Many of you like the new design. Many of you loathe it. Whichever way you feel, please understand that I'm not wedded to the way it looks now - it's not "my way or the highway." Only one thing about the new site is fixed in stone, and that is that each player shall have a cookie containing a unique account code if they are to play. This is the reason for the email-based registration system. There are other ways to provide this cookie. Two that I have in the works are Facebook-based registration, and sub-accounts (allowing registered players to generate account codes for their kids or students). But if you routinely clear cookies, or play on a new computer every day, you're going to have to log in. Sorry.
Everything else is subject to change at your suggestion. I have had an unavoidable enforced break from working on the game, due to paid work on a deadline, and this has given me a chance to reflect on things as the praise, complaints, and cries of "Help! I can't play" have rolled in. I'm not a good user interface designer, and I know it, yet I keep trying to guess at design elements that will work, spending precious time implementing them, then discovering too late that they were mediocre additions at best. I need to stop guessing.
I need your help. While I squish bugs, please give me ideas. However you feel about the current look, think about it. What do you like? What do you not like? SPECIFICALLY. I'm not talking about bugs, new features, or general sluggishness here, just design. It would help me to hear either "I like that the board is resizable, and the way it is done" or "The list of guessed words would be much better if it was one word per line, rather than a comma-separated list." Not helpful would be "I hate the look" or "Don't change the score list!" or "The last round word list is confusing." These are not specific recommendations. If your first reaction is "Make it like WEBoggle!", then I have to ask "Really? Just like it? With 200+ players in the score list?" One of the motivations for the new, flexible interface was the volumes of complaints that I got about the old interface.
There are radically different views amongst you. This is why configuration options have multiplied, and why I added Themes and drag-and-drop rearranging of parts. At the moment, Themes are just simple color schemes, but they can radically alter the look of the game.
Here are some possible topics: Should I discard the ability to rearrange the play area? Enhance it, allowing free-form positioning and sizing rather than columns? Should I have two alternating page layouts, one during play and one during scoring (and the ability to stay on the scoring page even though a new game has started)? Put in a toggle button to turn the "frames" of the game parts on and off? Use a different color scheme? Change fonts?
Meanwhile, some people still can't play. I'm on it.
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24 comments:
Thanks for your hard work, Evan. I really enjoy the game. Honestly though, I wish I could just play the old weboggle. It was simple and it always worked for me. I loved playing it and I really miss it. With the new version, I can't play. IF the board will even open for me, at best I can enter a word or two before it freezes up. So frustrating. Since the switch I've yet to play even one full game. Can we please have the old weboggle back, at least while you're working out the kinks on this new one?
The fact that you have hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of satisfied users somewhat changes the picture.
It means that when I have a problem, I can't take it for granted that everyone else has the same problem. I need to know if it's the fault of my own computers.
So here are my questions:
(1) Am I the only one who can't do Snapshot?
(2) Am I the only one for whom pointing at a word in the word list of the last game, doesn't highlight the people who found that word?
You get used to the new format, thogh there was nothing wrong with the old one. Just one thing is worse now: in the former format, all players having the same number of points were given equa rankin, and you always saw yourself on top of those other fellows. Now everybody gets a unique ranking, which seems to arbitrary. Ithink this would be fairly simple to fix.
Evan, we were managing to play OK until last night; since then we have suddenlý had a new request to log in. When we type the password in,it comes up as invalid.....when we are sent a "new" password and type it in, it also comes up as invalid. As a result we are having some nasty withdrawal symptoms! Can you please help us to get into the game?? Thanks!!
Evan, so sorry to have bothered you, our teenaged son came to the rescue and we are back IN!! Thanks for the Game, we love playing.
I like the new design a lot.
There are a few things that could be improved. One I mentioned in another thread is the feedback with not-on-board words. With the old version, all highlighting disappeared immediately when you typed something impossible. Now, it just stops highlighting new letters, which is much too subtle. And, when you hit enter, the word disappears into the ether, with no feedback.
Another minor thing is the button panel in "Word List for Last Round". Right now you can turn off each button independently. That means you can make all 16 different combinations, but really, who would want to do that? I think it would be more useful if pressing the button would select just those words. For one thing, I'm worried that the difference between the "You" words and the "Only" words is too subtle -- but I wouldn't know since I haven't got any "Only" words since the new version got popular :-(.
Also, there's no way to report words not in the dictionary. I've only been playing since Christmas (after a loooong hiatus) and I've already come across a couple of words not in the dictionary. One is quite common: "funder". The other is more obscure: "hennin". You might want to compare your list to the SOWPODS list (http://67.19.18.90/sowpods.zip). I'm actually more of an intersectionist than a unionist, but since that ship sailed years ago, you might as well load all you can.
