Gemp-LotR enters public beta

[mcfion]

Hello... I'm a starter here... I don't LotR in a long time, but I'm teaching some friends how to play with my few cards...

I have a suggestion to help new players: pre-build decks! Some decks already ready to use, my suggestion is to use the official pre-build decks and the decks by top players of the official tournament! Like those tournament decks of magic... This way new players can play right away and after having a more accurate idea of the game, he can make his own decks! What you guys think?

[Air Power]

Hello... I'm a starter here... I don't LotR in a long time, but I'm teaching some friends how to play with my few cards...

I have a suggestion to help new players: pre-build decks! Some decks already ready to use, my suggestion is to use the official pre-build decks and the decks by top players of the official tournament! Like those tournament decks of magic... This way new players can play right away and after having a more accurate idea of the game, he can make his own decks! What you guys think?

I'm not involved in the program, but let me know if you need some starter decklists and I'll post what I have.

[MarcinS]

i have a question about opp. win%.
in first week i have a 63.29 opp win%
in the second week it is 54.69%
yet in overall results it is only 52.67%
this doesn't seems logic to me.

Lets say in Week 1 you play one opponent and you win. That opponent will not play anyone else.
Your opponent win % in Week 1 will be 0%. Lets say, the same thing happens in second week, with a different opponent, your opponent win % in Week 2 will be 0% as well.

If your opponent from Week 1 won his only game in week 2, and your opponent from Week 2 won his only game in week 1, your total opp win % for the whole league (after week 2) will be 50%.

So to summarize - there is no mathematical formula to figure out the Opp Win % of the whole league, based on Opp Win % for each week.

[hsiale]

(long post alert)

For some time I've been noting down various things that I found could be useful, I guess with all sets done this is good time to post the list so that you can go over the suggestions and choose what to implement (I hope you choose all ). Those are mostly usability issues, aimed at saving time and allowing more efficient use of the site.

1. Deck builder

1a. culture button should be also in the shadow cultures row, with the already existing one displaying FP cards and the new displaying Shadow cards.

1b. Sites should not be a card type, there should be a separate button for switching from draw deck building to adventure deck building (when this button is on, card type selection and culture buttons should be deactivated and keywords list should be changed so that you can search sites by terrain keywords). When the button is off, no sites should be displayed, when it's on, only sites can be displayed (as we can use merchant as collection manager now, there's no need to display sites and non-sites together in deck builder).

1c. Deck builder should show in some way if there are unsaved changes done to the deck you are currently working on.

1d. When deck is saved, cards in each box should be sorted (for example by: 1. Card type 2. Culture 3. Quantity in deck 4. Collector's number - in draw deck boxes, in adventure deck box by site number if old style sitepath is used, by twilight cost if shadows sitepath is used). If a deck is changed, after a few versions it is a complete mess and sometimes I need to note down the decklist, delete all cards and build the deck from scratch, so that I can clearly see what is in it.

1e. Automatically generated text deck list should be available when needed (useful to post a deck to forum/website/send to someone) - for example in this (http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,6969.0.html) thread formatting used is very nice and easy to read.

1f. Advanced deck settings. Together with the deck, there should be a possibility of saving:
- default bid,
- default starting fellowships,
- autopass settings,
- some notes about the deck.

Default bid and starting fellowship can be set using the same way we use now to bid and play fellowship during each game. Both for bid and starting fellowship there should be a choice whether to use it automatically skipping game start procedure or just hint but leave the procedure as it is (so that you bid/play companions, but default bid is not 0 but your set amount and in companions choice the one you should play to get default fellowship is highlighted), and the choice should be done independently for casual and tournament games. If due to a change in deck default bid results in autocorrupt it should be reset to 0, also if starting fellowship becomes impossible to play it should be reset.

For autopass, there should be a choice for each phase (for maneuver, archery, assignment, skirmish and regroup separate choice for FP and shadow sides of the deck) and also for each response event in the deck (there's nothing more annoying than FP player finding out you hold All Blades Perish in hand because the game waits for you to respond, when playing a deck with this card I definitely prefer losing some time by having to pass every time my Nazgul takes a wound, even if I don't have the event in hand, so that my opponent can't be sure if I have it). The choice saved with deck would be loaded at the game start and should be possible to change during the game if for example you are low on time and want to autopass more.

Notes about deck: I play mainly FotR block and Movie. I have 9 decks for each of those formats (and things will get worse when I get into some more formats building decks for them) and sometimes a quick reminder of main deck's strategy displayed above bidding box would really help me if for example I play a deck first time for a month.

2. Game hall

2a. When you put mouse over "Watch game" button, list of all players in game room should be displayed (so that you can find someone who is watching a game quickly).

2b. It would be nice if game hall chat was available also from some other places - merchant or game room if you're watching the game, not playing.

3. Game room

3a. Each site on the adventure path (or in support area) should have its owner listed in the info box. Adventure decks should be treated like discard piles - you should see number of cards in each of them and be able to look through your adventure deck at any time.

