Simple PBEM Feature Request

[urgrue]

An "trust mode" to PBEM would be nice, if you're playing against someone you trust, which would make it so you can view the action as soon as both have done their turns (ie not require it to be sent to them first for viewing). This way every email would be a turn, watching the action, and the turn after that. Would make for a much faster PBEM experience.

[urgrue]

I didn't even realize, but this would mean TWO turns per email:

player A: do turn1

player B: do turn1, watch vid1, do turn2

player A: vid1, turn2, vid2, turn3

player B: vid2, turn3, vid3, turn4

etc

this would be so much nicer and faster in situations where you trust your

opponent, and presumably it's pretty easy to implement, I really think it

would be worth doing.

please?

[Olle Petersson]

I guess that the turn sequence you're proposing is very difficult to implement.

Plotting turn #2 before the opponent has viewed turn #1 would mean a lot difference to the game code.

Implementing the current hotseat sequence, where one player "plot-n'-watch" while the other "watch-n'-plot" would be much easier.

I don't think any of them would add a lot to the gaming experience though.

Cheers

Olle

[Visom]

Isn't the one turn per mail already said to be included in CMBB? Something along the lines

1) P1: Plots turn 1

2) P2: Plots turn 1

3) P1: Movie turn 1, plot turn 2

4) P2: Movie turn 1, plot turn 2

Repeat step 3 and 4 until end.

[urgrue]

Originally posted by Olle Petersson:

Plotting turn #2 before the opponent has viewed turn #1 would mean a lot difference to the game code.

I don't think any of them would add a lot to the gaming experience though.

Cheers

Olle

I don't know much about coding, but I don't see why the game couldn't even cheat at it like this:

player A finishes his turn3, and now both players have done their moves for this turn. game computes the battle video, and saves the game at this point to a file on the side. now just allow player A to do his turn4 instead of player B, and save this file also. diff the files and send the first save file plus the diff to player B, now he can watch the video from the first save file, then diff it back and load the second version that has player A's completed turns.

i know it sounds messy but in fact this is really simple. this would be ugly and messy and surely it would be smarter to do it another way, but this would work, i presume. CM doesnt even need to know whats going on, i could even do all this personally with a shell script, the only thing that needs real code is telling CM to let player A play instead of player B, but this cant be too complicated.

anyway, i dont agree that this doesnt add anything to the gaming experience. currently a 20 turn game takes about 40 emails, and each email provides only a 1-10 minutes of pleasure. this isnt very exciting (by comparison to TCP/IP play). in my example the same game is played in about 10 emails where each email provides about 20-40 minutes of fun (these are wild estimates).

even in your suggestion, copying the hotseat play over to PBEM, the game would be about twice as fast as currently.

for me at least, being able to play two turns and watch two videos in one session would be a much more involving and exciting experience than doing the same in four separate sessions (time required to get into it, get comfortable in my chair, etc...).

anyway, thats just my opinion.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Visom:

Isn't the one turn per mail already said to be included in CMBB? Something along the lines

I don't think so.

According to various BTS comments made from the beginning of time, changing the PBEM format is not easy. They are trying to alter the way settup is done so that people can't cheat with the new rarity system, but they aren't sure if even that will make it in.

[Redwolf]

In real trusted mode, you can exachange two turns per mail. TacOps does that.

Even without trust, the third mail we have in CMBO is not neccessary from a security standpoint as discussed in other threaads. I think the question whether it will be in CMBB is entirely dependent on implementation time, not theoretical feasibility.

[ May 29, 2002, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]