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WarLight will be going down on Friday, April 1st at 1am PDT (8am GMT) for up to 2 hours. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this 2-hour window.

During this time, WarLight will be upgraded to v1.02.0. This blog post contains a summary of the new features going live.

Open Tournaments

Tournament creators can now mark their tournaments as “open”, which allows any WarLight player to join their tournament without having to be invited! This makes it much easier to set up public tournaments.

This is similar to the Open Seat system that exists for games, but for tournaments. Tournament creators can use the existing open seat prerequisite system to define prerequisites that players must meet in order to join the tournament. Blacklists are also honored, just like they are for open games, in that players that the tournament creator has blacklisted will not be allowed to join an open tournament without being invited.

Map Browser Improvements

The process of picking the map you wish to play on now has additional options to help you explore the maps easier. First off, the map browser now allows for searching, so you can type the partial name of a map, for example, “Earth”, to filter down to all of the maps that contain the word Earth.

Second, there’s new sorting options that allow you to sort the maps by their name, number of territories, or age.

Last, the WarLight maps have been divided into the following categories:
– Featured Maps: This replaces the current “built-in maps” drop-down that exists today.
– All Maps: A way to view all of the maps on a single page.
– Real World Maps: Maps of places that exist in real life.
– Fictional Maps: Maps that look like a real-world place, but don’t actually exist.
– Novelty Maps: Maps that don’t even try to resemble a place.
– Local Maps: Maps that appeal to small communities, such as a specific office building or school.
– Single Player Maps: This category exists just to separate out the Europe Challenge map, which isn’t really suitable for multi-player under some settings since it contains isolated territories.
– Testing Maps: For map creators, maps they’re testing are now placed in their own special place to make finding them easier.

Strategic 1 v 1 updates

As promised in the previous blog post, the Blockade card is being added to the Strategic 1 v 1 settings.

Timezone Improvements

Dates and times have been a bit inconsistent on WarLight. When within a Flash part of the site, any dates were shown in your local timezone. This is possible because Flash knows your timezone. However, the WarLight website always had to display timezones in GMT, since web browsers don’t share their timezone information with websites.

This is being fixed so that everyplace on WarLight will always show you dates in your local timezone. This is made possible by Flash. The first time you hit the Single or Multi-player tab, WarLight will store your timezone so that everyplace on the site can represent dates in your local timezone.

Ladder Improvements

Ladder matchmaking has been tweaked. Instead of matching players/teams with 20% of the ladder on either side, WarLight now matches either 10 places on either side or 25%, whichever is larger. This improves the situation that’s currently faced by the 2v2 ladder, which has a smaller potential pool of teams to play against.

Ladders will no longer invite you to a game with someone you just finished playing or someone you’re currently playing.

The ratings of players in their provisional period are no longer shown on the main ladder pages. You can still see their provisional rating by clicking on their name. The main ladder pages sort provisional players by the order in which they first joined the ladder. This helps to avoid placing more emphasis on provisional ratings than is due.

Players who have finished 30 or more ladder games now have the option of dropping to one game at a time.

The layout of the 2v2 ladder games has been updated so that it’s more readable. This makes the dashboard look a bit cleaner.

Misc Fixes and Improvements

– Profiles now say “1v1” instead of “2 player FFA”
– Changed the way that the Flash app is sized to fix scrollbar issues.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the turn indicators in the chat window to be off by one.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused focus to get lost, making hotkeys not work until the next click.
– Fixed a bug that caused the 15-minute auto boot to really be 10-minute auto boot.
– Fixed a bug that caused a white box to appear over player names on the invite screen for players with an extremely large invite list.
– Fixed a bug when previewing a map from the website that caused the “Go back” button to be visible when it didn’t do anything.

EDIT: Forgot one:
– Tweaked the history hotkeys based on feedback. The Home and End keys are now used to go to the beginning and end of the game, and the left/right keys are strictly for moving one turn at a time.

As a result of voting over the last week, the blockade card is officially going to be added to the 1v1 ladder! This will make the game deeper and create for a lot of new and interesting strategies.

You can view the new settings with this template: Play in Multi-Player, Play in Single-Player.

Be sure to practice up! The change will go live at least one week from today (probably more), so you still have time to practice.

Thanks to everyone who voted. 16% of the voters picked the “I don’t care” option. Of those who cared, 72% voted in favor of the card and 28% voted against it. This is pretty definitive that far more people are in favor of the change than not.

There are two polls going on right now that will affect players participating in either of the WarLight ladders. Please vote if you’re a WarLight member playing in or interested in the ladders. Vote even if you don’t care about the outcome (there’s a “I don’t care” option.) I want to ensure everyone has a voice!

Poll 1: Should the blockade card be added into the 1 v 1 ladder?
Poll 2: Should the ladders switch to a traditional ELO model?

