% of Game Complete Column in Lobby
Sun, 2015-03-15 16:43
Just a small idea I had that I would like to suggest...
In the Lobby, could we have an extra column showing the % of game complete for each room where play is taking place? This percentage could be calculated based on current hog points and total of hog points at start of game.
This would make it easy to see which room to join, as a new game might be starting soon.
Awesome game by the way.
Interesting suggestion.
But I don't think your calculation method is really a good estimate.
Especially if a lot of vampirism is involved, then the health can vary wildly.
If the hogs started with 1000 HP overall, and then some health boxes got collected and now have 1100 HP in total, does this mean the game is now -10% completed?
Also, the remaining round time can be poorly estimated, because many factors determine when a game ends.
Perhaps a more stable estimate would the remaining time/rounds until Sudden Death, after that, the number of rounds after Sudden Death.
Maybe the game can calculate the maximum possible time the game could possibly take, based on Sudden Death. This mechanism could calculate the latest possible time where the game will definitely have ended, that is, long after Sudden Death, when 100% of the buildable zone is covered in water. The game can assume that each turn takes the longest possible time until that point.
However, this estimate is still not perfect, since the game timer is often halted.
Long story short: I think estimating the end of a game is often difficult, if not impossible. Also, as soon as custom scripts are used, things become even more difficult to estimate.
I guess a simple “time” column might be good for a start. It simply shows for how long a game has been running so far; the players in the lobby could draw their own conclusions from that. Maybe just simple numbers instead of complex estimates are the real answer to this.
Hi, I am a Hedgewars developer.
I'd also like to note that requires the server to pay a bit more attention to games than it currently does.
An approximate estimate by server could be done by paying attention to turn messages and team count and SD variable. But that would be inaccurate w/ lua overrides. Dunno. Whole thing seems a bit too fuzzy. Maybe simply game started time, like "5m 30s" or something?
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Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev
Thanks for your feedback. I guess it isn't as straightforward as originally thought.
The easiest way would be to show the elapsed game time, but without knowing the various game parameters for the room this information might not be of much help. Also, it would need to be clear if the timer would be time for current game, or total time room has been active for.