Announcing WarLight 1.6

I’m taking a break from working on the mobile version of WarLight to bring a few updates to the main site.

WarLight will be going down on Monday, September 5th at 3am PDT (10am GMT) to add new features. If all goes well, it should only be down for about 20 minutes. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this time.

During this time, WarLight will be upgraded to v1.06.0. This release is a bit of a grab-bag of a bunch of small features that have been neglected over the years. This blog post contains a summary of what’s changing.

Graphic Updates

Many areas of the site are receiving facelifts and animations. Polish has traditionally always taken a backseat to features throughout WarLight’s development, so it’s good to finally give it some effort. I won’t spoil the surprise by posting screenshots here, but it’s safe to assume that you will be pleased!

Collapsible Right Column

The right column of the main game screen that houses the orders list and players summary can now be hidden when it’s not needed. This is primarily designed for players who play on low-resolution screens, such as netbooks. By collapsing it, it frees up more screen real-estate that can be used to display the main map.

Wiki Integration

The help tab has been replaced by links to the WarLight Wiki. The wiki will now serve as the primary way of delivering information about the game.

All of the old help content is gone, and any links to the old content will redirect to the correct wiki page, since I hate creating broken links. Further, many more areas within the game itself now provide links to the wiki, such as next to each game setting and each card.

Big thanks to Grzechooo for helping out with the wiki!

Ending Vacations Gracefully

Vacations now expire one hour after playing in a game instead of immediately. This helps the situation where a player has several games where they are over the boot time when returning from a vacation, especially when some of those games have auto-boot enabled.

The rule of thumb when coming off of a vacation is to ensure players take all of their turns where they’re over the boot time within an hour of each other. By doing this, they won’t become bootable in any of them.

Misc Changes

– The “Advance by one” button was replaced by << and >> buttons that allow for navigating backwards. Players can also use the arrow keys here like they always could in history.
– With the chat window open, holding the Control or Shift keys while clicking on a bonus link now inserts its name into the chat or team chat windows, just like how territories work.
– Each territory and bonus now has a link to Wikipedia under the “More Info” button. This helps those of us who like learning more about the areas we’re conquering.
– After surrendering in a single-player game, the AIs are now significantly faster at finishing the game out.
– The manage-invite-list page now shows when players are on vacation.
– When searching maps, pressing enter after typing a filter now clicks the Apply button.
– The invite limit for tournaments has been raised from 3 times the tournament size to 5 times.
– Renamed the “Select all” button to “Show all”
– Changed the “Team Game” check-box into a drop-down.
– Ladder games now show “expires in X days” if they’re within 10 days of expiring.
– Players in a ladder with 1 game-at-a-time now get automatically bumped up to 2 if they fall under 30 unexpired games.
– Games in the 2v2 now ladder now expire after 5 months instead of 3. Already-expired games won’t un-expire; just new ones won’t expire until they’re 5 months old.

Bug Fixes

– Fixed a bug that occurred when Random Warlords or Random Cities was used in conjunction with overriding all (or most) bonuses to zero or negative armies.
– Fixed a bug that caused ladder matchmaking to include expired games when determining how many times you’ve played an opponent.
– Fixed a bug that caused blank thumbnails for the Tic-Tac-Toe map.
– Fixed a bug that occurred when pressing history’s Next Order button while looking at the distribution of a game that hadn’t taken its first turn yet.
– The lobby now clips player names when they get too long.
– Fixed a bug that occurred when abandon or blockade cards were set to excessively high values.
– Fixed a bug that caused the top pixel of letters to be cut off of map names.
– Fixed a bug that stopped people from being booted when on vacations even when vacations were not honored for that game.
– Player’s profiles no longer show them as idle if they’ve never played a multi-player game.
– Fixed a bug that caused failed attack orders to show the wrong value if you watched it, then clicked to an earlier order, then clicked on it.
– Fixed a bug that caused an error if you tried to create a ranked map-testing game.
– Map designers now get a friendlier error if they upload a SVG file with duplicate territory IDs.
– Fixed a bug that occurred when a map designer leaves the Create Game Wizard on the map browser step while they manage their maps and then return to the wizard.

10 thoughts on “Announcing WarLight 1.6”

  1. Hi Fizzer,
    The look is much improved, nice “polish”. One small criticism is that the flip up card and attack windows are slower and gratuitous animation. Edging into cheap powerpoint effects. Love the side bar hiding option, that will make it much easier to play on a netbook!!
    Cheers.

  2. I saw “Polish” and I thought that you are thinking about Poles :D. New site looks good. But there is still one more thing that is annoying – vacations for 10 day. The most people are on vacation for 14 days. I got booted in few games because it.

  3. Love the updates, one issue with the auto hiding is that the timer dissapears, if you can keep that at the top right that would be great!

  4. I play on a netbook, so I appreciate the thought behind the auto-hiding sidebar, but unfortunately the game is now impossible for me to play! The scrollbar is disabled, and I can’t view a significant portion of the bottom of the screen, meaning that I can’t zoom in or click and drag the map, I’m stuffed! I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox, and effective navigation of the whole thing is impossible in both! I’m in the middle of loads of games and even developing a map, this is a disaster!

  5. Fizzer,

    Awesome updates. As always I appreciate the discretion you use when changing things and err on the side of not overreacting. This is a quality I do not possess that you seem to carry in spades.

    The Wiki integration with the country profiles is a nice educational touch as well.

    The one issue I notice, however, is that my screen is too small using my Mac notebook, cutting off the bottom of the page on certain maps, excluding things from a proper viewing. It does so on my main page as well making it impossible for me to access the page 2, 3.. tabs. Any known action I take to resolve this would be much appreciated.

    1. I’ve identified what’s causing this issue, and I’m working on getting a fix out now. It should be fixed by tomorrow. In the meantime, you can try pressing F11 put your browser into fullscreen mode. Thanks for reporting it!

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