Sorry, but I haven't clearly understood what you wanted to say in the first paragraph. Could you please clearfy?

Just a point to clear that all properties and money of bankrupted player go to the bankrupter (the player who bankrupted him). Before the bunkrupted player leaves he can arrange any deals, but he cant cheat the bankrupter by selling all his properties to another player for 1$. This is not written in rules themselves, but I had a look in internet and came to the conclusion that people use this in official tournaments. Anyways, this seems reasonable.

I know this is binary system and that it works well. I simply have concerns about the system being user-friendly and it's simplicity of perception for newcomers.

I can't agree with you on this point.

Everyone has to search for the property in any case. I don't know how others search for their unit but I believe it is something similar to what I do. I'll tell how I do this with the current system. Usually I don't know properties by their names by heart. At first I simply know the visual location of the desired property on board. I go there and look for the unit's name. Then I go to my personal area and look for that unit. In many cases the unit is squeezed by other units and I have to open path for it to pass.

You see the sequence is quite long. Instead of this with my proposal it simplifies. With the current system you have to center your screen on the property square to look for the unit name (even in case you know properties names by heart you have to move the screen to your personal area!). With my proposal you center the screen to select the desired unit. You move that unit away and the screen automatically centers on your personal area with the only unit in it (which is already selected!). You have the unit in your hands now and should not concern about it being struck, so you're ready to immediately perform the operation.

What important there to my mind is that sometimes after the operation is done the unit should return to the personal area and sometimes it should return to the edge of the map. Namely the unit should return to the edge when you mortgage the property, because you usually mortgage to gain money and don't want to perform any actions afterwards. I guess it should return the unit to the edge when bargain finishes. The unit should return to the personal area when buy/sell a house or hotel, because these operations can go in a row (ummm... or not?). Also I suppose the unit should be returned to the personal area after unmortagaging.

Another ways can be to always return the unit to the personal area (except when units return from bargain, because several units could be returned at one time) or to always return the unit to the edge. Probably returning to the edge is the best one. And if you want to repeat an operation with the last property you still have the selection and simply have to right-click anywhere to return the unit back.

About the ping beacon. I guess it would be useless. Don't you think people will go over all properties they have sending them to the beacon one by one? To my mind it is easier to look for the desired unit name on the map.

In case fritfrat likes the proposed idea I'll talk a little about the design of the personal area. To my mind it should copy the central part, with four ways: east, west, north, south. There are six operations: sell property, mortgage, unmortgage, buy house/hotel, sell house/hotel, exit. These operations could be done by four buttons because not all of them can be applied at one time:
1. The east passage should be exit for similarity with the end turn on the main controls screen and should be always opened.
2. The west passage has always a function of sell property. The west passage is closed when the property is mortgaged or when it has at least one house or hotel.
3. When player has 0 houses or hotels on the selected property the south passage has the function of mortgage/unmortgage. When player has at least 1 house or hotel the south passage has the function of sell house/hotel. There is no option to mortgage/unmortgage property in this last case because the property with houses/hotels can't be mortgaged. The configuration of the personal area hints what case takes place: if the west passage is opened (you can sell property) this is mortgage/unmortgage (and mortgage or unmortgage is determined by the unit's hp), if closed this is sell house/hotel. In no case down passage is closed.
4. The north passage has always a function of buy house/hotel. It is closed when the property is mortgaged or when you have not got a monopoly of that color.

to save some major room i'm not gona quote you Wormer.

My first paragraph basically says what if a player arrives in the situation where he is technically bankrupt but if he sold off part of his big mass he might be able to survive a bit.

By this i mean say you owe over 1k you have the light blues with hotels, all 4 rails and some misc stuff thats either mortgaged or not enough to pay rent. All in all you have 375 from hotels 200 from rails and the rest adds up to about $100 or less due to not having much or being mortgaged. You can't say this person is out of the game he could easily trade off some rails to another player for some cash.

Its only 50 for houses and he may rather trade the rails off than sell hosues. This would be bargin time for some players which would keep some dangerous stuff from landing in the bankrupter's lot and give the player owning this a chance to still stay in the game.



Well the problem with your system is you have to look to different areas of the map which is kinda annoying for people that actually know the game pretty well. Say i wana buy house for all the orange. I have to seleect each and every gd one move it and then it appears at my area. Then move to buy house and repeat for where i want my houses and god forbid if i need more than 3.

Also if you don't know monopoly you can just look at the names. Each unit has a color in the name representing its spot on the baord. for quick reference you can send each one you need to the ping beacon. Also each color group has a rough resemblence either sharing the same unit or the same race and same attack range roughly (melee or ranged).

This can be put into a tutorial for those who don't know the map or the maker could actually tell them. Maybe frit could make the boxes bigger 2 and sort them by color as they are bought. This would make things faster for those not that familiar with monopoly.

