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Turn timer starts before I can do anything
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Fomatic wrote
at 9:53 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST
The major issue which made me stop playing kdice a while ago was that the turn timer would start as soon as the previous player clicked "end turn." I thought that this would have been part of the fixes that Ryan mentioned in the email he sent out, but it looks like this still happens.
To clarify, this means that in the time it takes for the previous player's new dice to be allocated (and I think even sometimes for the tail end of a battle to be resolved) my turn timer has started ticking away but I can't actually do anything. I have to wait until all the previous player's new dice are allocated in order before I can declare an attack. This is particularly evident in the endgame, where an opponent will have a large portion of the board under their control and it ends up taking most *or all* of my turn timer just to allocate dice for them. Sometimes this gets to the point where I don't actually have enough time to do anything and am erroneously deprived of my turn and labeled 'away.' Am I missing something? I'm using Firefox for the Mac, but I tried it a while ago with various browsers (including IE for Windows) but the same thing happens. Thanks for any help anyone can give. |
Replies 1 - 7 of 7
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Fomatic wrote
at 10:22 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST Someone just suggested that perhaps this has something to do with me being close to the servers (I'm in Ottawa)...but I have no idea how plausible that is.
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Ryan wrote
at 10:54 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST I think this is a speed issue. You have 10 seconds to decide to do something. Unfortunately the 15 seconds starts immediately since the server does not know how long the flash animation will take on different computers. The flash portion of the application may still be rendering.
On most computers the rendering is quick and takes at most around 1 second. It is abnormal for this animation to take 15 seconds. How old is the mac you are using? Maybe also try upgrading the version of flash installed. A final solution to this type of problem would be for me to add a feature that would allow you to disable animations, and therefore allowing you to immediately make you moves. |
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Ryan wrote
at 10:54 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST *The first line should say 15 seconds.
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Ryan wrote
at 10:55 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST Also, a similar type of problem occurs when you have two windows open to a kdice table. Make sure you only have one.
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Fomatic wrote
at 11:44 PM, Tuesday December 26, 2006 EST That's interesting. Thanks for the quick reply. I'm running a 1.33Ghz G4 iBook with 512MB RAM. The other computer that showed the same behaviour was a PC with slightly higher specs. I definitely am not running kdice in more than one window, but now that you mention it, I noticed some slowdown in a couple other flash games recently.
The option to turn off dice rolling and allocation animations would help me immensely. However, there's another idea which would also be of interest to other people besides those with my problem: could you allow people to queue up their next move before their turn starts? Or, more simply, if the flash client allowed you to send a move as soon as your turn timer starts going, regardless of whether or not the previous animations are finished. Of course I don't know about the logistics of implementing any of these things. Anyway, thanks for making and maintaining such a fun game :) |
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CNE wrote
at 5:25 PM, Wednesday December 27, 2006 EST I'm all about that "disabling animations" option, Ryan.
However, I still think that a common countdown-to-war timer (of 5-10 seconds) followed by the first-turn-player would be better. Then again, I ain't no Flashy AJAX programmer. |
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gohstlee wrote
at 8:41 PM, Wednesday December 27, 2006 EST Just want to say that I can confirm the issue can be seen when you have 2 different kdice windows open. So, make sure you aren't doing that by mistake.
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