Okay, I come from a much larger website of online RISK, and I realize now how small this is. Advancements in this site will come as it grows larger maybe. Is there any Premium Member stuff where the owner will profit from this site?

nope. it's all a labor of love. but donations are always a great idea.

Is there a limit to the amount of games you can play at the same time?

that's what the points are for. so hypothetically, i guess 20. but that's waaaay too many. this game, unlike risk, requires lots and lots of talking if you want to do well. and you can't put enough energy into it if you have so many games going on. i'd say don't go more than 5 or 6 at first.

you have a total of 100 points when you start. you can spend them on 20 games (x 5points) or on just 1 (x 100points) game. it's up to the player. A game's entry bet can vary from 5 to 2000 or more.

Hmmm. Okay I think I get it. So the current scoreboard leader could double his points in one game.

Multiply it by 7 I mean.

most people prefer to refer not to gathered points for ranking but to these (un)official rankings.
http://phpdiplomacy.tournaments.googlepages.com/theghost-ratingslist
they are similar to ELO rating in chess

there are two kind of games. winner takes all (wta) and points per supply center (ppsc). You need to have 100 points to be able to create a wta game
http://phpdiplomacy.net/points.php

Wow! Well. Let's see here. You joined this site 7 minutes before you posted this thread, and joined ONE game at that time! Welcome, I'm sure you know all of our forum needs perfectly. If you do, then you're a multi and should be banned.

If you don't, you're spamming the website, and using this account as advertisement, and will surely CD in your game. Please ban him now, and get this over with mods. Save the people in his game (Which hasn't started yet) some time.

whoa, take a chill pill rlumley. he's done nothing wrong. he's asked some good questions, actually, about games and stuff.

rlumley, one of my first thoughts when I joined was "Why on earth aren't they using phpBB?" If you're at all familiar with forums, it's a natural question. (Particularly since the site itself is php.) Moments after I joined I was already thinking the same thing, I just didn't bother to post it.

The reason they don't use a standard BB system is that kestas wanted the forum to be tied to your actual player ID. They do use a standard form for the Development forum, so they're not ignorant. There will be improvements in the next version.

Another element of that is that actually there aren't too many features of phpBB that we actually need. True there are improvements that could be made but not enough to make it worth replacing the forum, especially with something as bloated as phpBB.

@lanyards: "Hmmm. Okay I think I get it. So the current scoreboard leader could double his points in one game...Multiply it by 7 I mean."

No. At the start of a game, all the players must pay the same amount of points to enter - an amount set by the person who initiates the game.

If a game was started up where the entry cost was equal to the total points held by the player topping the leaderboard at that point, then logically no-one else would have enough points to join that game.

But the seventh player in the scoreboard could multiply his points by seven...

Or indeed anyone lower.

At first, I thought the same thing. But beyond simple formatting tools, there isn't really much I'd want to add to this forum. I certainly don't want people having signatures or uploading images etc. mainly because I just like the feel of this forum.

Yes.

IF he set up a WTA game using ALL his points, AND the six players above him on the board all joined, AND he won outright.

People who like this forum style are the same ones who insist on listening to records, because the pops and crackles add to the music. :P

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I agree the forum needs much work, but I don't really want to have to tack on a separate site for discussions, which is what phpBB would require. The problem is phpBB is just really hard to integrate effectively into an existing piece of software, at the moment it's hard to see the best way forward.

One thing I can rule out is rewriting the features of phpBB into this forum system. This means we either need to accept a limited forum, or integrate into a more easy system like Drupal of SMF.

Next version of the forum system will have pagination, be a bit more compact, and will allow links to user profile pages and games, but after the next version variants and the forum will be the main features on the todo list.

Other than a lack of pagination this forum is just fine, Kestas.

@DingleberryJones - Good quality (ie 150 gram or over) vinyl records have a much richer sound than many CDs, and both vinyl and well-mastered CD's are significantly superior in sound quality to MP3.

plus when it comes to djing, you cannot manipulate a CD or MP3 like vinyl, unless you have serrato live or something. you should know that, DJ!!!

at first i hated this forum style. now i really love it. i love that when you click on a topic it refreshes the whole page with that topic expanded. i love that old topics get lost in time and space. i love that you can even depth charge a topic

this has been discussed a few times. I suggested an SMF forum at first, but this one has really grown on me, plus it has been improved quite a bit.
Some hierarchy might be nice, but I'm pretty much content

Jamie
"both vinyl and well-mastered CD's are significantly superior in sound quality to MP3"

Agreed. I wasn't thinking mp3s. Just the people who prefer records over CDs because they claim to like the crackle hiss and pops.

I really like the forum, it just feels so much more friendly than the other forums I use/have used.

