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d.a.barchipelago (1726 D)
26 May 20 UTC
(+3)
Suggestion: Close chat option
On large variants, having lots of chats open makes the mobile interface quite cumbersome. It'd be nice if we could close chats, or if chats with dead people closed automatically.
9 replies
Open
Lagaroth (1073 D)
29 May 20 UTC
(+2)
How to do a proper convoy
Is this how to convoy? https://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=43159
9 replies
Open
Titus (1572 D)
21 Jun 19 UTC
(+3)
How to Create Group Chat Feature for the Site
Does anyone know how a group chat feature could be implemented to allow players to initiate a chat with a selected sub-group of the players in a game. Below is the idea i thought of how to implement. Maybe someone has some more specific useful ideas and any idea how easy and the cost to implement. My idea to implement is in following response

Titus (1572 D)
21 Jun 19 UTC
(+3)
My proposal:
You would need a tab that would list all the players, then in that tab you select which players you want to chat with and then click a control to initiate group chat for those selected players, and that would then open a chat for a group of players. If one player closes the tab, then they leave the group, but the tab remains open for the other players that still have that group tab open, but the players remaining in the group chat receive a message of those that have left. (Softros Messenger has similar features) I guess you then would have a separate group chat tab for each group chat you start and are invited to, and do not close. Since you likely would only be in a handful of group chats, I would think the group chat tabs would not be unmanageable. I guess you could create a mirror vdip cite and develop a working copy, and then update the site code and database to implement that without disrupting data in the current database. Could be a major undertaking, maybe require fundraising to try to raise the funds to make this change. I think it could be done, may cause disruption even loss of games, but after the initial pain, would be amazing. I have had games cancelled for snafus in the system, so most everyone would tolerate this to get such a great option.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
21 Jun 19 UTC
(+2)
I'm not convinced about chat room that can be joined and leaved. Could be hard to get an old 3-way chat back if you want to look at it at a later time.
Chat rooms would be interesting, hard to implement though I would expect.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
21 Jun 19 UTC
(+2)
Technically it’s not that complicated.
It’s more how to implement this in the current page layout.
Anyone with some UI skills here?
G-Man (2466 D)
21 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
+1 multi-player messages/chat
KingOfSwords (1497 D)
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+2)
While it's kind of too bad that there's no way to have an intermediate conversation between the basic 1-on-1 and the global chat, I don't think it's practical within the form of having a button for each conversation. Most people would be sensible enough to use 3- or 4-way conversations sparingly, but if some fool decided to push the system until it broke, there would be a huge number of possible combinations. The math involved is based on factorials, which get very big very quickly. In a 7-player game, the number of combinations would be huge; in a 35-player game or larger, it would be astronomical.
jmo1121109 (1200 D Mod)
22 Jun 19 UTC
I'm very much against a chat you can leave. From a backend standpoint that would be awful to code. I'd love to see a good UI design proposed for this though, that's the main thing that's held me back from making this.
jmo1121109 (1200 D Mod)
22 Jun 19 UTC
Perhaps putting a hard limit on the number of chats you're allowed to be in per game would solve the factorial concern around the large variants.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
@jmo: Was thinking about this long ago, and the UI is the main reason this has not happened. So if someone can provide a somewhat usable UI-idea we can try to implement this.
tobi1 (1997 D Mod (S))
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+4)
I had a thought on this in the past as well and came up with the following UI design which I'd like to propose now (still with some old webdip styles):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5vnb9bt45iso6hl/webdipGroupMessages.png


The basic idea is to replace the tab interface with an interface that could display in theory display the factorial amount of chats that a possible in a game. So in my proposal different chats will be displayed in a scrollable and therefore easily extendable list instead of tabs - similar to common messaging apps. Every other behavior of the current system stays as it is. Especially chats are unique and you are not able to have multiple parallel chats with the same constellation of members.


In detail the chat interface is split in 3 parts (as you can see in the linked image):

1. The chat overview: Here all active chats are listed and can be easily accessed by selection on that list.

By default the chats are ordered by the time the most recent message was received. Color coded country names make it easy to identify the members of one chat. As in a current system an envelope icon notifies you of new messages in one of the chats.
As you can see, there are four buttons for each chat. The first one lets you pin a chat, so important conversations always stay at the top of your list. You can also directly mark a chat as read or unread. Or you can mute certain conversations. If you feel that the overview is cluttered by old, now unimportant chats, the last button lets you remove those from the list.
However, every unmuted chat with a new message will automatically reappear in the chat overview so you won't miss out anything.