Evan, I appreciate more than I can say all that you've done over the years to make the game as easy and fun as possible for us. A thousand thanks and a thousand more, and I've said that with $$ and will do so again, I'm sure.
Unhelpful as it may be, though, I just have to say, God it was so good before. Elegant almost. Quick, easy, anonymous, non-intrusive. Yer in, yer out. I used to have a couple of bookmarks, one for the 4x4 and one for the 5x5, and with one click I was set to play the game. Boy, those were the days. It's all so slow and cumbersome now. I know you're working on that, but still. I'm not hopeful that it will ever again be as simple and snappy as it was before.
Anyway.. enough general whining and pessimism. Here's some nitpicking that actually might be useful to you.
1) Once the game is over the "Guesses" list disappears; I'd like to see it stay put until the new game starts. True there's the "Words You Found" list, but the "Guesses" list included guesses that were not words, and that info was helpful. I also liked being able to see at a glance how many points each word was worth. And finally, once the "Guesses" list disappears, so does my score for that round, making me scroll and scroll to see what my score was, if I didn't happen to catch it in time. Now, if my name could just appear at the top of the list all the time, that wouldn't be a problem, but alas....
2) The font size used in the "Last Round" list of players is larger than it needs to be. Imo, it should be the same size as is used in the "Word List[s] for Last Round." I won't go on and on with reasons unless you want them.
3) "Word List for Last Round," "Words only you found," "Words you found," Words other players found," and "Words no one found" are all locked together; I'd like them to be separate so I can put them in different places.
4) I miss being able to mouseover a word and see who got it.
5) The "Visit the Blog" link on the left side of the page doesn't work.
Thanks again, and good luck!
Kit
Re: desert rat's #5, to put it more exactly, the "visit the blog" link is blocked by Firefox's popup blocker, and possibly by other popup blockers as well.
Re: showing who else got a word you found - while the old Weboggle had this feature, most of the time, it didn't work. The set of people it highlighted had very little to do with the set of people who actually found that word. So while I agree that such a feature would be a Good Thing (tm) for the new game, it couldn't/shouldn't just be a copy of the feature from the old game.
boofer: Snapshot doesn't work yet.
mqw: Ranking bug is fixed in Tomorrow's Release.
ken: typing-highlight bug is fixed in TR, and word reporting is waiting until my hair is no longer on fire ;-)
desert rat: Good feedback! Except for separate word list panels, your stuff is fixed in TR also.
Thanks, all!
the very first day it worked. since then I haven't be able get this thing to work on my mac.
Please--what is this about?
I have a couple of small comments.
First I think if you enter something that is neither a real word nor on the board, it should say "suchandsuch is not a legal word" instead of just saying it isn't on the board (this is how it worked in weboggle). It was useful to be able to just type a word to check if it was legal.
Also, when the round ends sometimes I'm hitting backspace. Unfortunately in IE it seems that this is equivalent to pressing 'back'. Is it possible to not have the text box lose focus after the round ends?
Also I agree with Ken's first comment about highlighting.
Anyways thanks for the great game!
Thanks for keeping this game up and running! I sure do enjoy it! I like the new interface in general, especially the ability to customize easily. The one thing I wish you could work on is the speed (I guess?) I type faster than the words register and it is sometimes frustrating to have typed words long before time is up that have not yet cycled through to be counted. Otherwise - thanks again!!!
Thank you for putting together this site- it is wonderful. The only criticism I have is that when a game ends, and I hit the backspace button (to clear a partial word entry, for instance) it will cause my browswer to go back a page, effectively bumping me off the site. If you could fix that, it would be great.
I enjoyed this while it was beta - now everyone else has invaded too... it's too frustrating as I don't feel I'm anywhere near on a level playing field.
I have a couple of suggestions:
First (the easy one to implement I think) can we have an 'intermediate' level - a 4x4 board using the 5x5 dictionary? This is how we play the 'original' at home as the three-letter words get tiresome.
Secondly, any chance of having multiple boards so we can play with a couple of dozen rather than a couple of hundred? I like to feel that I get to know those I'm playing with - that's just not possible now everyone is crowding in.
i think the e-mail registration is the lamest thing ever. can you explain why, again? i hate having to log in and hardly ever play because of it.. sigh.
If you're a lawyer, what would you do about this? Weboggle WordsPlay
I love this game and thank you thank you for all of your work.
Just one thing: I agreed with what "seb" said - now there are so many people playing it is hard to compete and get anywhere near the top. I think more intimate games are nicer and fun when you get to know the other players and compete.
Thank you!
thanks so much for this site. ditto the suggestions to have multi-games with fewer players (100+ is indeed a lot).....and LIVE CHAT would be super!!
weboggle.info has live in-game chat. WordsPlay should also have a chat facility.