3b. When choosing a site on new style adventure path, next to each possibility amount of twilight you will have at the start of the shadow phase should be displayed next to each site (of course amount you'd have if no optional actions are used).

3c. Game should show somehow if current assignment/skirmish phase is normal or fierce one.

3d. If there are less than 3 minutes left to player decision time-out, additional clock warning about it should be displayed (complicated assignment phases can take close to 10 minutes and it would be good to avoid losses because you don't know you're thinking for too long).

3e. "Pass" and "Done" buttons should appear in opposite corners of box they are in so that it's harder to misclick.

3f. For the same reasons, choosing next skirmish to resolve should look differently than using ability of a companion in that skirmish (for example by using a different colour around the card when choosing a skirmish, or making it go around both companion and minions when choosing a skirmish).

4. Merchant

4a. Next to "Owned" selection there should be also second one "Wanted" so that you can look for cards you need. Deck builder should have a button "Add deck to want list", when used, deck is compared with "My cards" and all cards you lack to build it are added to want list (and removed once you buy them or remove from the list).

4b. Sorting by collector's info should be available. Turning off merchant's prices display should be possible (so that merchant can also become a good tool to look through your collection without unneeded info clogging the picture).

----------
That's everything that's on my list now, I hope you find it useful Two things to remember: for 1f purposes The Witch-king, Black Lord and Orc Crusher are also "response events", for 3c there are two possibilities to have a skirmish that's neither normal nor fierce (A Dark Shape Sprang and The Witch-king's Beast, Fell Creature).

[MarcinS]

Quick comments:

Deck builder
- 1a - won't do it, at least not soon, a culture is a culture, there is no distinction between FP Gollum and Shadow Gollum,
- 1b - won't do it, both merchant and deck builder use the same mechanism for filtering and sorting and I would like to keep it the same across both, to avoid code duplication,
- 1c - will do that,
- 1d - won't do it on save, will do it on load of deck, so when you load a deck, all the cards will be properly sorted (in one way, or another),
- 1e - this requires a bit of work, as I need to add sub-titles to all the unique cards that have them, will do that at some point,
- 1f - will do the following - notes about the deck, default bid and autopass settings, will not do - starting fellowship, as to validate it during deck building, if the starting fellowship is playable, it would have to start the game in background, to check card interactions (-1 twilight if you can spot, etc), it's also difficult for effects that trigger of playing a card, like R Pippin from FotR,
- extra - will also add extra checkbox for "is about to wound one of your characters" pausing and waiting for your input, please note, that deck builder is not able to check what the cards do for the same reason as above for starting fellowship, so I can't check what type of "is about to" events are in your deck, also at the moment there are 12 types of "is about to" effects, and 38 types of "when/whenever/for each" effects and you probably don't want to fill 50 checkboxes to "tune" each of your decks,

Game hall
- 2a - won't do it - that's too much extra information sent too often, for a very narrow use,
- 2b - won't do it - that's what browser tabs are for,

Game room
- 3a - will do that,
- 3b - won't do it - you should be able to easily count it and for a game itself it might be difficult in some cases,
- 3c - already done (after restart),
- 3d - will add that,
- 3e - will do that,
- 3f - will do that,

Merchant
- 4a - I will do something a bit different, the purpose is to see what you need to build your deck using "My cards" - so in the merchant, there will be an extra box to select a deck, and it will filter only cards that you need to buy, to have that deck,
- 4b - will do that,

[bibfortuna25]

3B: The problem is that the window for choosing a new site covers up the spot where the twilight counter is. I can move that window a little bit, but not far enough to see how much is currently in the pool.

[MarcinS]

3B: The problem is that the window for choosing a new site covers up the spot where the twilight counter is. I can move that window a little bit, but not far enough to see how much is currently in the pool.

You can resize the window with the site cards... If it's still a problem, I can try figuring out something else.

[MarcinS]

Progress report (after restart):
- done - 1d, 3a, 3c, 3f, 4b
- remaining - 1c, 1e, 3d, 3e, 4a

[Gartax]

It should be cool to have a foil filter in the deck builder and in the merchant. Thanks

[ellesar]

there is already a foil filter :p

[bibfortuna25]

It seems MarcinS has disappeared off the face of the earth. There haven't been any updates to the program's latest bugs.

[TelTura]

He's only been gone a week.  Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions.

[Nitsuj]

It seems MarcinS has disappeared off the face of the earth. There haven't been any updates to the program's latest bugs.

Wow, do you sound spoiled here.

[MarcinS]

It seems MarcinS has disappeared off the face of the earth. There haven't been any updates to the program's latest bugs.

I'm in Malaysia at the moment. I'll be back to "normal duties" on Friday, I'll fix all the reported bugs during the weekend.

[TelTura]

See?  It's not even something stupid, like "I was hit by a semi and can barely move my shattered hands", it's "I'm stuck using fracking satellite internet and can barely load this forum, let alone my repository and test environment".

Lag is always a good reason.