Just to set the record straight... The amount of time and work it would take to integrate the phpDip userlist with a phpBB userlist is FAR less than the effort level required to develop and maintain a completely separate forum system (e.g. this one).

Features I miss from a real forum are the ability to list only new posts, jump to the last unread post in any given thread, the ability to immediately reply, message editing, real clickable links, image embedding (for maps and so on), and I can probably think of plenty more.

The stuff people seem to complain about in these threads -- the giant annoying sigs and avatars and stuff -- can be disabled with a few checkboxes.

phpBB isn't terribly "bloated" either -- the full code weighs in at about 3MB, and I rather suspect phpDip eats up vastly larger amounts of disk space with it's map cache.

Not that I care much -- I do prefer phpBB but it isn't a big deal -- but some things being said here are not accurate.

i know a lot of forums that switched from phpBB to this implementation

Define "a lot"... I run quite a few forums and have been involved in this kind of thing before the Web existed (like one of the other posters, I enjoyed 300baud Compuserve dial-up, I ran BBSes, I did the USENET thing, etc), and frankly I doubt you've see "a lot" of forums downgrade to something like this. (And in the spirit of accuracy, maybe you've seen somebody switch to a similarly stripped-down format, but "this implementation" is not a stand-alone system.)

NPRZ, that is true. I think the point is more that the whole look of a phpBB doesn't quite fit phpdip. If a new theme could be developed to make it, I would be first to jump at the opportunity to get it.

alamothe? eg?

One feature that would be nice would be to be able to sticky some key posts so they would stay at the top. For example, the moderators' shared email address. I can never remember what it is.

NPRZ maintaining and developing this forum is definitely less work than properly integrating phpBB in (and then keeping the integrated phpBB system up to date with the patches as they come out). I'm not maintaining this system out of masochism after all, only because it is easier and it does the job

Also software bloat isn't related to disc usage, this forum is one table and a couple of hundred lines of code (compared to tens of thousands of lines and dozens of tables), that has nothing to do with the size of our map cache

If you'd prefer a more fully featured forum then I understand and agree, but it definitely wouldn't be easier than sticking with what we have now (which is why it hasn't been done)

I completely agree with NPRZ, phpBB gives posters and moderators way more freedom. It can be organized too if run the right way.

I still think that all we need to do is add sticking/locking/ghosting (or whatever DJ called it - posting without bumping) and a few different sections, including one where anyone can post, but only read their own threads, and mods can reply to all (linking everything back into the site rather than the email). Oh, and the ability to lock people from boards separately.

kestas, to clarify, I was referring to extending and adding new features (like the new release and figles' wish list up there) to the forum, not just running it. They both run more or less on auto-pilot most of the time, I'm sure.

"I certainly don't want people having signatures or uploading images etc. mainly because I just like the feel of this forum."

QFT.

"the ability to list only new posts"

Well the newer posts are up at the top. Is this so important that you need to import a foreign system?

"jump to the last unread post in any given thread"

This should happen... perhaps it's your browser? Because mine automagically jumps to the last unread message.

"message editing, real clickable links, image embedding "

Message editing sucks, clickable links is something that can be done with this forum and isn't a huge deal, image embedding is a no-no.

"the ability to immediately reply"

I'm under the impression that figle wants to AJAXify the forum eventually, which would give this ability, yes?

Using phpBB here is like using Windows Vista to run a ticket machine.

phpDiplomacy's forum solves a number of disadvantages of traditional forums like phpBB, such as:
- subforums,
- pagination,
- sticky posts (these are particulary annoying)

In phpBB forums, admins have the option to turn off signatures, image posting, posters having the ability to make sticky posts, ect.

Yes, but the point is that there's not enough that we would add that phpBB has that would justify porting over to phpBB. Less is more.

Maybe in the future, when the site grows more?

alamothe, the points you list are irrelevant. Most of the phpBB forums I run don't use subforums, pagination is something that is being added (and is hardly a bad thing), and stick posts are being added.

Again, I had my fill of arguing whether it's good or bad in the last thread, I just think some of the points raised aren't exactly an honest assessment of the situation (speaking as both a programmer and a forum operator). That's all.

Not my site, so once my two cents are on the table I'm done. :)

See? I could have edited that and fixed "sticky" posts and you wouldn't have had to pause when you read it. :)

Sticky posts are being added?

It's funny because right after I read "stick posts" I looked at your second post, and then continued to read your first post. I can't pinpoint what prompted me to do so, and perhaps it's just lucky coincidence, but I didn't have to pause at all. I don't like editing because it's better to have a record of what was said and have corrections come after the fact.

Most forums editing probably makes sense. But on this forum, not being able to edit after the fact is important.

I think that, if you have editting, there should be a "show original message" button two, which appears at the bottom of the post.

editing*