I had to take a break from this for awhile, because I was getting too frustrated not being able to play. I'm happy I can actually get into the game again, with the fixes you've made. However, I'm still not enjoying it near as much as the old version, which as someone said earlier was so simple and elegant and fast.
I REALLY miss the word list being one word per line with the points after it in ( ), or (not in dictionary) etc. It made it so much easier to see in an instant out of the corner of my eye if the word i guessed was a real word or not. As it is now, I waste too much time trying to look through the list of words separated only by commas and it's very frustrating.
Also very frustrating is that the highlighting on the board no longer can keep up with my typing as it used to, so again, I'm losing a lot of time waiting for the highlighting to catch up so I can see if I've typed the right letter or not.
Have I missed the way to resize the board? All I've been able to do is max out my browser window, and move around the different pieces on the website, but the actual game board of letters is still smaller than I would like. I would also recommend going back to the style of the old board. I can't remember exactly the difference, but once I started playing on the new board, I found my eyes had a tough time finding the letters. Perhaps a thicker line between letters? Or make the letters slightly smaller so there's more space between the letter and the edge of its square.
I'm not a big fan of the way the player list is right now, because to see where my score is and to see how many players there are, I have to click over into that window and scroll down, rather than simply scrolling down the whole page (which is much easier to do- might just be a Mac thing, but still).
I'm happy I can play again, but still not loving it... I'll keep checking back for game updates. Thanks!
I think that it would be fair if points were deducted for non-legal words. When there is no penalty, people can randomly guess, rather than using their knowledge of words. This causes a skewing in ranking because those who KNOW more words aren't necessarily doing better than those who are guessing.
I've been trying to to play the new game and I have had no luck. I loaded Java stuff but I don't think it worked. I am stuck in bed a lot because of health problems and it was fun to play. It's too bad! I'm not too computer smart.
We used to play the 5x5 game in school with a bit of a twist – we did not allow any words that were formed by simply adding an “s” to make a plural. We allowed words that ended in “s” naturally, like lens or glans, and also irregular plurals (“es” or “ies” endings), but that’s it.
We liked this because it let us spend more time looking for good, long words (which is most of the fun – let’s face it!) and less time in a mad rush to write (now type) all the plurals, which you have to do when there is one or more “s” on the array.
But we felt that once you found a word, it was no fun and no more interesting to write it down again and add the “s”. Our view was: "Big deal! You noticed an adjacent 's'. Congratulations."
Some of us even wanted to outlaw “ed” endings for verbs, but we did not go that far. It shows up a lot less, and not all verbs take it. However, virtually every noun can take an “s” at the end. We also did not like three-letter words getting promoted to 4-letter points by virtue of adding an “s”. That seemed to us to defy the spirit of the 5x5 array.
I find a great deal of success in the web version is dependent on not only how accurately you can type, but how fast. Rewarding speed typing is, to me, not the point of the game.
I realize this would be considered a radical departure to most Bogglers, and would probably need a curtailed database of words, but wanted to pass it along for your consideration. I believe most players would prefer this once they got used to it – at a minimum, it reduces the need to type like a maniac to get all the plurals that others are getting. Now, you have to do that to score.
It could just be an optional way to play -- a "plurals" version and a "no plurals" version.
Just a thought.
We used to play the 5x5 game in school with a bit of a twist – we did not allow any words that were formed by simply adding an “s” to make a plural. We allowed words that ended in “s” naturally, like lens or glans, and also irregular plurals (“es” or “ies” endings), but that’s it.
We liked this because it let us spend more time looking for good, long words (which is most of the fun – let’s face it!) and less time in a mad rush to write (now type) all the plurals, which you have to do when there is one or more “s” on the array.
But we felt that once you found a word, it was no fun and no more interesting to write it down again and add the “s”. Our view was: "Big deal! You noticed an adjacent 's'. Congratulations."
Some of us even wanted to outlaw “ed” endings for verbs, but we did not go that far. It shows up a lot less, and not all verbs take it. However, virtually every noun can take an “s” at the end. We also did not like three-letter words getting promoted to 4-letter points by virtue of adding an “s”. That seemed to us to defy the spirit of the 5x5 array.
I find a great deal of success in the web version is dependent on not only how accurately you can type, but how fast. Rewarding speed typing is, to me, not the point of the game.
I realize this would be considered a radical departure to most Bogglers, and would probably need a curtailed database of words, but wanted to pass it along for your consideration. I believe most players would prefer this once they got used to it – at a minimum, it reduces the need to type like a maniac to get all the plurals that others are getting. Now, you have to do that to score.
It could just be an optional way to play -- a "plurals" version and a "no plurals" version.
Just a thought.
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