Ummm... I see... How this interferes with forbidding paying less than the cost of the property when trading while you're bankrupt?

Okay, but not less annoying problem with the current system is when units get squeezed. Also, you can put that units on the edges to hotkeys for quick reference.

EDIT:
I thought of another system which can replace the current one. This one is for future versions, because it requires major modifications to the map. It is based on a miniboard placed somewhere on the map:

All units there except dark archons belong to the neutral player. The color of property units shows their owner. There are four button units: scout = mortgage/unmortgage, mutalisk = sell property, valkyrie = buy house/hotel, wraith = sell house/hotel.

Lets say, for example player 1 wants to mortgage. He mind controlls the scout and it appears above his dark archon to identify that the player entered the selection mode:


Now he mind controls units he wants to mortgage/unmortgage. A scourge appears above the selected unit to identify the selection:


Then the player confirms the selection by mind controlling the scout again.

While in selection mode the player can mind control already selected unit to cancel the selection.

When player mind controls mutalisk (sell property button), units in trade area are created. The player can add or remove properties from trade by mind controlling them there.

Mind controlling units of the other color while in selection mode does nothing.

Mind controlling units while not in selection mode can show short info.

Additional 4 button units could be added to eliminate the central part and replace it:


Almost all controls from one screen, isn't it convenient? Plus very visual.

EDIT2:
Just for fun I was playing with this mini-board interface and incorporated trade and auction areas:


When you trade you have two mutalisks to represent your and your partner site. You add or subtract cash by mind controlling powerups. When you agree with the deal you morph mutalisk:


And this is how auction looks like (you add +5 or +20 by mind controlling that little mineral powerups, the mineral field to the right displays current bid):


EDIT3:
lol, and here the final part little bit rearanged to perfectly fit the screen:


The water is invisible when you look at the center. You roll the dice by morphing zerglings with larva (yeah two zerglings like two dices or alternatively you can roll the dice by morphing an archon), you end turn by mind controlling the egg, you ask Mr. Monopoly for help by mind controlling civilian. Enter trade area by mind controlling the free mutalisk. All other control buttons are situated in the bottom: shuttle = buy property, scout = don't buy property, dropship = mortgage/unmortgage, valkyrie = buy house/hotel, wraith = sell house/hotel.

EDIT4:
Or better morph two scourges! And when scourges born they ordered randomly split over the mini-board. Their resulting hp 1-6 represents the dice value They belong to the player. To finish the turn the player moves both his scourges back to the meh lil yellow square and they morph the larva for the next player And use observers instead of scourges to represent the current selection.

Post has been edited 11 time(s), last time on Jun 5 2009, 3:26 pm by Wormer.

The key idea behind the directions was to keep it simple. The less actions you have to do, the better, and in the least number of locations around the map. This is why everything is centered around 1) your inventory and 2) the controls in the middle, except for trades and auctions where the new location is only used after initiated from one of the 2 primary areas. In fact, DevliN's original map that I started on just had those two areas just because it wasn't very far along, and I saw that it was possible to do everything out of those two areas.

Another important decision behind my methodology was that after learning how to play, you can play very quickly. Obviously the center of the board is the prime example of this, in contrast to norm's map where you flop all over the place to do the turn by turn functions, and I find that just grabbing units and ordering them to buy/sell house beacons and mortgage beacons takes very little time at all.

The fact is, your method condenses everything even further than mine (trades take place at the same spot), but it is more click intensive, visually clustered, and generally more "this looks confusing" at first glance. It's actually one of my favorite parts of the map that it seems extremely simple at first with just the four directions, and then continues later with just 4 beacons.

If you really like your method, I will give you the map and let you make it yourself after I'm done. It obviously won't have any further edits I do to it, and I would ask that it only be tested privately and released only after I see it and make sure it works, but I'm open to people editing it for their greater enjoyment. I certainly wont do it, though.. not even considering the massive amount of work required to overhaul the whole thing a few days worth of work short before release, I even like my system more.

Also, I do know of and agree with the rule of all trades since entering bankruptcy are reverted upon declaring bankruptcy. Think about triggering this for a second, though, and you'll see why I decided not to do it in this release It's been on the list of "possible further additions in later releases," though, as you can see on the first post of this thread.

Now I just need DevliN to give me back the map I really don't care if you haven't touched it; I can do the cosmetic edits myself. I want to get this released before Monday when I leave for a few days again, and in order for that to happen, I'd have to get the map back today.

EDIT: I am starting working on it again. Due to DevliN's not responding to my PM's even though he's been online, I can only assume he hasn't worked on it. Which would have been fine if he had just told me so, making me instead wait around for nothing... ah well. Lets see how fast I can get all this done.

EDIT2: See release thread for any further information.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 12 2009, 6:51 am by fritfrat.