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A better and easier EpicMafia

over 5 years

So, I have a lot of ideas on how to make EpicMafia easier to use for new and not-so-new users alike, and I figured I'd compile those ideas (along with ideas from other that I endorse) in one place so they do not get lost and can get easily referenced. These ideas are all on here for various very specific reasons, and I'll try to explain each idea and why it would be good. Some of these might be more targeted at unranked/Sandbox, since that's what I usually play, but I think there are some in here that will help everyone.

Give users their role logic Night 1

As the game is now, users only receive their role on Night 1. This means that if you want to be reminded, or learn, what your role actually does, you have to go to the learn tab. In my opinion, this should not be a game that you need to flip between multiple tabs to play. I think it should work more like [Image 1 in the first comment]

Incorporate Emjack's /role function

 Emjack [Linked in the third comment] honestly changed the way I play EpicMafia. It is full of many incredibly useful features, and given that it is years old, I'm honestly pretty surprised that some of these features were never incorporated into the site.

One such function is the /role function. At any time during the game (including at night), if a user types, for instance, "/role doctor" (which they might want to look up after someone claims it), a text box will pop up like this: [Image 2 in the second comment]

I've been on the site since 2015, and I <i>still</i> use the /role function at least every-other game. There are so many different roles, and many of them are pretty complicated. As I said before, ideally the goal is that someone should be able to play the game without having multiple tabs open.

Allow users to simply mark someone as an alignment

The ability to mark someone as a role via their icon is a great function! I occasionally use it, but I'm sure some people use it every game to keep track of claims. I've seen it suggested that you should be able to mark someone as simply blue (village) or black (mafia) if you don't know their role, but you have a <i>feeling</i> about their alignment. As of now, I just mark people with random village/mafia/3p roles if I have a feeling about their alignment, but I think it would be very helpful to include the colors as markers along with the roles.

Allow users to easily pull up system messesages

I know that in ranked, you are not allowed to copy/paste, but in unranked/sandbox you are, and we do it <i>a lot</i> to claim/fake claim. Currently there is a thread [Linked in the the third comment] which many users use religiously. I used to use that all the time before discovering that there is actually already a command in Emjack that you can use to pull up a system messesage. Adding this function to the side won't hurt ranked games at all, but it will help a <i>lot</i> of people who play unranked/sandbox.

Allow us to hover over icons

The icons are tricky to recognize sometimes. A lot of new roles being added makes it even more likely that you might see a role you don't recognize. I often seeing people ask What is [User X]'s role, if they see it in the graveyard, or if maybe the bride proposed to it. I think an easy fix to this would be to allow users to hover their cursor over a revealed/naked icon, and have a small box appear that says the name of that role.

Role grouping

A lot of roles can be grouped in certain ways. E.x. there are roles that reveal other roles: oracle, bride. There are healing roles: doctor, surgeon, nurse. There are contacting roles, there are roleblocking roles, there are hostile thirds, ect. I think you should add tags to the roles in the learn tab, and make it so if you click a tag, you can see what roles fall under it.

Also, make it so you can put a tag into the chat in-game as a command, and see what roles fall under that tag. This would greatly come in handy if, for example, all the mafia are dead and someone wants to know why the game is still going on. They could enter in, say, "/tag hostilethird" and have the game pull up for them "cultist, zombie, killer, clockmaker, gambler, werewolf, mastermind, usurper, anarchist, autocrat."

Misc

  • make it so that someone's role reveals in their death messesage if they suicide or turn into a vegetable. E.x. "Johnsmith, the fool,turns into a vegetable" instead of the current "Johnsmith turns into a vegetable."
  • allow bold text and italics in-game. This would allow more expressiveness as well as help the people who play comp and are not able to use caps for emphasis.
  • <i> greatly </i> expand the vocab. Add words (e.x. veg, sui, vote) and shortened named for roles that people use (e.x. vigil, lk, ect) There should probably be a thread dedicated to this so the community can throw in what they think should be on it, imo. This might help new users a lot.
  • other markers you should be able to put: heart (for your lover, or if you are mistletoe, or if you are angel, or cupid), all items actually could have uses as markers (vest, gun, snowball, crystal, knife, idk if I've missed any)
over 5 years
a way to view the setup page ingame (on mobile) would be great too
over 5 years
minigame issues:
liars dice - can't change the die face that you're betting
boggle - can't select more than 1 letter
draw it - can only draw dots. trying do draw anything more just scrolls the page
battlesnakes - technically playable so long as you have some sort of arrow keys (like gboard's text editing tool) but very hard to work with. probably unfixable though
stack it - same as battlesnakes and again probably unfixable
chess - i'm not actually sure but many people have apparently had problems with it
probably others as well but don't know which ones
liars dice is probably the most fixable bc it actually works in some browsers but on chrome it's broken.
changing player number is broken for all minigames. works fine when making/searching a maf setup tho

switches in settings do not like working. you can eventually change them if you tap in just the right way but idk how that is. works fine if you switch to desktop view though