2. Chat selection panel: Open a chat directly.

If you want to start a chat with a new constellation or want to open a chat that is not in the list of active chats anymore (or you do not want to search for it in a cluttered list of a Divided States match), you can use this panel. Just select the desired conversation partners, click on "Open chat" and start your conversation.

3. Messaging area: Read and write.

This is pretty much the same as in the current system. At the top the chat partners are displayed again with the same information as in the current system. Below the text in a scrollable list with the newest message at the bottom. And finally a textbox to write your next message.
[Looking again on this, the chat member list seems to be too large for conversations with a few members. Perhaps the detailed information could be hidden in an extendable section or be removed completely (you would find them anyway at the bottom of the board). But more ideas are welcomed!]


If that is a thing for you, I can think of implementing such a system. As pointed out by Oli, this should not be too hard technically.

What do you think?
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+3)
I think this takes much to much space. Esp. if you add more countries.
ubercacher16 (2169 D)
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
Plus one to the idea of multiple player chats.
Chumbles (1380 D)
22 Jun 19 UTC
I think this would make the coding and maintenance of the site much more complex than is justifiable. Wouldn't this be better accomplished by finding a forum hosting site that has the features you want and linking it? Just an idea. But my experience in managing software products tells me that this might be more trouble than it's worth.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
22 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
@ubercacher: it's not that complex.
The UI problem is much harder than coding.
ubercacher16 (2169 D)
23 Jun 19 UTC
Yeah, I know. Just weighing in on the idea in general. Thanks so much for all you do around here!
jmo1121109 (1200 D Mod)
23 Jun 19 UTC
Okay tobi, I see what you did there and I understand oli's concern. I think the space would get a lot more manageable if you replaced the multi like player name/info for the 3 person chat with the list you get when you select global, just the colored names of the players (non anon) or the country names (anon) for even single person chats.

I think that would solve some space issue by cutting it down by 1/3rd. Way better then any ui design I was able to come up with for this feature.

The mute system is really broken right now though for country mutes, with a bunch of bad bugs that would need to be fixed before something like this happens.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
23 Jun 19 UTC
What if we remove all country tabs without a chat and add selector what countries you want to message. We can even hide this selector. Once there is a chat it gets a separate tab (that you can choose to "ignore" to revive the tab again.
tobi1 (1997 D Mod (S))
23 Jun 19 UTC
Alright. I have replaced the extensive chat member information by a smaller text in one line as proposed and made the upper list a bit smaller so the whole interface already looks a bit more compact. Adding the current vdip styles I now have the following:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbduwmkpp315g5h/webdipGroupMessagesV1extended2.png?dl=0

As you can see, I added the buttons for the Divided States variant to see how the interface looks for such a big variant. Now the selection section gets rather big. But as suggested by Oli this section could be hidden. A hidden version could then look like the following:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5r2i3o9dyqimiv9/webdipGroupMessagesV1.png?dl=0

Note that I added some border to the text as the Divided States variant uses many colors that were not readable on the background. Though I am not really convinced from the new look of the font and would stay with the old font style (perhaps it is better to overwork the font colors of the variant at some point if that is becoming an issue).

What do you say?

@ Oli: I am not really convinced of keeping the message tabs if we would switch to a multi message system. I believe you would quickly lose overview when there are several multiple member chats going next to the normal one, especially on larger variants. Further more should a tab of say a 5-member-chat be labelled without spanning half the screen?

@ jmo (and others): Would you say it would be good to stay with the profile names as label for the chat in non-anon games? I have not played many Full Press games lately but I believe that the country association would be much more important when writing messages, especially if the related country tab would not be displayed above anymore. But I would like to leave that question to the ones who are more used to Full Press non-anon games.

Concerning the mute problems: I believe, that the in-game mute system should be rewritten for a multiple chat system anyway. It would not work with multiple chats as it does currently. And a simplified version where you just are not informed about new messages in one chat (as in common messaging apps) should be sufficient for such a mute system IMO.
Oli (977 D Mod (P))
23 Jun 19 UTC
I'm not sure if a tab-system is messier. In your solution there might be problems with new messages after the visible first 4. And a lot of space is wasted as each chat takes a full line.
The 4 switch-icons could move to the chat area to save some more space there...
jmo1121109 (1200 D Mod)
24 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
So something I've been thinking about is the biggest shortfall in our press system is that it isn't live updating. If we're going to put work into redoing it anyway, that should be the main priority.
bo_sox48 (937 D)
24 Jun 19 UTC
(+1)
I have had an idea in my head for some time that we on the webDiplomacy side could integrate an instant messaging system for our press, which would mean that messages are both sent and received instantaneously when the press boxes are open and notifications are presented on the rest of the site without having to refresh the page or open a new page. This is a pretty obvious thing to integrate along with group messaging in my opinion - both are a fair amount of development work, but they go hand in hand. Either constitutes an almost full redesign and refactor of the press system, so doing one at a time instead of both together really doesn't make much sense if we're planning on using our limited development time and resources in a sane manner. Because this thread is regarding group messaging, I'll stick to that theme, but instant messaging really should be a priority when it comes to updating our press system.

