Strategists, as I finally found some spare time the last days I was able to overhaul my magic ladder game analysis tool which is packed with a bunch of features that might help you improving your strategic gameplay on the modified medium earth map.



Forecasting your enemy's strength and predicting his positions, income, card pieces and next attacks undoubtedly is the key to success in this game. However, keeping together all those pieces of information - especially over several turns - can be a pain without organized note taking and structured analysis.
LadderBud will boost your analytic capabilities as it allows you to store all relevant aspects of the typical ladder game for each turn, branching into multiple variants and contemplating possible enemy reactions. I wrote that program back in April 2019. Since uncompromisingly entering all available information into LadderBud, my gameplay improved significantly and catapulted me to a +2300 ranking, grabbing the golden trophy within 2 months.
As game reviews are a precious source for learning the basics of Warzone strategy, I just started another thread to present a fully analyzed ladder game with LadderBud (check out the ladder forum). Maybe this thread will grow with more contributions in future.

If you want to give LadderBud a try, visit

http://www.ladderbud.de

I didn't rent a webserver to host the website, but installed a RaspberryPi in my cellar, so bring some patience or come back later in case the website doesn't response in time.

Maybe I am going to implement some additional features, including more maps, maybe testing AI supported analysis, but as you all know there are just 24h a day. Let me know what you think!

Cheers

Yes

well... guess I have to join the ladder now xD

Not really tried it yet, but a few quick notes.
Looks awesome!
Wish you could enable full-screen and/or let me resize the window. This is a quick fix :)
Would be cool if TAB could be used to move between territories (maybe limit to the same bonus?)
Maybe add a UI element to help keep track of cards / card parts? You have notes ofc, but having a UI element to help would be great

I wish you set the free version to 1 saved file. Not sure how you did saves (I guess you worry that ppl can get around the limit by moving savefiles?) but having 0 saves is not really long term usable tbh.

A dream feature would be to pull data from your current ladder games using the warzone api :P

Edited 8/15/2019 21:18:38

Nice

Wow! Without a tool like this, keeping notes quickly gets too tedious to be worth it. If I ever rejoin the 1v1 ladder, I will give it a try.

This ia the progression of the modern world

I like your former tries xD
I did the same at least pen and paper. Then I started with Onenote and screenshots. Though it still last a while until new turns are updated. but its available on smartphone

if you ever feel like to put more effort on this tool. I would need it as application for android... and secondly would be nice to vary in maps. that would be awesome

I was just dreaming about a tool like this recently because it's often difficult for me to keep track of things in my head. The tool isn't bad as is (once I learned the shortcuts), but there are a few questions I have before I purchase this.

1- Does the tool have the ability to support more maps, or is it only MME for now? If it's just MME, will other maps eventually be included?
2- Why not add a deployment feature/orders? As is, I can still mess up my variants. It would be nice if the tool worked like Warzone, except I get to put in the orders for the enemy as well as myself.
3- I don't see a way to add more than 2 players. It would be nice to analyze team games.
4- If I buy a premium license and then it gets updated to a new version, will the new version be free, or will I need to purchase it again?

Thanks

Good comments here, this tool looks like helpful for learning, and advancing. I also want an app version (iOS for me). I'm skittish about unverified installations that run Java for my Mac/Windows computers.

It would be helpful if you could post a demo of your product to YouTube or some other platform.

Hi guys,
thanks for the feedback! Originally I coded LadderBud to serve my own purposes only.
I had fun doing this so I did not really care that I spent a lot of hours (~50) to develop the tool.
When I more or less finished LadderBud, I thought it might be interesting for other people as well so
I wanted to try out a few things:

- How to sell a self made application
- How to build a website hosted on an own webserver to present the tool
- All the bureaucratic aspects involved (online payments, taxes, legal issues, ...)

To educate myself, this was worth the extra effort.
Earning money by selling premium licenses would be nice of course, but I know that LadderBud is
too much a niche product to be capable of attracting the attention of many people.

But back to some notes:

• making LadderBud available as Android/iOS application
  That would be a great thing of course, but I fear it would require serious GUI overhauls
  (LadderBud basically is a canvas with a JPEG background and all those textfields positioned around using
  absolute coordinates). I am not so sure whether this would be easy to do in a mobile app. (Maybe someone could share some experiences or thoughts)
  
  Next, GUI control would probably also be a problem to make LadderBud usable by touch operations
  only. I would most likely end up rebuilding the original WarzoneApp...
  
  
• More maps
  Including more maps would currently require to draw the board in a jpeg file and to position the textfields.
  It would be conceivable to add a small builder tool to allow users to add new maps.
  I would like to do this but at the moment I am not sure whether it is wise to invest the time.
  Maybe I promise to do that once 50 premium licences are sold :-D
  
  
• Signing the executables
  That would be a nice thing as well but it costs money. As there isnt a serious perspective to earn money
  with LadderBud itself, it isnt really an option. But I understand that people are hesitant to run unsigned
  executables.
  
  
• Adding more players
  This would actually be easy to implement. I consider this in future versions.
  
  
• Pulling data from real boards
  Currently, LadderBud requires you to manually insert the board information (wastelands and start positions)
  This could be certainly done by some optical recognition procedures or taping warzone API's (I dont know whether
  this is possible though)
  

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and dont hesitate to post further LadderBud experiences.

MMJ

Make it open source!

Awesome tool!
I think I am going to join the ladder now.

Nice work.

How can we know there is no malware in this?

Edited 9/22/2019 22:59:24

There is no malware.

I must be blonde or missing something, but how does it work ?

I downloaded Required Java version, closed and restarted Chrome browser, but if I go into a game, it does not show ?
Or does it only pop up in ladder games ?

Hi Sandgroper,
it's got nothing to do with your browser. Ladderbud is a standalone desktop application.
Simply start the executable and it runs independently. No need to open Warzone simultaneously.

Greetings

ok, got it thank you...

oops wrong thread

Edited 10/25/2019 05:37:35

You'll probably make more money embedding advertisements into the app itself and post it on github than actual premium subscriptions. I fall into the 2% bucket of "no matter how good the tool I will still suck" so feel free to not listen to me.

Here is an idea to Ladderbud v2.0
Free should get save files equal to the number of games they have selected in the settings for the 1v1 ladder. Having 0 would result in having to lag your computer.
Premium memberships should get split into three tiers: Classic, Plus, and Pro.
Classic: $25.99
Limited to 50 saves
Only 1v1, Real-Time, and Seasonal ladders are allowed
Plus: $59.99
Limited to 250 saves
All but 3v3 ladders are allowed
Pro: $99.99
Limited to 1,000 saves
All ladders are allowed
Ads: EMBED ADS! Also, forbid adblockers and add an adblocker error.

Edited 10/29/2019 01:57:38