We've added an elo system :tada: .

Instead of the more traditional chess elo system where elo starts at 1000, we've added a more engaging approach, similar to boardgamearena's:

• Elo starts at 0
• If you lose your first game, your elo still becomes 1
• Your elo cannot decrease until you reach 100 elo
• After that, it's like a normal elo system, with a lower limit of 100 elo

We feel this is the better suited system:

• It avoids discouraging new players that lose their first games
• Nobody likes having a negative elo
• It slowly, slowly, pushes the upper boundary of elo upwards: players will naturally have to keep being active if they want to get to the top of (non-existing yet!) elo rankings!

Elo started being processed since yesterday. We decided to not retroactively include older games.

Also a big thank you to players who gave their feedback on the elo system suggestions, @trojanrabbit who helped us adjust the formula for multiplayer games as well as all the others!

More detail on the elo system here

Now we've done more under the scenes things, to prepare for a new game. We hopefully should get it in beta this week-end and launch it next week. Stay tuned! :)

A "quit" button was just added, next to "Vote cancel", and it appears when a player dropped out. It allows you to quit without penalty.

Hello everyone!

I plan to improve the site in general to be able to manage different games, and several version of the same game, as well.

For now there's only one game, gaia project. But gaia project is going to get an official expansion, and the unofficial (for now) space expansion is going to have some changes. Just for that, in order to not disturb ongoing games during development, I'm going to try to make a system to be able to handle several games & several versions. Will be helpful during playtesting :)

As for other game(s) that are going to / may be added, there are ideas, but no definite plans yet. Will depend on publishers, existing online implementations, maybe even using the digital implementation to playtest a new game before going cardboard. Anyway, if new games are added, they are going to be perfect information games.

There's plenty of other stuff to improve on the website, so we'll see. If you like TypeScript or want to help with the graphics or the design, that'd be awesome as well.

Changes

We are on a new Major version of the Gaia Project implementation: v2!

Auction

You can now play Gaia Project more competitively!

The detailed auction rules are here.

Player status

Now you can see the status of other players: busy, online, offline. As long as you're not currently on a gaiaform.io tab, you'll appear busy.

We hope this is useful to know which of your games has all the players currently online.

Spaceships removed (for now)

Since the spaceship implementation is outdated, and it's for playtesting, it's removed until we implement the new version. It'll allow us to add it back in without a new major version.

We may add a way for players to create games on v1, if we take too long implementing the new version of spaceships. Those games would be unlisted while open, to prevent other players from joining by mistake.

Small changes

The changes for Gaia Project will only appear in the new games created, those on v2.

• Player boards no longer switch around
• The first three letters of player names are displayed below the turn order
• In the turn order, we now see the distinction between when it's a player's turn to charge power, and when it's their turn to play
• Open games are added back in a player's page
• Default settings for new game make the timer stop at night in the creator's timezone

Plans

Our plans seem to always change, we always deviate from what we plan and add other stuff too.

Here's our immediate plans:

• Add another game, Take 6, a game with the same mechanics as 6nimmt. We have a lovely "New Game" page, we need to add another game there! We'll try to make an nice UI, using completely different graphics from Gaia Project.
• Overhaul Gaia Project graphics. We have a designer in our players that has a lot of nice ideas ;) Of course, everything will be done to preserve readability to the utmost.
• Add an ELO system. We may also create a thread asking for feedback on a suggested implementation before going forward!

I added 10 minutes + 60 seconds

@lucasrrr said in New auction system:

I'm also really disappointed about the disappearance of the previous style of bidding.

Really like the idea of bidding on randomly selected factions.

Due to the feedback we've received, this week-end the option will be given between the two styles of bidding :).

The randomly selected factions will also be introduced.

Timer

The ability to specify when the timer starts and ends was just added. Two new game durations are added: 1h and 6h, and the 5 days game duration was removed.

It can be useful for live plays: specify a game duration of 1h, 5 minutes per move, and a timer starting at 6 PM and ending at 10 PM, and if the game is filled after 10 PM you can safely wait until the next day, at 6 PM, to start playing. And if a player is away for more than one hour, he's dropped out.

For time zones, just do the same: a game duration of 6h, 15 minutes per move, and a timer comfortable for your timezone, and you should see people playing at the same time as you.

