Secret-hitler: 2.0 thoughts and suggested features

[cozuya]

OK so some ideas bouncing around in my head.

First off 1.0 should be out some time this year meaning most of the correctly labeled stuff here should be addressed. That means the original rules completely implemented as true as they can be in this format, all bugs addressed, all desired features in. This is coming along.

After that, I'd like to see what the community is thinking for fun things to make this site and game fun and interesting.

My first thought is custom games. By that I mean a 3rd tier apart from standard and rainbow that is essentially, in the create game view, a user would click a check box for custom game, and a new view would appear with a few different settings/options:

• Drag and droppable policy powers i.e. a user could put a bullet to be assigned after 1 R policy enacted.
• Slider for number of hitlers in game, more than one would replace vanilla fascists. I don't think fascist:liberal ratio should change. Yes, obviously, we need to be able to have as many hitlers as we want. Not a sentence uttered a lot historically.
• Slider for "when does this game enter hitler zone" obviously right now at 3 R policies, but why not variable right?

New policies? I am not a creative by any means at all.. as you can see from the UI. But how about:

• "Protect": new fascist policy, the president will select (in secret only truly known to him/herself) a player who, if targeted for assassination, will not die, taking an additional bullet to actually die.

• "Convert": new liberal (!) policy, the president will select a player. If that player is was on the fascist team, that player is has now been changed into a liberal. If that player was (a) hitler, that win condition has now vanished for both sides. In penance for switching sides, the fascists have ripped out that player's tongue and he/she can no longer speak/chat in this game. If that player is a liberal, the fascists have brutally attacked him/her and they can no longer speak/chat in this game.

Just some stuff I thought up. If you have any better ideas for a 2.0 release ("more than what was put into to the real game"), please let me know.

[DennisTheFinn]

as far as custom games go, this is a good base start. I'd wait 'till you see how custom goes in live before adding more things. Have to flush out the exact added features.

[DennisTheFinn]

suggestion, for custom games, allow for increase of size (seating of more people) to get crazy big games... could put a max. amount of 15 or 20.

[Tvrqvoise]

There are a few minor design issues I would like to see cleaned up.

• When I first joined, I was too stupid to figure out how to leave a game and start a new one. I think the 'leave game' button should be clearer, and maybe more central.
• I would like to see a more seamless way to go from being an observer to playing in a game / participating in chat. Perhaps as part of trying to interact with a disabled UI element, you could instead be presented with the create account / log in dialog instead.
• I was complaining in #90 about not being able to find any good code reuse for the changelog content. Perhaps an easier solution would be to put that in one place -- I think defaultMid could show the latest patch version's notes (or a "we've updated! see what's new" callout) with a link to the main changelog page.
• Rules contain some board-game specific notes, such as mentioning that the cards should be "shuffled".
• I think a bit more consistent spacing, styling, and color usage could go a long way. Just a once over now that everything's more or less solidified would I think make a big difference, design wise. I might throw together a mockup of this at some point, if nobody objects.
• More ways to notify people of an active turn would be good. Blinking tab title / favicon (like discord), desktop notifications, a noise, something.
• During a game, you should be able to see your own player card.
• I think the chat box UI could be made a bit more unified. Specifically, I think the mute observers feature should probably be a toggle which is applicable when combined with the other toggles, and whitelist could be replaced by an individual mute feature.

[cozuya]

So I like all of these ideas. A full on UI/UX review and update would be great - I am clearly not a designer and am not very talented at stuff like that. Changing favicon (at the least) for focus is also a great idea.

As far as the overall UI I think if I had the chance to overhaul it I would a) make the tracks section a bit smaller and b) have an optional "table" layout by getting rid of the "players" section and instead having them circularly around the table. Also it really needs to not be fixed widths for anything as it looks ridiculous on my ultrawide and yeah a full on refactor of the layout (with flexbox) would be great.

After the moderation stuff went in I think thats the last major feature I want in 1.0, so I need to concentrate on bug fixes, which have ballooned lately, and I had a pretty bad 0.6.1 release. But as far as contributors - work on what you feel like. If you have a feature you want in, make an issue and mark it suggested enhancement and we'll have a quick discussion here and most likely you'll be given the green light to bring it in.

[Tvrqvoise]

What about automatic lobbies? Perhaps you toggle a setting, and get auto-seated into a new game 30 seconds (or something) after your last one concludes?

[cozuya]

I think I'd rather not - I think it would definitely lead to an increase in accidental afks, and not everyone wants to play in certain modes.

[Tvrqvoise]

Yeah, that is a good point.

[Tvrqvoise]

A few more. I'm kind of new to the game itself, so feedback is appreciated:

• Claims dialog should appear over the games board instead of nested behind chat
• When fascists win, the box shadow highlighting the winners should be red instead of blue
• Card interactions on the game board should have a title giving context. For example, the board should say "Accept election of chancellor Foo by President Bar?" above the Jai and Nein cards. Currently one has to check the chat.

[DennisTheFinn]

A nice feature would be to have the name of the game you are in somewhere. so if you name your game '<3' it shows up when you are in game somewhere.

It would also be nice to be able to set uber specific limits on the amount of players in your game, so you could have 5-7-8-10 only games or something like that.

Also, better wording on the veto, because as of right now it can be confusing especially for new players.

---Should be something simple like

"Select Ja to veto the chosen policy
Select Nein to enact the chosen policy"