Ideally, the way this would be designed from a UX perspective would be simple: there is a menu, probably a dropdown, with each country and a space sort of like the address line of an email where the name of the country you are speaking with is displayed. This would take up a small amount of the space that the press box itself currently takes. Aside from this, the display would not change. You can add multiple recipients to a message this way, just as you can add multiple recipients to an email. From a design perspective, this makes the most sense.

I don't envision changing the standard country-by-country toggle options that we currently have above the press box, but we would need a way to access previous group chats without necessarily remembering all the members. I propose replacing the notes tab, which I personally have never used and don't think many people do, with another dropdown containing shortcuts to each of the group chats we have been a part of throughout the game. If we haven't initiated any or been invited into any, the dropdown would simply be empty. In gunboat games or public press games, this tab would simply remain the notes tab.

On the front end this would not be very difficult to code. Rearranging the notifications system on the front and back end to allow for live updates would be the trickiest component.

I can probably draw up some basic design thoughts with pen and paper if it would interest any of the developers here. My PHP is absolutely atrocious, so I wouldn't be much help on that front.
MilesFM (995 D)
25 Jun 19 UTC
Hopefully it isn't as bad as the language design.
KingOfSwords (1497 D)
03 Jun 20 UTC
Here's a previous discussion on the topic of group chat within a game.


23 replies
GOD (1850 D Mod (B))
24 May 20 UTC
TELECONFERENCE GAME SUNDAY
A friends of mine and I want to play a live game next Sunday, but with voice negotiations through discord. We've tried that once already and it works really well, pretty close to ftf.
6 replies
Open
Samuel, o Louco (824 D)
29 May 20 UTC
Which font do you use to make texts in diplomacy variants?
I'm trying to create a variant in Photoshop, but I don't know which font to use to write the names of the places; it gets foggy when it is very small. Does anyone know what kind of font I use?
4 replies
Open
Aelfred Smith (1051 D)
26 May 20 UTC
Absolute War
Hello all

We are trying to start a Gobble Earth game and we need a lot of people. You are welcome to join.
1 reply
Open
New Concept: Squadrons
This is just an idea I had: What if there were squadrons (a group of planes) in vDip?
They would be able to go on both land and sea territories, but of course there's a catch, or they would be OP.
The catch: They would not be able to capture territories.
Any thoughts?
6 replies
Open
Aelfred Smith (1051 D)
25 May 20 UTC
Absolute War
Hello all
We are trying to start a Gobble Earth game and we need a lot of people. You are welcome to join.
https://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=43798
1 reply
Open
Maluco Rasta (1225 D)
24 May 20 UTC
Choose Your Evil Empire
Good day.
I am playing this game and it happened to me to move a fleet and it took the order wrong and went elsewhere.
It may have been a mistake, but now, the next turn, she won't even let me give her an order. It doesn't show me like a fleet of mine in the game.
How do you do with these things?
1 reply
Open
Mercy (2131 D)
30 Apr 20 UTC
(+3)
Suggestion: new rating system
I propose a new rating system that will fix many of the problems people experience with vRating.
66 replies
Open
Samuel, o Louco (824 D)
19 May 20 UTC
Thinking of creating a Divided States variant, but in Brazil
I really like the Divided States variant. And I think it would be really cool in a Brazilian version too, and I'm thinking about creating it. But would that be considered a copy or something?
11 replies
Open
Metramax23 (969 D)
21 May 20 UTC
Join Please!!!- Sticks and Stones
We have 4 open spots guys please join!!!
1 reply
Open
Tener (950 D)
19 May 20 UTC
Private Messaging
Hi all. I am a newbie to vDiplomacy though I have played WebDiplomacy. How does private messaging work in vDiplomacy? I don't see the same account settings for messaging that I am used to. Thanks for helping me.
4 replies
Open
Lukas Podolski (1234 D)
16 May 20 UTC
Middle Earth variant
I recall we used to have one here, albeit quite unbalanced? Will we have anything like this in the near future?
8 replies
Open
vDiplomacy
Why is it called "v"Diplomacy
8 replies
Open
CBro27 (1453 D)
16 May 20 UTC
Reporting potential cheating to Moderators
How do I report potential cheating in a gunboat game? GameID is 42792
1 reply
Open
TheBubonicTague (969 D)
14 May 20 UTC
Question About Custom Phase Lengths and Swaps
If I choose a custom phase length of 24 hours, then select "10 minutes" for time until phase swap, then "1 day" for phase length after swap, could someone describe what that would look like in-game?
10 replies
Open
umbletheheep (1023 D)
18 Oct 19 UTC
(+3)
New Weekly Diplomacy Newsletter
Hey guys. I've started a weekly diplomacy email. The goal is to keep everyone updated on the current events going on across the community both online and the local scene. I'll also be including weekly strategy articles. You can see the past issues and subscribe here https://bit.ly/2mvDOTX

