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Competition Evolution

A

Amoeba

New member
This is a forum game. It's something I've been working on for a long time, and now that I've pulled it all together, after months of planning, its's finally open to new members.

It's a strategy game where you evolve creatures on a world in order to compete with other players on the board by killing or out-competing your opponent's creatures. The winner is decided when only one player has creatures left on the world. You can make up worlds and arrange games with other people, or offer challenges to whoever may take them.

There are no members yet and only one game running with just myself (so people can see how it works). There's an in-depth post explaining the rules. Don't be put off by the length of the rules, because once you understand them, it's quite easy to play.

I could really use some advice and suggestions in making it a better game, and making the rules easier to follow. I have never been good at explaining things, and some suggestions on making the rules more clear and concise would be splendid.

Here's the link: Competition Evolution. Please don't comment on the lack of a banner or fancy graphics because I'm not concerned about that. (unless it really, really annoys you, then I'll see what I can do)
 
Coolio. Very nice idea. Might join sometime.

Ahem. First of all, I don't think the rules are placed in clear enough spot. I personally don't think hiding the How to Get Started thread in the Arena section is a great idea -- you might want to move it to Help and Suggestions.

In the Arena Section, place a more detailed tutorial on how to make your own arenas, probably with a few examples and rules. Also, have a thread to post separate squares of different habitats (without the number on it), so people can just copy and past those pictures to make their own arenas instead of drawing their own. You can put other people's habitat ideas on it, too. Also have some detailed descriptions of the habitats there, to be helpful and such.

Maybe rename "Player's Section" to "Creatures" or something, since "Creatures" more accurately describe what that board is for. Also, put a detailed description on how to make your creatures, evolve them, and rules there. I personally like having lots of detailed rules, so then I'll know exactly what not to do when playing. It gives me a sense of security, in a way, since I don't have to worry about breaking the rules that I don't know about while I post.

You might also want to have a whole game (maybe labeled "example" or something) where you play against yourself so people will know exactly what goes on in a game. Maybe put some explainations on the side in a different color/font/bold to further explain how to play the game.

I personally is very bothered by the large "INVISION" sign on the top, but I guess that can't be helped... You might want something that says "CompEvo" in large letters somewhere (preferably a pretty banner, because everybody loves pretty banners), just so I know where I am. It could be just that I'm not used to invision though...
 
Seritinajii said:
My validation email isn't coming. o.o
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EDIT: you're validated. I set it to user email validation but for some reason I had to validate it manually. No idea why that was, but its done now.

That's wierd. Maybe that's why nobody's joined. I'll see if I can figure out what the problem is.

Ok, for now I've made it so that you don't have to validate your email. But if that causes any problems then I'll have to change it again, perhaps to admin validation, which would make registration a lot slower.

Crazy Linoone said:
Coolio. Very nice idea. Might join sometime.

Ahem. First of all, I don't think the rules are placed in clear enough spot. I personally don't think hiding the How to Get Started thread in the Arena section is a great idea -- you might want to move it to Help and Suggestions.
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I was thinking about that. For some reason I guessed people would look there first since its the first forum in the game category. I'll place it somewhere more appropriate, and link to it in some of the other topics so if people miss it in one place, the will come across a link to it elsewhere.

Crazy Linoone said:
In the Arena Section, place a more detailed tutorial on how to make your own arenas, probably with a few examples and rules. Also, have a thread to post separate squares of different habitats (without the number on it), so people can just copy and past those pictures to make their own arenas instead of drawing their own. You can put other people's habitat ideas on it, too. Also have some detailed descriptions of the habitats there, to be helpful and such.
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That's a good idea actually. It could develop. I wondered if I might need a tutorial for making arenas actually.

Crazy Linoone said:
Maybe rename "Player's Section" to "Creatures" or something, since "Creatures" more accurately describe what that board is for. Also, put a detailed description on how to make your creatures, evolve them, and rules there. I personally like having lots of detailed rules, so then I'll know exactly what not to do when playing. It gives me a sense of security, in a way, since I don't have to worry about breaking the rules that I don't know about while I post.
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Advice noted. I will try to add more detailed tutorials, perhaps so there isn't one big tutorial but many step-by step tutorials. One for how the game works, then linking to another about how to make your first creature, then linking to another about how to join a game, make moves and evolve, etc. Each one links to the other so that at the start it might say "make sure you have read here (link) first" for example.

Crazy Linoone said:
You might also want to have a whole game (maybe labeled "example" or something) where you play against yourself so people will know exactly what goes on in a game. Maybe put some explainations on the side in a different color/font/bold to further explain how to play the game.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea. Hmm... might do that.

