Last day for Season 1 of the coin leaderboard!

The first season of the coin leaderboard is almost over! For the final 24 hours of the season, the leaderboard is dark, meaning that the coins won by each player are hidden from view. Instead, it simply shows the number of coins that player won when the leaderboard went dark.

Once the season is over, the real values will be revealed to everyone, and the prizes will be awarded immediately.

Also during the final 24 hours, real-time versions of the 1990, 4950, and 9900 coin games are now be available! These games are normally only available as multi-day, but for the final 24 hours of the season they can be played real-time. Just a few wins of the big game might be enough to take first place! Good luck!

Update 3.6: Jump to top/bottom order buttons, clan forum preview

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.06.0! This blog post describes what’s changed.

Jump to top/bottom order buttons

When moving orders up/down in the order list, there are two new buttons that allow moving orders directly to the very top or bottom of the list:

Clicking the double up or double down arrow buttons is equivalent to clicking the up or down arrow buttons an infinite number of times. This saves a lot of time in games where you have lots of orders, as it could be time consuming to move orders up one at a time.

Order List Multi-Select

This is not a new feature, but as long as we’re talking about re-arranging your orders in the orders list, I thought I’d highlight a feature that a lot of people don’t know exist: The orders list allows you to select multiple orders at a time. When building your turn, this is useful to delete or visualize many orders at once, and it can also make moving orders around easier.

To do this, simply hold the Control key down and click on multiple orders. You’ll notice they all become highlighted, both in the orders list and on the map. This makes it easy to visualize them all at once on the map.

If you want to select many orders in a row, select the top order and hold Shift when clicking the lower order.

While multiple orders are selected, you can delete them all with the X, or move them up/down as a group.

Clan Forum Preview

If you’re in a clan, you’ll notice that there’s a new section on the multi-player dashboard that shows recent forum posts in your clan forum. This makes it easier to keep track of your clan’s forum without having to open its page manually.

Other Changes

– When the website home page is accessed from an Android device, it now gives a link directly to the app.
– Viewing a teammates orders before clicking Begin in a no-luck cyclic game no longer produces an error message.

Update 3.5: Coin leaderboard, alternate colors

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.05.0! This update brings improvements to coin games, adds an alternate colors feature, and other improvements. This post will explain everything that changed.

Coin Leaderboard

WarLight now has a leaderboard that keeps track of who wins the most at coin games. Best of all, the leaderboard awards prizes to the top ten participants every three weeks:

  • 1st place: 15,000 coins ($150)
  • 2nd place: 7,000 coins ($70)
  • 3rd place: 2,500 coins ($25)
  • 4th place: 1,500 coins ($15)
  • 5th place: 1,300 coins ($13)
  • 6th place: 1,000 coins ($10)
  • 7th place: 1,000 coins ($10)
  • 8th place: 500 coins ($5)
  • 9th place: 500 coins ($5)
  • 10th place: 500 coins ($5)

Every three weeks, the leaderboard pays out these prizes, and then resets so that everyone has an equal chance at winning the next set of prizes. These prizes create a huge opportunity for players to earn even more money from coin games.

It’s important to understand that the leaderboard only tracks how many coins each player wins from coin games. It is not affected by losses. Therefore, it doesn’t really show how many coins each player has.

At any time, you can visit the leaderboard page to see who is winning. However, the final 24 hours before prizes are given out, the ratings are hidden. This creates suspense so you don’t know who’s going to win until the final second. While hidden, the leaderboard will simply show how many coins each player won when they were first hidden, and no longer update.

Alternate Colors

On the Change Color page, you can now set an alternate color in addition to your primary color. After you set an alternate color, if you attempt to join a game where your primary color is taken by another player, the game will simply automatically use your alternate color. If neither color is available, you’ll be prompted to pick as you are now.

Map of the week auto game

There’s a new auto game available in the Open Games section that will always be played on the current map of the week! Auto games are games created by website, instead of by a player, so they’re always available under the Open Games section.

The new auto game is an FFA available both in real-time and multi-day variants. This replaces the double earth auto game.

