Warfish Blog

Several new categories have been added to the Browse Tab directory: Game Mods, Plugins and Your Invitees. These new categories allow you to see all the Games that are getting modded, any plugins you can use to customize your Warfish account and profiles of all the people you have invited to Warfish.

The easiest way to browse the categories is to click on the links at the top of the Browse tab shown in the above image. Some categoreies have subcategories like in the case of Game Boards and User Profiles which will be displayed at the top of the Browse tab once you’re inside either the Game Boards or User Profiles category.

The image above shows the Game Mods category of the Browse directory which is only available to Plus Members. These are listed in order of newest to oldest so that you can see what new mods are being shared on the website. Any Game Mods that were published within the last week are marked as *new*. In some cases the Game Board that the mod is associated with is not Shared for Plus Members or requires a purchase before it can be played, so when you click on Start Game for thos mods you’ll be given a message indicating that you don’t have permission to play that Game Board.

Finally, this last image shows the new Plugins category in the directory. The Plugins category shows all the plugins that are available on the site. You can customize your Warfish account by installing these plugins and they can perform a variety of functions from counting up how many unit, territories and continents a user has to plugins that render a visual representation of you game history.

Speaking of plugins here are a couple plugins by Theep that have been recently updated. Not only did Theep help refine the plugin system and create these plugins, he was also nice enough to write the following about his recent changes:

Loss Plugin – So, you have been playing warfish for a while and you are sure that the computer is rigged against you! This plug-in tells you how much you have lost when attacking compared to statistical average as well as other players.

Contrast Plugin – The contrast plug in is designed to help figure out which players are which, specifically when the colors used on the board are similar. It will encircle your players in white. You can click the name of the player and they will have all of their countries encircled in black. UPDATED: You can put your mouse over any country, it will show you the name of who owns the country.

Map Based Combat Summary Plugin – This plug in is designed to show you what has been going on for the last several turns. It shows the map with a circle and a line toward the country that was attacked. Black are successful attacks while the white are failures. The table at the bottom shows a listing of each attack and the losses each side took. UPDATED: By putting your mouse over a country that attacked you can see how many the attacker and the defender lost.

So now you can find plugins (Theep’s as well as other plugins), game mods and your invitees more easily by looking for them in their own categories in the Browse directory.

Mod featuring allows game designers to highlight which game mod is the most up to date version of a game board, i.e. which game mod should be considered the “default” for a game board. To select one of the game mods on a board that you designed (the mod doesn’t even necessarily have to be one that you designed) as the “default” mod go to your Design Tab > Boards List and click on the “set default mod” link in the Actions column on the left.

Then you will be presented with a list of all the shared mods that are available for that particular game board. You can see which mod is selected as default by the “(default)” indicator in green next to a mod’s name. Once you’ve selected a mod any game host who goes through the create new game table process using your game board will be shown that particular mod first in the list of mods to be selected.

Now when you make mods, i.e. add new updates to your designs or scenarios or whatever you can make sure that your fans know about it and don’t miss it when they are creating a new game table with one of your game boards.

Now you can share game mods you’ve created or play mods that other users have made.

To find/play mods that have been shared check out the new Mods tab on each game board. Generally speaking if you can start a game with the board you can start a game with a shared game mod for that board (the only exception for this is the Sample boards where you have to be a Plus Member to play game mods on them). Here is an example of a shared game mod for the Pirates of Malta board:

Also you can see in this screen shot the “Mod this mod” link that displays for Plus Members right next to the Start Game link. See below for more information on modding mods.

Sharing a mod that you’ve made is just like sharing a game board you’ve designed. Click on the share link that is in your mods list for the mod that you would like to share.

Once you’ve done this your mod should appear on the Browse Board Info page for that board just like the first screenshot above. That is basically it for mod sharing!

Note: You may have noticed I skipped last week’s featured feature… I was taking a small break and was out of town (in Laos) for a week thanks for being patient.

Modding your mods lets you build on top of the work done in existing mods. For example, copy an existing game mod and customize/override the components you need or start from scratch and link-in components from other mods. Modding mods allows you more flexibility in sharing components between mods by either linking them in or by copying them into your mods. The following is a short example of modding a mod.

The most common way to mod a mod would be to first start by selecting a mod and copying it using the Copy link on your mods list:

Then when you view your mod you will notice that all the components present are linked in rather than included in the mod itself. This example is based on the mod created in the “New Feature: Game Mods” blog entry below. Here I am going to change just the player colors but leave everything else in the mod the same. So to start I will click on Customize next to the Player Colors mod component:

After I’m done customizing the colors when I return to the mod page I can now see that “Linked-in” column no longer indicates that this component is linked in from the other mod:

When I view the mod map I can visually see in the legend that the player colors are no longer shades of grey (compare with the image from “New Feature: Game Mods” below) and also that my setup scenario is still part of the new mod:

That is all there is to modding mods: [1] selecting a mod [2] copying it [3] customizing / adding the components you want.

Team vision is a new create game option for fog-of-war team games that allows team members to see each others territories. Enabling team vision can change the dynamic of the game play as well as reduce the amount of communication between team members since they already know the location of all of each others territories and units.

Team vision also effects the adjacent territories that are visible to each player basically every team member sees the same map. For example in “Very Foggy” games you can see all the territories and units you or your teammates occupy as well as all adjacent territory ownership of territories adjacent to your territories AND all your teammates territories.

