as long as it's humanly possible.

If you have ads enabled, you are the "product" that pays for site maintenance- if you play coin games, doubly so. If your company loses its product, it collapses, so you always want to have friendly relations with the product.

Then again, I can't tell if WL is making any money right now. If it's just Fizzer's side project, then yeah the users have zero power. But if it's any more than that, then the users' desires matter.

Edited 7/10/2015 16:54:54

I guess that's the difference between you and I. I don't care that only 1 person is working on this game. It's Fizzer's intellectual property, if he wants to open-source the game, he can. If he doesn't, then just deal with it. I don't think he has to open-source the game to improve it. I think if he wants more developers, he'll hire more developers. That's his decision. It's his game and you have to respect that.

That's why I don't think you're truly improving the game by doing this all publicly, you come off as whiny and hostile. If you want the game to be open source, suggest it, mail fizzer, get a petition going. Openly whining about features that you have solutions for isn't progression.

I truly do think you care about this game, but you're not coming off the right way. :P

It's his game and you have to respect that.

I do. However, we're his consumers. Consumers make choices.

At the end of the day, there are things that Fizzer can do to make his game more palatable to the consumer. I'm just outlining what I think they are.

mail fizzer

He's ignored the only message I ever sent him, unfortunately. He doesn't seem to check. :(

But let's not make this personal. This isn't about me. This is about the game. Call me hostile/whiny/whatever you want, but at the end of the day that doesn't make a difference. I'm saying this because I think Fizzer is doing things wrong (at least from my consumer and 3rd-party developer perspective), not because I want your communication advice. Thanks, though.

Edited 7/10/2015 17:24:29

Knyte,
We have a roadmap. That roadmap has about 20+ updates/versions on it right now. Each update takes a week or two, sometimes more.

We are not outlining what is in the full plan, that said we know the clan system needs attention. But fixes to a system that might be replaced are not productive.

If the system works but is not broken it is not a top priority. Things that are broken get the most attention.

On the subject of broken things, expanding the game to handle millions of players of all skill levels is a top priority.

So tutorials, single player expansion, and reducing complexity are on the software roadmap.

The "nice to haves" for expert players must take a backseat to the priority of growing the game. The "Nice to haves" come after.

Sit down with a player that finds the game for the first time, watch them play the game. That is where we have spent a lot of time planning. 90% of new players think the game is too hard to understand or give up once they reach the end of the single player campaign. If we can make a dent in this problem there will be twice as many players.

Our goal is the same as yours, we want all the "nice to have" features. Prioritizing how we get there is what we work every day on.

Hey mercer. How do you think the single-player requests went? What have they yielded? Asking because that's something I've thought about for a while and it was cool to see.

Thanks for the explanation, Mercer. I was looking at it from the perspective of a non-newbie, but your behavior makes sense now that you've explained your priorities. I didn't even think about expansion.

That said, my offer still stands. If I ever get the opportunity to implement the "nice-to-haves" myself, I'll do it for y'all without charge since I probably want the features more than most.

@Lolowut
You really must stop eating so much Cheerios. There are other edible products out there you know.

@knyte
I get where you are coming from. But, I really think we have a lot to be grateful for. Fizzer has at least given us some public APIs to work with. He could have just refused access outright.


I would second Lolowut's opinion. It is his game, and his right to decide what features get implemented. However, I do encourage you to keep persisting with ideas on how Warlight can be improved. In some way it does contribute to his thought process.



p.s - I would also like to contribute and add new features to WL if ever given the chance

@Lolowut
You really must stop eating so much Cheerios. There are other edible products out there you know.

How can I ever enjoy my Cheerios when people keep pissing in them!? ;-;

Yeah, definitely my fault here. I was completely blind to one aspect of development goals. :/

Ah well, given these realities, my quest continues to figure out how to implement what I want as a third-party dev.

This does come down to what I keep saying which is that a little more communication is needed.
It really does help in the long run.
Just a little :)

The Mercer arguments makes a lot of things clear, yet one issue seems quite confusing - I can agree with the idea, that from the Fizzer perspective WL has more important things to do than "nice to haves" and that they are very busy on other things, yet I must also agree for some point with knyte - if Fizzer only asked community to help him with solving some of this "nice to haves" I am sure he would find more that dozen volunteers capable of doing it properly and for free.


Edit: there is a 2nd feature tagged as "PLANNED" meaning we should soon (I hope) acquire
"Partial history : see what only one player could see" !!

http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1920689-partial-history-see-what-only-one-player-could-s

Edited 7/10/2015 22:26:46