Crazy Linoone said:
I personally is very bothered by the large "INVISION" sign on the top, but I guess that can't be helped... You might want something that says "CompEvo" in large letters somewhere (preferably a pretty banner, because everybody loves pretty banners), just so I know where I am. It could be just that I'm not used to invision though...
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Well, I'll begin working on a banner, but it might take me a while. ^^; That is, if it isn't going to look tacky.

Thanks for the feedback, there's a lot of it to work with. Hopefully a lot of improvements can be made.
 
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Invisionfree is crashing on meeeeee

I think it might be just me though.

But yes, I personally like Proboards better. You don't get this huge banner that says "PROBOARDS" on it, and you get to put the title of your forums in nice big letters on top.
 
It seems to be working fine for me, does anybody else notice any problems?

I'd like to find out if it's happening to anyone else because if it is I may consider switching to another forum, see if that helps.
 
Oh! Oh! Linoone sees a typo!

Forest: Mixed forest with a mild wet climate. Winders may be cold, especially closer to the tundra. Summers are warm and plentiful with fruiting trees and flourishing vegetation.
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It's in the first arena.
 
Invisionfree is customizeable if you know what you're doing; I don't remember whether there is a separate space for adding the header image or if that all needs to be done via the board CSS, but it can be done.

I wouldn't know about any "crashing" problems it's having right now, although I do know that IFree's servers have been going through difficulties on and off as of late; I'm not interested in joining at this point in time (I'll keep it in mind for later, though, sounds interesting), but when I gave it a quick look before I didn't notice any problems. That said, I do know that IFree boards tend to have a terrible time with spambots, and nowadays can have a pretty poor reputation (I seem to recall Proboards not being a stellar choice, either, but I don't know much about those from experience so I can't say). You might be better off using something like Zetaboards (the new board made by the IFree people) or else finding free MyBB or SMF hosting, or even InvisionBoard hosting that isn't the InvisionFree flavor, but with careful maintenance you could probably make IFree work just fine for what you need.
 
Linoone has a few suggestions and questions!

1. How many sentences should the description of the creature be, at least? I mean, it would be bothersome to have people write one-sentenced descriptions and try to join.

2. Hmmm... Why would anyone want to take away stats when evolving? Since you win the game by making your species super powerful and stuff, I think people will try to buff up their species when evolving as much as possible. You might want to, say, make a rule about how, when evolving, one must make a certain number of negative changes.

3. I think you might want to have people give reasons for the stat changes when a species evolve. So then they can't add massive amounts of attack to their species without changing the appearance much.

And that's about it. :3
 
Crazy Linoone said:
Linoone has a few suggestions and questions!

1. How many sentences should the description of the creature be, at least? I mean, it would be bothersome to have people write one-sentenced descriptions and try to join.
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Well, the description is accepted based uppon the quality of its content - ifv you can get a fairly clear picture of the creature and its important features in your head, then its well done. If you can do that in a couple of sentences, good on you, though I wouldn't expect it.

That said, species can be declined if they don't give enough detail.

Crazy Linoone said:
2. Hmmm... Why would anyone want to take away stats when evolving? Since you win the game by making your species super powerful and stuff, I think people will try to buff up their species when evolving as much as possible. You might want to, say, make a rule about how, when evolving, one must make a certain number of negative changes.
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You know, that was silly of me to put it there. Actually, I only did for if someone hypothetically wanted to make their species evolve more realistically, though it would be a disadvantage.

Crazy Linoone said:
3. I think you might want to have people give reasons for the stat changes when a species evolve. So then they can't add massive amounts of attack to their species without changing the appearance much.

And that's about it. :3
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I have comments in the guidelines about that. They say that if the stats change drastically then so should the description/illustration.

Unless you perhaps ment in the same way I have put in the first arena? That is possible, yes.

Thanks for making these suggestions. :D
 
You know, that was silly of me to put it there. Actually, I only did for if someone hypothetically wanted to make their species evolve more realistically, though it would be a disadvantage.
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Hmm... Might want to make it a rule or something. "Be realistic" or something, so people won't go around and add +5 attack to their amoeba-like thing which evolves into a shark-like thing.

I dunno.

Unless you perhaps ment in the same way I have put in the first arena? That is possible, yes.
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Yup. I think this would make it more realistic, if you get my drift.

And you're welcome~ This game is really innovative, and I sense potential.
 
Crazy Linoone said:
And you're welcome~ This game is really innovative, and I sense potential.
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I do hope you're right.

I'm not sure about limmiting where one puts their 5 stats because I wanted to make it a strategic game where people can take different techniques to win (even adding 5 to one stat and none to another is a risk - you need more than one stat improved to win). What maybe I should add is that one stat point isn't a lot considering how many can be accumulated over the course of a game.
 
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