https://puu.sh/CmWr4/d32654bfa9.jpg
https://puu.sh/CmWsV/ff71c4644c.jpg
https://puu.sh/CmX20/8f2b818d71.jpg
weird formatting issue and i think it happens on desktop too. profiles were doing this too before the loading fix. if you load a page immediately after clearing cache it'll load correctly but not even again after that. fame pages don't have this problem

https://puu.sh/CmWDo/a279a998c5.jpg occasional loading issue, not sure if it's just mobile

copy pasting where it works (and when it used to work in maf) is janky. if there's no text in the field you can't paste or select anything (unless you use gboard but who know how many ppl actually use gboard). usually it'll just select the gray "type your text here" text instead. have to type something first to be able to select or paste

can't look at upvotes & downvotes without desktop view
over 5 years
fully listed menus (like anarch bomb) do not have any issues. though it would much be preferable if the full game size would adjust to screen size (and accomodate for the keyboard) and most dropdowns were still there so as not be too clunky. most of this was prob already mentioned but with mobile the lack of scroll beans everything

when people have too much stuff the popup when you click their name ingame will cut off and be unscrollable

role markers do not work

role hints and info tips do not work. most of the hints could probably be done away with though since you get a full description of your role now

can't see details when tapping on soneone's pie

touchy dropdowns (ingame, hosting setup, switching alts) - sometimes when you open one you automatically select the first thing in the list when you didn't actually touch it. you can usually get around it if you long tap the button though

forum stuff polls, game mode, petition, etc should be accessible in the mobile layout without needing to go to desktop. maybe making some sort of tab for each thing if there's multiple could keep the page tidy

text selection and copy pasting does not work in any maf game. works in minigames
over 5 years
ok here's a list of all the mobile issues i could remember:

underworld & graveyard do not list players correctly: suis and vegs do not show in either. all normal deaths show in both regardless if they've been gy shanked or not

when switching to a different app, epicmafia disconnects when you tab back in. requires a manual refresh to fix. this wasn't happening before the latest updates and doesn't happen with any other app or site, though not sure if it's just me or not. seems to affect lobby chat too but lobby chat always likes to disconnect

https://puu.sh/CmVwa/c59eaec2de.jpg might be just me ? this in firefox and fully loaded. someone on firefox on pc said profiles load fine for them. for me loads correctly on chrome though

regardless of screen size the height of the game area is too short. it should instead auto fit to the user's screen size

actions tab only becomes scrollable if there's enough actions to make it so

player selection lists seem to be set to specific positions and do not scroll with the actions menu. if there's more than 8 players alive it becomes impossible to vote no one in lynch meeting. click username voting's very great but there's no no one option for that. it also only works on the regular meeting and not troublemaker's

party (and presumably blizzard too) breaks many people's formatting both on mobile and desktop. player selects for role actions do not scroll with the actions tab on mobile and display far below where they're supposed to. same display issue on desktop but the page is completely scrollable so it's all still usable
over 5 years
ROLE LOGIC N1 HAS BEEN ADDED

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
over 5 years
Though I highly reccomend allowing users to use the /role fuction in-game as well before hiatus. The goal should be to make this a game you don't need multiple tabs open to play.
over 5 years
Still need role logic n1
over 5 years
emoji
over 5 years
Giving users their role logic night 1, fixing vegetable message, and allowing mods to edit vocab list, role aliases, and role descriptions will come before my hiatus

A flexible setup creation system with setup forking will also come if I have time
over 5 years
Along with all this some of the learn page descriptions should be updated, eg Baker says 3 days, not 3 phases, Nurse's page is just confusing even though it's a simple role (literally just saying it's Doctor + Drunk would be better than the current page's wording). There's a few others but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

I started a doc (unfinished) to document all of the little interactions and it's honestly way more than the basic information that needs to be on the learn page but there is a LOT missing. Might post it somewhere if I ever finish it but for now it's very unfinished.
over 5 years
Yes yes very nice ideas for lucid to never acknowledge.
over 5 years
use bbcode for forums not html
over 5 years

Shwartz99 says


desta says

please never allow bold text in sandbox games


What's the matter? Afraid of the sight of a strong, bold text user?


never
over 5 years

desta says

please never allow bold text in sandbox games


What's the matter? Afraid of the sight of a strong, bold text user?
over 5 years
please never allow bold text in sandbox games
over 5 years
based!
over 5 years
Great thread. Great recommendations. I would say I support all of these.

I will add my own:

Increase game design flexibility by adding the option to combine closed roles with pre-determined roles. For example, I'd like the option to create a setup where 5 roles are pre-determined and WILL appear for certain, and also a closed role bundle where the dice is rolled. I imagine this would be super easy to implement.
over 5 years
hey same but im on my alt
over 5 years
hey same but im on my alt
over 5 years
haha im on the 1st image
over 5 years
honestly there are so many ways that we can go about bringing everything on the learn tab into the game to help new players but lucid you have to do SOMETHING and this would definitely help unless you have greater plans
over 5 years
good thread, this improvement is way overdue. Please implement, maybe share it on main lobby too?
over 5 years
over 5 years
Image 2
over 5 years
Image 1