Episode 230: Hot, Hot NS Hex

[Rob Zacny]

Soren Johnson, Ryan Kuo, and Michael Hermes join Julian today to talk about iOS asynchronous board gaming. Neuroshima Hex is the star of the show and leads the panel to other recent additions such as Eclipse and A Brief History of the World.

 

Listen

[hexgrid]

Worth noting: on iOS, the built-in turn-based game support is somewhat straitjacketed; a lot of the implementation problems (including things like the incredibly primitive matchmaking, and things like timeouts) in games stem from bad assumptions in the way the Game Center async turn-based API was designed.

 

As an example that's currently biting me, there's no sane way to do simultaneous turns.  In the system provided, it's always some designated player's turn, and remains so until either (1) they end their turn, or (2) they are timed out by the (Apple-run) server.  Only the player whose turn it is can actually make changes in the game.[1]  What this means is that if you want simultaneous turns, you wind up still having sequential turns, but have players ganging up and passing on a bag full of orders, all of which get resolved at once when they get back to the player who took the first "turn".

 

[1] iOS 7 adds a slight change to this to allow things like trading, but at least according to my reading all it allows is for the player whose turn it is to interact with other players without abusing the turn order.  That is, it makes Settlers of Catan-style trading possible with less insanity.

[sclpls]

Great episode, but I take exception to Julian's characterization of Eclipse's AI as mediocre. I've seen it do some very clever stuff! (His point is otherwise well taken though)

[spillblood]

Good episode. Some more description about the different games talked about would have been nice though.

[BoardgamesToGo]

Good episode. Another feature I think is vital (but often missing) in async games is in-game chat. True, no one uses this as much as I'd like (because no one has come up with an interface so great you can't avoid talking smack to each other), but it's really frustrating when there's nothing at all. Though I usually play async games against friends I can email or IM separately, sometimes I'm playing against strangers and there's no way to communicate. Dumb!
 

I liked the point about boardgame adaptations benefiting from rules tweaks that enhance online play. Like the small mods Brief History of the World is crying out for. If you don't already know it, take a look at the play-by-web site Yucata.de. They've dealt with this problem for years, and in several cases have made those tiny mods you're talking about. Either it's an option to speed up online play (look at Yspahan), or they acknowledge a tweak to the rules (look at Pompeii). Something similar happens at MichaelSchacht.net for Hansa. Some players will be bugged by the changes, but it's to the game's benefit. Leaving the original way as an option seems like the best solution.

[sclpls]

It occurred to me recently that most of Stefan Feld's designs would translate really well into iOS games, although unfortunately to my knowledge no one is working on any ports. His board games tend to be heavy-ish Euro games that involve taking a single, difficult decision. Trajan in particular strikes me as fitting Soren's ideal for a good asynchronous experience. Ironically the only game of his that I think wouldn't work well is one of his lighter games, Die Speicherstadt. That one involves a worker placement bidding mechanic where players go around placing workers one at a time bidding prices up until everyone has placed all their workers. That's the sort of thing that takes very little time when everyone is sitting around a table, but will kill any asynchronous game.