Other Changes

– The four castles 4-player FFA coin game no longer hides the names of players in the lobby.
– The high-stakes coin games are now multi-day instead of real-time. If you are interested in playing a high-stakes games, you can simply join and then wait for the e-mail telling you that an opponent has joined.
– When using no-luck cyclic move order, the speed that each player commits is no longer shown in the players panel until after the first turn.
– When using no-luck cyclic move order, it is no longer possible for spectators to see the map distribution until after the first turn. Additionally, the thumbnail that appears in the My Games section is no longer generated until after the first turn.
– When using no-luck cyclic move order in a team game, the collective speed of the team is now the slowest player on that team instead of the average speed of the team.
– When using no-luck cyclic move order, the “You will get x-th order” indicator no longer includes players who are out of the game.
– The Past Game page simply hides the boot time on archived games, instead of stating incorrectly that they were 0-minute boot.
– Adjusted coin deposit options.
– Fixed a bug that caused the “Recall last game” and “Recall last tournament” buttons to be mis-placed.

Update 3.4: Banking boot clock

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.04.0! This update introduces two new features to make banking boot timers more transparent.

Two Clocks

When playing a real-time game that uses Banking Boot Times, there will now be two clocks in the upper right corner instead of one:

This makes it obvious how much of the remaining time belongs to the fixed portion of each turn versus the time you have stored in your bank. The previous single clock used to simply show these two numbers added together, which made it more difficult to tell if you were consuming banked time versus each turn’s fixed portion.

Player Boot Clocks (experimental)

Also when playing a real-time game that uses Banking Boot Times, a new experimental option is available that will show how much time each player has banked under their name in the lower right hand corner:

If you want to try it out, you can enable it on the Settings tab.

Misc Changes

– MP Dashboard: Forum posts now provide a link directly to the last page, if the thread is on multiple pages.
– MP Dashboard: Flipped the columns so the primary one is on the left.
– Added a footer across the entire site, mostly for SEO purposes.

Update 3.3.1: Small update

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.03.1! This update fixes a few small bugs and makes improvements to the multi-player dashboard page. Here’s what’s changed:

– Added “Active games where you are not eliminated” to My Games filters and MP Dashboard
– MP Dashboard: Added (F5) after the refresh button, to show that it can be activated with F5 as a hotkey.
– MP Dashboard: Moved the refresh button to be above the ad, if ads are enabled.
– MP Dashboard: Shows up to 15 games without clicking +more if on the real-time tab.
– MP Dashboard: Don’t show blog posts older than a month.
– MP Dashboard: Reduced font sizes.
– MP Dashboard: Added links to create game and create coin games pages.
– MP Dashboard: Added a big dot over the boxes for players who haven’t yet taken their turn.
– MP Dashboard: Show the number of “my games” in parenthesis next to it.
– Moved the My Games and Open Games tabs to the right.
– Fixed a bug that caused the information line to be missing from the Open Games tab.
– Fixed a bug when viewing the settings of a single-player game that caused the “Boot/Surrender” header to appear.

Update 3.3: Multi-player dashboard, map of the week

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.03.0! This update adds a new page under the multi-player tab, called the multi-player dashboard, as well as a map-of-the-week feature.

Multi-Player Dashboard

When you click the multi-player tab on WarLight.net, you’ll find there’s now a new page, called the Multi-Player Dashboard. This page shows your games, open games, recent blog/forum posts, and more.

This page is intended to eventually replace the My Games and Open Games tabs. For now, the My Games and Open Games tabs are still available if you want to go back to them, but they will eventually be removed.

This page has a number of improvements over the My Games and Open Games tabs. For example, each game shows icons that help you identify their settings at a glance. For example, games will show a special icon if it uses custom scenarios, wastelands, modified kill rates, multi-attack, local deployments, etc.

Complementing this page is another new page titled Past Games. The Past Games page allows you to browse through all of your games that aren’t shown on the multi-player dashboard. Previously, this was done by changing your My Games filter to “All Games”. Spitting it out into its own page streamlines this process.

The My Games section of this page will inherit the same filter that you were previously using on the My Games page. A new filter was added to support this page, simply titled Default. This new filter shows all games that you are alive in or have unread chat, excluding all games you declined or where the host removed you. A new sort option was also added, which is always used on the multi-player dashboard, called Actionable. The actionable sort puts all games where it’s your turn on the top, followed by games with unread chat.

The new filter and sort are also available on the old My Games page.