In the above screen shot you can see that not only can blue and pink see each other’s territories and units because of team vision, but also all the owners of adjacent territories because the game is using the “Very Foggy” option.

Thank you to the users who have suggested this feature and also to mike20060830210738 for the extra reminder . Please keep sending the great suggestions, questions, reminders, comments etc through the feedback system.

Create variations (or mods) of your favorite game boards, maybe remove border that shouldn’t be there, change the continent bonuses or add a completely new continent. In addition to changing the countries, continents and borders of a board you can also mod the player colors, the rules and change the background to create a complete set of changes to any game board you have access to.

The image above is an example of a game mod that modifies the player colors of the default board to be shades of grey and adds two new countries to the board Hawaii and Antartica and also adds a new continent (which you can’t really see in the image) called “Islands” which includes the two new countries. Also, a starting scenario has been added to this game mod to specify which territories should start off as neutral territories and you can see these in this image as well. For more information on starting scenarios see the blog entry below.

To create a mod to go your Design Tab (only available to Plus Members) > Mod List and click on “Create New Mod”. Once you finish your mod you can lock and play it from your modslist just as you would a game board design:

Just like when designing a game once you lock a game mod you can no longer make changes to it and a “Play” link will appear on your mod list.

When you start a modded game you can view the mod title, about text and see who the game mod designer is by viewing the Details Tab of the game table (if you’re a plus member there is also a link to the design page for the mod):

This way players playing in a modded game board will know that it has been modded and have a little information on the mod. Be sure to include a descriptive mod title as well as about text so that players understand what the changes are.

Game Mods are not shareable yet, but will be very soon . In any case, the mod tools are ready for Warfishers to start trying out (send feedback!). Hopefully by the time you’re done designing / testing your first couple mods the sharing system will be ready. Happy modding!

I guess the homepage was probably “invented” over a decade ago probably shortly after people started making html pages, but up until now Warfish hasn’t really had one. This week’s featured feature is a new page to give you an overview of what’s going on with Warfish and your activity on Warfish, i.e. the “Warfish Homepage”

The homepage is pretty basic now so be sure to send in any feedback with other stuff you’d like to see displayed on the Warfish Homepage.

You can now choose your own team in tournament games so you can team up with people you know to dominate a tournament. In order for this option to be available first the tournament host (i.e. the player who creates the tournament) must select the option when creating the tournament. Also remember to select the team size to be greater than 1.

Once the host has started the tournament in addition to the regular input field for in-tournament name players will see an additional team selection drop down on the Join tournament screen. This dropdown shows all the teams that still have available spaces in them. The dropdown just defaults to the next available team, so if you don’t have a preference you can just leave the team dropdown on the default setting. However, players who would like to cooridinate teams they can select an alternate team and inform their friends which team to join.

A new list of your teammates has been added on each tournament player info page so you can easily see all the teammates on a player’s team.

That is basically all there is to choosing your team in tournaments. Once you’re on a team just like in game message boards if you’re a Plus Member you can send private messages to “[My Team]” on the tournament messages tab. Good luck in all your tournaments!

Up until now ranked gaming was only available as a test feature for Plus Members, but now you can see how well you fair against others with any board that you have purchased. In other words, in addition to being able to [1] create private games and [2] create tournament games you can now [3] create ranked games using boards you have purchased.

You can start a ranked game using your purchased boards by following one of the new links that have been added to Warfish either on the board ranking page itself:

Or by clicking on the “Start Ranked Game” link on your Play Tab > New Game Table > Choose a game page:

Once you have clicked on either of the above links you’ll be on a special create game table page that will allow you to choose your name and color as usual, but also select the number of open seats you would like to include in your ranked game.

After you create your game your ranked game will appear on Warfish.net so that other players can join and fill the open seats you’ve created. Your game will automatically start once all the open seats are filled. That is basically it!

You’ll see and [R] next to the game title which links to the ranking page so you can identify which games of yours are ranked and it is linked to the board’s ranking stats so have easy access to check the ranking stats from any game that is ranked. When a ranked game finishes your ranking will be automatically adjusted based on if you won or lost. Now lets see what your ranking is!

The first mod-able game board component, the setup mod (aka starting scenarios) has been released to the site, it is part of a game board mod system I’ve been working on. Using setup mods you can create a variety of situations from recreating historic battles to simply specifying the location of neutral territories. You can create mods for any board you have access to play. Here is an example of a setup mod created for the Pirates of Malta board:

Notice that there are 4 predefined players on this board (one starting in Africa, Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East) and neutral territories have been placed covering the rest of the territories. Also you can see that the neutral territories in France all only have a single unit to make it easier for the player starting in France to take that continent. To try to balance the powerful territories in the Middle East some key territories in the Middle East have been designated to start with 5 neutral armies. Finally, Malta itself because of its high unit bonus and special attacking ability starts has designated to start with 10 neutral armies.

You can create mods for any game board you can play. To get started go to the Design > Mods Tab and click on “Create New Mod” where you’ll be asked first to choose which game board you would like to mod.

A modder can control many details of the setup including choosing players names and colors, what cards they have and how many units they have in reserve. As the mod system is new more changes will be introduced to it in the next couple weeks to make it easier to share and play others’ mods also more aspects of the game board design will be openned up to modding. Please be sure to send any feedback you may have.