Real time RPS online (alpha)

[scaudex]

Hi,
in my spare time I'm developing a website to play RPS online in real time.
It's still in alpha stage, so I would be glad if you could check if there's something that could be improved about the interface or the rules of the game. Currently, you can challenge the bot (SYSTEM) or other users, and the winner of a match is the first to win 3 rounds of RPS. The highscore is calculated on matches won.

You need to register to play.
You can, in theory, play as guest, but I plan to forbid that, so the ability to play as guest is currently not well supported and will soon be removed.

I don't want to give further explanations about the game, as I would like to see whether it is, in fact, intuitive to play (for a RPS player, that is)
I'm awaiting your suggestions, here's the url:

http://seriousrps.dreamhosters.com

thanks,

Scaudex

[Maxamillion]

i tried it  but no other guest in at time. so no game.

would prefare to try without registering an email address initially.

it looks like it could become a usefull tool.

Max

[scaudex]

Thank you for your feedback

I put a welcome message on the chat, as I realize the method for challenging users (or the RPS bot) is not easy to see, and it requires some directions.
I could avoid having to register an email address, and just go with having to choose a name and a password, setting the email as optional.
For test purposes, I have now deactivated the request for email confirmation (in the email field you can insert something like 'email@email.com') and you will be registered anyway.

Scaudex

[Franklint]

I just checked this out, and I really like it!

The interface is really smooth and nicely designed, especially the throw deliveries and the RPS icons down the bottom. The whole site functions very well. The only two qualms I have are 1) the debug commands appearing at the lower-left (which I'm assuming are only for testing purposes while you're in alpha/beta) and 2) the fact that SYSTEM's throw choices leave a fair bit to be desired. I'm not sure whether you're using an algorithm or a pre-determined sequence, but in either case you should consider changing around the throws that the computer chooses, as I noticed that it has way more losses than it does wins (22 vs 12) and I found it rather predictable (for example, for the second set after I'd won the first point, it simply continued to switch up and switch up and switch up, and did nothing else).

For people wanting to play against others, it will simply be a matter of popularity and advertising. If you can get enough people interested, I can imagine that quite an active lobby of players would be a good place to go when you're bored at work  .

One other thing that caught my eye is the lack of any kind of win/loss declaration. I think it's a must to incorporate "You win!" and "You lose .", or similar, messages at the completion of games, both against the computer and other players.

EDIT: Just nitpicking here, but certainly on my Mac running Leopard, using Firefox, I had to right-click on names in order to bring up the challenge menu, rather than left-click as stated by the welcome message. Might want to look at that.

I hope that your site will take off, and I would definitely encourage you to keep actively developing it.

Cheers,
Franklint

[scaudex]

Thank for your encouragement, it is much appreciated!

I refined the winning sequence, now it displays "you win"/"you lose" messages.
About debug messages, I think I will keep them a little further as they are very useful (for me) in this alpha stage.

SYSTEM's throws should be completely random, unless there's a bug. Of course, "with randomness you can never be sure" ( http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/4905F106-063A-401C-8631-392E2E49652A/ ).
Probably its win/loss ratio will be more close to 1 once it will have played more games.
I'm not sure if i want to implement some sort of gambit play, or unbalance the probability of throwing certain hands.

About bringing up the challenge menu: probably in the future I'll replace it with a "double click to challenge a user", unless I figure out some other things you can do with a user's name.

thanks again,
Scaudex

[R Cohrs]

The best variation of online RPS that I found was the cards.  Reminded me of the Kaiji anime another bullboarder posted about previously.  Because you revealed a bit about your game mechanics, I found this to influence me to play an off-balanced match in a more throw-exclusive tactic.  This seemed to work for me but I would have to test this further.  In addition I can almost assume that the throw will break after 2 or at most 3 consecutive throws since I wasn't confident there would be "true" randomization where a throw would have to be repeated a ridiculous number of times.  I believe boarder martinburley once had a nice randomization test on this board that showed some startling statistics about true random sequencing.  It seems like a nice beta version and I look forward to seeing the full package develop.  Also I had to right click the names, but you already stated that you're working on that. 

One of the most addictive online RPS games I played was a Molson online tournament from early 2004.  My memory is a little vague but I believe there were 3 players to choose from; a girl, a dude with lots of rings, and I think a skeleton hand.  Although it probably didn't matter at all in theory I found better performance using a particular character, and switching up the characters seemed to pull me out of ruts.  This also had a feature that when you played a gambit sequence it would shout it out to you and let you know what you played; I thought that was pretty cool. 

PS:  I dug around and found the randomizer that martin put up

http://faculty.rhodes.edu/wetzel/random/intro.html 

[scaudex]

I'm a huge fan of Ultimate Survivor Kaiji, I can say that's what got me started on this RPS game in the first place.

Since you're interested about the details of the throw generator, the algorithm is the Mersenne Twister ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_twister ). It looks like a very strong random number generator, and it fares well in many randomness tests.
Anyway, I believe that an algorithm with a little bias, or which would use a strategy different than total randomness could be more interesting, as it would have an edge on players who can't figure out its strategy and guarantee a victory for opponents who can; the totally random bot is there just because it's more easy to implement and test.
A possible extensions could be adding some other bot with different playing personalities; but I digress, let's see if the site is palatable for human vs human play before that

Scaudex

[Maxamillion]

i guess i am not an intuitive RPS player.

I signed in
got beat by system
but nowt happened when i tried to play guest.

I probably need to experiment a bit with it or get Franklint to show me the way through !!! lol

Good game thought! nice & simple.

Is there a score accumilator somewhere? System beat me 3 -1 first match.
do i have to sign out & statr again for another game?

Puzzeled
Max

[scaudex]

but nowt happened when i tried to play guest.

Yes, guest is problematic. I'm thinking of a way to eliminate guest accounts and simply put up a "login or register" panel, in which you write a name and a password, and if you're already registered it logs you in; if you're not registered it asks if you want to create your account with that user/password pair.

Good game thought! nice & simple.

Thank you:-)

Is there a score accumilator somewhere? System beat me 3 -1 first match.
do i have to sign out & statr again for another game?

That's unexpected, it should record your loss. If it doesn't it's a bug. I can't reproduce that with my test accounts, can I ask you what browser are you using?


Btw, I updated the scoring charts, now players are ranked by difference between wins and losses, and secondly by number of wins.

Scaudex

[custardchuk]

You may be interested in this.   http://rubyquiz.com/quiz16.html

I have no idea what they are talking about, just like this thread.

regards
custardchuk

[Al Thorn]

http://gawker.com/5419108/google-geniuses-disguise-perfect-cheese-vehicle-as-childs-play

The real link uses the word "p0rn" instead of "cheese," but the link still works.

[Mr. Mormon]

scaudex,

Even though it's been a year without a reply, don't give up! I love the simplicity and minimalism of the site. My suggestion: focus challenges on a certain number of repeated games; minimum and maximum preferences and an automatch feature would be useful. Without repeated games with the same person, where's the long-term strategy?

[Mr. Mormon]

Another must, especially while the project has low traffic: allow challenges/accepts and plays without both players having to be logged on at the same time. The high scores list shows that only four people have actually completed one or more games.

I hope you can regain an interest in this site or at least post the source code somewhere. The world needs a better rps server, and this can be the one.

[Mr. Mormon]

Where are you, Scaudex?  

As long as he's not working, we need more people in this thread so we can talk about a new server.

[Mr. Mormon]

Is anyone interested? Is another heated discussion about online RPS necessary?