Both of these new pages are implemented in html instead of Flash, which means they load much more quickly and can be refreshed with your browser’s refresh button (F5). This is the first time we’ve had non-Flash pages under the multi-player tab, so a few other changes were made to the structure of the tabs to facilitate this. The sub-tabs (the white links under the main top tabs) and the top-right account bar are now implemented in html as well, instead of Flash. This enables the ability to right-click and select “open in a new tab” in many places that were not possible before, such as the sub-tabs and game links.

The multi-player dashboard page has a hidden feature for multi-day players. When you click on any multi-day game where it is your turn, when you finish taking your turn, you’ll see a a “next game” button to take you to the next one in the list. This makes it possible to play your turn in all of your multi-day games without continually returning to the My Games or dashboard page after each one.

Map of the Week

WarLight now has an official Map of the Week feature! Every week, 5 maps will be eligible to be voted on by the players. The map that receives the most votes will be elected Map of the Week and will be featured on the new multi-player dashboard page.

Here’s how the 5 maps will be chosen:

  • The highest rated map created within the last week
  • A random map that’s never been voted on before
  • The map that got the 2nd most votes in the previous week (or, on week 1, just a second random map)
  • Two maps that are nominated by members. Players can only nominate one of the two slots each week, and may not nominate a map they created.

Bug Fixes

– Fixed a bug that caused the WarLight logo in the upper-left to get split in half if your browser was zoomed in or out.
– Fixed a bug that caused the rematch button to not work for coin games.
– Fixed links to profiles from map reviews.
– Fixed wiki search on the Help tab.
– iOS: Fixed a bug that caused errors on devices that used a right-to-left locale.

WarLight AI Challenge 2

The WarLight AI Challenge is back! The AI challenge is a way that coders can write their own bot to play WarLight against other player’s bots on randomly generated maps. The winner gets €1024! (approx $1257)

You can choose your choice of programming languages from an impressive list: C, C#, C++, Clojure, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Prolog, Python, Ruby, Scala and Tcl.

The competition is just starting, so grab your favorite language and get coding! http://theaigames.com/competitions/warlight-ai-challenge-2

Update 3.1: More coin templates

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.01.0! This update makes some new settings available for coin games, as well as a couple other minor changes.

New Coin Templates

Two new templates have been made available to coin games: A 1v1 on Small Earth, and a 1v1 on Rise of Rome. Check out the Open Games page to check them out.

Games with higher wagers are also available. The templates have been structured so that the cheap 80-coin templates are quick games, and the longer settings have larger wagers.

We plan to continue to tweak the coin templates a lot over the coming weeks. Feel free to let us know what kind of settings you want to play coin games on!

Other Changes

The “Open Games” tab now is split into two sections — one that shows coin games, and the other shows free games. This will make it easier on people who don’t care about the coin games to avoid looking at them.

Profiles now show how many real-time versus multi-day games each player is currently in, rather than just showing the combined total.

Changed the website’s <title> tag for SEO purposes.

Update 3.0: WarLight coins!

WarLight has just been updated to version 3.00.0! This update launches the previously announced coins feature!

Coins!

Coins are a way that you can make money by winning WarLight games. On the WarLight website, there is now a new Coins tab at the top. Here you can deposit/withdraw coins, as well as join and create coin games.

To get started with coin games, deposit some coins into your account and then join a game or challenge someone!

Special Event – 50 player FFA!

To commemorate the launch of 3.0, we’re also launching a one-time special event: a 50 player free-for-all coin game! This is the biggest game of WarLight ever played! And the winner gets 10,000 coins ($100 USD)!

Be sure to join quick, as this event is only open to the first 50 players who join it, and then it’s gone. Join it now!

End-Game Window

Whenever any game ends, WarLight now pops up a new window that gives you some summary information about the game:

The Rematch button provides an easy way to re-play games with the same people and same settings.

Other Changes

– Game/tournament links are now automatically shown in your browser’s address bar, instead of being shown in the settings.
– The points bar in the top-right was replaced by a coin counter. You can instead see your level progress by hovering over your level in the upper right, or clicking Settings -> Points.
– Increased the number of unearned achievements shown to the player from 5 to 10.
– During the process of joining an auto game, if the game starts without you, you’ll simply be taken to its replacement instead of thrown into spectator mode.
– Eliminated the “Home” tab. Moved Change History and About to Help, Maps to Community, and Unlockables to Settings
– Using “https” is now required, and accessing http://warlight.net will redirect to https://www.warlight.net. Because of this change, you may have to sign in again if you weren’t previously signed into https://www.warlight.net