Blockade Card

The first poll is about whether or not the blockade card should be added to the 1v1 ladder. This poll ends on March 23rd, so there’s not much time left. Vote now if you haven’t!

Note that, as a general rule, any changes to the ladder game settings will be announced on this blog at least one week before the changes take effect. This gives you time to practice with the new settings.

Ladder Rating System

The second poll deals with the ladder rating system. This one is a bit more involved – you can read all about it on the poll page. However, I do want to touch on one problem that some players have noticed.

A couple skilled ladder players have been able to exit the provisional period at a very high rank, such as #1 or near #1. This happens if they go 10-0 or 9-1 in their first ten games, since the Bayesian ELO system rates players based on their record / opponents and 10-0 or 9-1 is a very good win rate.

First, let me establish one fact. If a player goes 10-0 (ten wins, zero losses), that does not guarantee that they’ll be ranked in the top 10. This only guarantees that they’ll be placed above the ten players they defeated. If their ten opponents all have low ratings, they’re not going to be ranked very highly even though they’re undefeated. This is a good thing, as it ensures that players must earn high ranks by defeating tough players.

Now, some players figured out that the easiest way to get to #1 is to have 9 wins against low rated players and one win against a high-ranking player (such as the top 5). The 9 low-ranking wins are easy for a skilled player, and they just have to be good enough to defeat a single high-ranking player to claim the #1 spot.

This is a problem, as it rewards manipulating the ladder. However, what really made this strategy possible was the old matchmaking algorithm. The old matchmaking algorithm would prefer to match provisional players with other provisional players, while simultaneously allowing a match between any two players under the right conditions.

This old algorithm made it possible to achieve a #1 rank with only a few wins against very good players. The matchmaking algorithm that exists today works very differently, which makes rising to the #1 spot much more difficult (as it should be!)

In the new algorithm, you’re always matched with other players near your rating even when you’re in the provisional period. Further, you’re only matched with players within 20% of the ladder from you. This means that new players joining the ladder won’t get matched with players in the top 5 right away – they have to defeat some lower players first in order to earn the right to face the higher players. Simultaneously, skilled players won’t have a cakewalk during the provisional period anymore. Once they start winning, they’re going to get matched against tough players before exiting the provisional period.

The bottom line is that, today, it’s much more difficult to emerge from the provisional period at a high rank than it used to be.

WarLight will be going down on Friday, March 11th at 1am PST (9am GMT) for up to 1 hour. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this 1-hour window.

During this time, WarLight will be upgraded to v1.01.0.

2 v 2 Ladder

WarLight 1.1 will bring us the 2 v 2 ladder! This ladder uses the “Strategic 2 v 2” settings, just like how the 1 v 1 ladder uses the “Strategic 1 v 1” settings.

Unlike the 1 v 1 ladder, however, you enter the 2 v 2 ladder along with a partner. The two of you will be placed together on the ladder and receive a single rating as a team.

Like the 1 v 1 ladder, all players joining the ladder must be WarLight members. Further, each player can only be on the ladder once. In other words, you can’t pick two partners and join the ladder on two different teams at the same time.

However, you’re not locked with your partner for all eternity. You may leave the 2 v 2 ladder and then re-join the ladder with a different partner. Doing this will create a new team whose rating will start over from scratch. Ratings cannot be transferred from old teams to new teams – so it’s not a decision to be made lightly! However, you can always change your mind and go back to the first partner, as re-joining the ladder with a partner you had previously played games with will assume your previous rating with that partner and place you back on the ladder as if you had never left. This is similar to how re-joining the 1 v 1 ladder works.

Move Order is now Team-Aware

Today, when WarLight sets out to determine who gets first pick during territory selection or who gets first move on each turn, it randomizes the list of every player in the game. This is perfectly fair in free-for-all games, however in team games it’s possible that multiple players on one team will get priority over others.

Let’s look at an example.

Assume we have a game with players 1 and 2 on team A, and players 3 and 4 on team B. Let’s say that all four players pick Mexico as their #1 pick and Norway as their #2 pick.

Prior to 1.1, WarLight would simply randomize the list of players (1, 2, 3 and 4) into any order. Let’s say the order comes out 3421. In this example, this would award both Mexico and Norway to team B. Team A would need to resort to their 3rd picks.

WarLight 1.1 makes this scenario more fair. After 1.1, WarLight ensures that the ordering switches between teams so that, in this example, one team would get Mexico and the other would get Norway – it’s impossible for one team to get both.

WarLight will switch between teams in the same way that it switches between players now – by reversing the order after each iteration. For example, teams will alternate ABC CBA ABC CBA.

Improved Ladder Matchmaking Algorithm

The algorithm that matches players up in the ladder will receive a bunch of improvements.