Here's a feedback thread, to see if we should add or remove some options.

UI

Two regressions were fixed:

• Being able to differentiate a normal game from a spaceship game in the list
• See directly the player's faction in their games on their profile

And of course the lists look better now, with a bigger icon and more information.

Under the hood

There were a lot of under the hood changes: the web framework on the server was changed to koajs from expressjs, the sessions are not stored server side anymore, and the data structure was changed to allow to implement other games / several versions of a same game more easily.

Plans

Here's what we are looking at for now

• Updating the spaceships expansion
• Adding internationalization (we already have French & Italian in our team, and a Portuguese volunteer)
• A lot of additional under the hood changes: use JWT exclusively instead of sessions, split the backend from the front end, better admin interface

No additional games are to be added in the near future, but we'll see after all that is done!

This is tough because it can basically be used to pass a turn and get another booster. And you can undo the move instead of clicking "End turn".

The online indicators and a karma system were added.

Elo is coming in the future.

Let's hope this helps :)

@JamesWolfpacker The timezone adapts based on your computer. If you set a game to run between 5 and 8 PM, someone in another timezone 3 hours away would see the game running between 2 and 5 PM. There's no need to do any conversion on your part.

Thank you for the report, it's been fixed :)

As you've probably noticed, Powergrid and Container have been added by @Doft !

It's really exciting to have contributions coming. The platform is open source, so are the forums or the boardgames.

Since the last announcement, there's also been a ton of improvements on Gaia Project by @Spock :

• A lot of warnings have been added
• A lot of improvements on charts
• Better graphics / visual representation for miscenallous info (satellites, power needed to make a federation, ...)
• Some variants with more balanced factions
• A Table mode, for those liking the alternate UI
• The possibility to visualize the leech network, the federations, the sectors occupied
• The ability to have a custom board setup

And finally, the platform has a lot of recent changes. I have to admit a lot of the motivation comes from @Doft's contributions.

The biggest one, and least noticeable, is the way the site is rendered. It's now statically rendered which is a lot better for search engines, for links posted to discord (you will now see a summary of the page), and also for your experience.

Avatars have been added, just recently to rankings as well. User descriptions have been added and the user page has been improved. Open games now expire automatically, for example live games will expire after one hour. A bit of color was added to the site, as well as a Credits page.

The option to have the host select the player order has also been added.

There are plenty of things on the roadmap, though which comes first is hard to say:

• Elo restrictions on games
• Better "Open game" page
• Add a description to a game when creating it
• Filters on games in Lobby on play time, elo range, etc
• Better page for the boardgame with links to BGG, the publisher, the source code etc
• Chat windows on the boardgame page, maybe home page too, and all the content pages. It should make it easier to find live games without going on discord
• Users being able to select their country
• Being able to follow/star/heart someone

Those are just the more immediate, achievable ones.

If you'd like to contribute, you can by leaving feedback on what you'd like to see prioritized :)

Anybody with design or graphic skills could help us a LOT. For example we'd like fan-made avatars for the GP factions, to show in game listings.

Lastly, if you'd really like to see a feature prioritized you can fund us on issuehunt. You can check the issues (on the unfunded tab), or create issues on github and then fund them. The link is for the platform itself, but you can also do the same for Gaia Project and Powergrid . We will only receive the funds after the work is done!

@funkdoc Hi, you can check the discord channel advertised on the home page. We'll introduce options to make it easier to find live games on BGS.

@ravenlord It seems it was cancelled. Let us know if it happens again (or contact us via the discord / per email)

@besunnysunny Thanks for the report, it's been fixed

Hi @NovusIgnis

In that particular game the total clock was 24hours, and you gain 1 hour per move, up to 24h.

No, it's not a requirement, it was a suggestion.

Maybe try resetting your password ("forgot password"), and open the link in the reset password email with the ipad's chrome browser?

@danglading if you have a google account you can link it to your account and then use it on mobile?

It should be fixed, now the app will clear expired tokens

@Guillaume by using the mine next to the gaiaformer, you can connect the planets of the federation by using less satellites. So you have to use this route.

Then, because the mine was added, the mine at the bottom becomes superflous and needs to go.

It's a confusing rule, but it's how it is (multiple questions on that rule & official ruling issued)