I hope you'll sign up, but I also wanted to hear what are some things you'd like to see. Be sure to keep me updated also with new variants so I can announce them. Thanks!
12 replies
Open
TheBubonicTague (969 D)
14 May 20 UTC
New to Site: Playing Games With Fewer Players
So, I'm new to the site and am trying to play with a group of friends as a way to stay in contact with each other. There are 6 of us. All of us are new to Diplomacy, and figured it'd be best to play on the Classic map first, but noticed it's for 7 players. Is there a way to pick the Classic map variant but only play with 6 people instead of 7? I can't seem to find anything talking about that. Thanks!
4 replies
Open
Interactive map in variant testing
The interactive map in the variant I am testing does not work very well.
(Sometimes it does not show the movement arrows)
(When I try moving from Newfoundland to Quebec in interactive orderface it thinks I am trying to move to Quebec north coast
21 replies
Open
Shaurya (708 D)
11 May 20 UTC
How do you redeem yourself?
I have 8 unexcused delays and want to play more games as I only have games going wich are very slow paced.
3 replies
Open
SlawDawg77 (1377 D)
11 May 20 UTC
(+1)
Concede vs. Draw
Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I can't find a clear answer. In my current game, most everyone has voted to Concede as a 3-team alliance is clearly in position to win. However, my understanding is Concede only gives points to one player that doesn't vote concede. Now that everyone else has voted concede, could the 3 of us that haven't vote draw and split the pot 3-ways? Or is a draw between all teams left only and if want a 3-way draw we have to fight until the end?
12 replies
Open
umbletheheep (1023 D)
11 May 20 UTC
Nexus Finals Video Analysis
Gohornsgo and myself are doing video analysis of the Nexus Finals. Here's the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UrfqiGhwGE.

We'll be doing an episode usually after each turn with another dropping tonight.
0 replies
Open
Variant Dev Thread: North America Minor Powers
Thread about a variant I am working on
3 replies
Open
Text in variants
What are people using to make the text in variants.
Whenever I try making text and then importing it, it ends up being blurry.
1 reply
Open
umbletheheep (1023 D)
08 May 20 UTC
Star Trek Diplomacy
So I came across this over at Diplomatic Corp which has run this variant: http://www.dipwiki.com/index.php?title=Star_Trek and the creator's page with all the files: http://mainecav.org/diplomacy/

Is this something that is this not available for fear of copyright infringement on vDip? I'm not well versed, but I know this is a deep history in fantasy zines in Diplomacy's history.
11 replies
Open
Momentbruh (677 D)
08 May 20 UTC
World Map Choose Your Country: BrUhMoMeNt
Anyone interested in a World Map, choose your country, no reliability, 2 missed turns, (renews every 5) extensions, and talking allowed? If so, go to here: https://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=43409
1 reply
Open
DevTools
What does it mean by image must be indexed/palleted png
22 replies
Open
Macca573 (1517 D)
07 May 20 UTC
Design bug on Mate Against Mate?
The way the map is drawn makes it look like false connections exist.
1 reply
Open
Aladeen (1122 D)
04 May 20 UTC
Civil Disorder but can't replace player?
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I can't find it using the search.

I'm in a game with friends/co-workers and one guy quit the game. We waited the 48 hours for him to go into civil disorder, which he did, but the game isn't letting us replace him. Is it because the game is private? We have a replacement ready to go, but our former co-worker isn't answering his email and we aren't sure what we can do to not have to wait 24 hours each turn to get the game moving.
5 replies
Open
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