The biggest change is that it will only match you with players near you in the ladder, instead of before where it preferred near players but could have matched against anyone. The ladder will only create games with people who are within 20% of the ladder from you. For example, if there are 50 players participating in the ladder, it will only look at the 10 players above and 10 players below you.

The algorithm is also receiving improvements that makes it work better for players in the provisional period, as it now ignores rank and creates games solely based on rating. Previously, it preferred to match provisional players against other provisional players which made it too easy to get onto the ladder with a high win ratio (10-0 or 9-1, for example). Now, it will match you to people rated near your rating, regardless of whether you’re provisional or not.

The full algorithm will be documented on the Help tab once 1.1 is live.

Hotkeys for Navigating History

1.1 will allow you to use the arrow keys as hotkeys to navigate around history of a game. The left and right arrow keys go forward and backward one turn, while the up/down arrow keys go forward and backward one order.

Additionally, while not in history the left arrow key takes you to the first turn of a game. Combined with the existing escape hotkey, which closes all windows, this makes it easier to quickly refer to the distribution state of a a game by simply pressing left and then escape.

Misc Changes

– Players can now hold down Shift when clicking on a territory to insert the territoriy’s name into public chat, and hold Control when clicking on a territory to insert it’s name into team chat.
– Increased the invite limit for single-elim and double-elim tournaments. You can now invite up to three times the start size of the tournament.
– A player’s ladder games now sort by last turn instead of game age.
– A player’s ladder games now highlight based on win/loss. This makes it easier to tell how much a player has been winning.
– Fixed a bug in the “Cumulative Defensive Luck” and “Cumulative Luck” graph.
– Fixed a bug that prevented players from moving a template between single-player and multi-player.
– Fixed the appearance of the member icon on the lobby screen.
– Fixed a bug that was showing the “this player is in their provisional period” message on players who had left the ladder.
– Fixed a bug that caused an error if you clicked history buttons on a game where someone got booted during territory distribution.

It was three years ago today that I first started working on WarLight. WarLight has come a long ways in three years, but I hope for it to go even further in the next three!

This is one of the earliest screenshots I have, from January 2009. It doesn’t really look that different from today

WarLight will be going down on Saturday, February 26th at 2pm PST (10pm GMT) for up to 30 minutes. Please plan accordingly for any fast games or single player games that may get interrupted during this 30-minute window.

During this time, WarLight will be upgraded to v1.00.3. Once the deployment is complete, you can view all of the changes on the Change History page, but this blog post also gives a good summary.

Forum Improvements with Markdown

Markdown is a popular syntax for allowing more flexibility in forum posts than just plain text. After this release, the WarLight forum will allow you to include bold, italics, different font sizes, clickable links, and even in-line images in your forum posts.

This will be applied retro-actively to all existing forum posts, so all links that exist in posts today will automatically become clickable. Once the system is live, I will make a forum post in the General forum describing how to use the special features.

Strategic 1 v 1 Luck Change

The Strategic 1v1 template (and therefore the ladder games) will have their luck reduced from 18% to 16%. This value is chosen since 4 armies attacking 2 armies will never fail at 16%. At 18%, the odds are 99.91%.

Ladder Rating Changes

The ladder rating system is getting a few minor tweaks. First off, ratings for new players will start at 0 instead of 1500. This doesn’t really affect much other than initial matches and mentality, but I felt this is necessary to reinforce the point that the current rating system does not start you at 1500 and raise/lower your rating based on your wins and losses. This is entirely my fault, since I presented the rating system this way, which was a mistake. The Bayesian rating system rates you as best it can with the available information – the idea that you start at 1500 is just plain wrong and should never have been introduced.

Second, the game creation algorithm has been tweaked. The main goals behind this algorithm are to try and match you with players that will get you fun games, while also putting an emphasis on playing new players so there aren’t a lot of repeat matches, while also not stagnating your games if you get stuck waiting on a few busy/slow people.

The ladder is settling down and pretty soon we will have what I consider an “established ladder.” The experience of a new player joining into an established ladder is important. With this new algorithm, the idea is that a new player will start at the bottom and work their way up. As they keep winning, the ladder will jump them further and further up the ladder until their win rate stats to stagnate and they find their final position. The Bayesian algorithm is perfect for this kind of system, since a strong player working their way up the ladder won’t penalize the players they beat on their way up much, since those player’s ratings will re-calculate dynamically based on the new player’s final resting place.

Third, the Best Rating column has been tweaked. This column remembers the highest rating you have ever achieved. It’s getting a partner, Best Rank, which will act similarly. However, both of these fields will now only be recorded once you’ve exited the provisional period. This prevents the early fluctuations from awarding a higher Best Rating than was really earned. Also, the Best Rating column has been hidden from the main ladder page just to keep things more tidy. You can still view the value by clicking on a player’s name. The existing Best Rating for everyone will be reset.

