Async Multiplayer

[VanHlebar]

Hi Ross:

I am just catching up on this thread and glad to see so much progress is going on! I was very surprised that you said Google has deprecated their Cloud notification service!?! I just downloaded a new strategy war game "Great Big War Game" and it also implemented async play very much the way you have. Their game literally just came out last week and they have some form of push notifications in it.

It is interesting because they too have opted to offer up a "friends list" to create games from or from random opponents. Their approach for the random games is a little different though. There is a "lobby" or list of open games on the screen that you can review and see what the options are that have been selected and then you can choose if you want to join that game or not.

I can't wait for Hero Mages to come out Ross with this ability. I have so much more time to play at random times during the day and evening and I love this game but I just can't ever find the time to sit down, join the server and then play a game or two. This will fix that issue entirely for me!

[pjft]

Hi Ross,

Congrats on the async update release - I just installed it in my device.

I was wondering, though: do we not get notifications on Android asides from the email ones?

Cheers,
Paulo

[Ross Przybylski]

Currently all notifications are handled via email. The application will send an email to you when it's your turn. It won't send another email until after the next time you log in.

AIR does support push notifications, but I haven't yet figured out how to send push notifications via my Smart Fox server. Future release

[pjft]

Hm, ok, hopefully it'll get done soon

So far it's great. I wonder, though - is our turn really only submitted when we finish it? That could certainly be exploitable :l I'd expect all our moves - and dice - to be running server-side.

Also, I may have run into a small bug, see this screenshot. I'm playing a 1 vs 1 with StormCrow, it seems, but it shows as 1 vs 3?

Cheers!

[Ross Przybylski]

Actually, each and everything you do is submitted to the server real-time. So, if a player were to "half complete" a turn and you checked in on the game record, you'd see those animations. The game doesn't notify you until the turn is submitted, however. Also note that if a turn is not compelted within 72 hours, it is possible to drop your opponent and claim victory. Games where a player is eligible to be dropped appear in red text.

[pjft]

Hi Ross,

Just to tell you I'm loving the update - finally I can get some serious multiplayer matches going on with people.

(Edit: removed the PM feature request and moved it to the right thread)

A few questions: why doesn't it save my preferred heroes and match type? I have to manually add them every time.

And why can't I really select the type of game I want to play unless it's with friends? I should be able to select either whether I want to customize my game in Random match, or join one that's in the queue. This makes it impossible for anyone without friends to play a match with more than one player - like a team match - or am I missing something?

Finally, I'm wondering if you would be willing to share what's the increase in number of games played, and even new players and new factions sold We are all rooting for you, as you hopefully know Well, even if you can't - even if on a high or partial level, - I hope all is going well.

Cheers, and good job!
Paulo

[Ross Przybylski]

@pjft

Preferred Heroes and game options are only saved for the current session. I believe I had this on my to-do list to have it save these settings between sessions, but deferred to future release.

Random matches are purposively restricted to random 1v1 head to head matches. There is no intelligence to the matchmaking either, it just matches you automatically with whoever is currently waiting on the que or puts you on the que if there is no one waiting to play. Our playerbase traffic isn't large enough to accomodate filters for specific game types, player ranks, or team games (hard enough to find 1v1 players to finish the game, let alone a 2v2). These features are included in custom friend invites because you can generally rely on your friends to complete any games you start.

As of yet, I haven't noticed any significant surge in player traffic or sales, though it does seem players are buying In-App purchases on the marketplace. It will be hard to determine the impact of async multiplayer until it's available on all platforms and has had a chance to be promoted.