Finally, the game creation algorithm has also been improved so it’s possible to receive more than one game per ladder update. This doesn’t guarantee you that it will create every match possible, but it’s a step in the right direction. More work still may be coming in a later release to make it full up all available matches.

Non-member Map Creators

In the previous update (1.00.2), map creators were allowed to invite past the 6-player limit when creating games on their own map. This has been improved even more, and now map creators can use all of the member-only game-creation features when creating games with their own map. This means they can use custom scenarios in multi-player and also specify any luck percentage for their games.

Dashboard Improvements

You can now click on the maps on the Dashboard to preview them. Further, a “Show all” link below the new maps was added that takes you to a new page that lets you browse all public maps.

Similarly, the Recent Forum Posts section grew a “Show all” link. This link takes you to a new page that lets you view all new posts across all forums at once.

Misc Changes

– Player’s profiles now link to their corresponding ladder page.
– After clicking “Show all” next to a list of ladder games, the ratings of each participant now show up in a new column.
– The 2v2 auto game is now fixed teams instead of random.
– The Reconnaissance card now moves the camera to the spot it was played on.
– Blacklisted players are no longer auto-added to your invite list via the auto-add system.
– The ladder now highlights the player being viewed, or yourself on the main ladder page.
– Updated the Variants page with three new variants: Juggernaut, real locations, and Chinese Checkers.
– Fixed a bug that prevented auto boot from working in games that involved AIs.
– Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause a Force Join to fail when a player did not have an automatic color.
– Fixed a bug that was preventing the member icon from showing up in the lobby.
– In the Tournament Settings window, the tournament settings were moved from the right to the left side to make it more balanced.
– Deleting a testing map now deletes any templates that were assigned to that map instead of causing an error.
– Fixed a bug that caused distributing games to appear at the bottom of a list of ladder games.
– Fixed a bug that was limiting the number of people that could be invited to tournaments too strictly.

Today’s update contains a few small enhancements and small bugfixes, mostly pertaining to the ladder.

Provisional Period

Players with fewer than 10 completed ladder games are no longer awarded a rank. This means that you need to finish 10 games before you’ll appear on the scoreboard.

You can still tell where you would have ranked by examining your rating compared to others, but you won’t officially get it until you complete ten games.

This is necessary due to the rating algorithm used by WarLight. The algorithm performs very poorly with small amounts of data. If WarLight ever switches rating algorithms, this restriction can be removed or changed, but for now this makes sense. This makes sense not only for the launch of the ladder, but new players joining the ladder since they would suffer the same problem.

The ladder updates more often

The ladder now updates every 2 hours instead of every 6. The speed may need to be tweaked again in the future, but right now the server can handle doing it every other hour.

Increased the number of ladder games you can play at a time

The maximum number of simultaneous ladder games has increased from 3 to 5. Players wishing to update their number can visit the ladder tab and select “Change Ladder Settings.”

Map creators can invite more than 6 players to their games

Any map creators that aren’t members can now invite any number of players to games that they create using their own maps. This is in response to non-members who were working on big maps and would like to continue development.

Bug fixes and smaller improvements

– Increased games and players per ladder page from 20 to 50.
– Tweaked the ladder game creation algorithm slightly – it sorts initially by rating instead of rank.
– Fixed a bug that was causing the ladder to set up duplicate games.
– Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the ladder to not invite you to games when it could have (but it still only invites each player to one game per run, that’ll be fixed later.)
– Fixed the broken link in ladder e-mails.
– Added the “offset” command into BayeseloLog.txt, making it so you don’t have to mentally add 1500 to scores.
– When looking at a person’s ladder games, the order is now reversed so newest games appear on top.
– Ladder games that have just begun now list the date they were created instead of blank.

EDIT: Instructions on how to run your own ladder simulation is now maintained on the WarLight wiki, here: http://wiki.warlight.net/index.php/Ladder_Ranks_and_Ratings#Run_your_own_Ladder_Simulations

Due to popular demand, free WarLight players can now invite 6 players to a game. This enables 3 v 3 games, as well as 2 v 2 v 2 matches.

Please note that 6 invites includes yourself, so this means you can invite a maximum of 5 friends plus yourself.

This was changed in a small update today, which also included a few bug fixes and minor improvements. Here’s the full list of changes:

– Raised the invite limit for non-members from 5 to 6.
– Moved “Newest maps” on the Dashboard to the right column.
– The 2v2 auto game and the Strategic 2v2 templates are now actually 2v2 instead of FFA.
– Ladder pages no longer show games still in the lobby as have moved on year 0001.
– Fixed many pages on Chrome so they no longer stretch to 100% width.
– Recent ladder games on the dashboard page now sort correctly.
– Fixed the rank that appears for contender 2 in a ladder game’s description.
– The ladder keeps a log of bayeselo commands located at Data/BayeseloLog.txt. This will be explained in the next blog post.