Two issues with Cartographers replays

[Tim B.]

I love the replay feature -- particularly the ability to step through what others have done -- but there are a couple of things that struck me as odd.  My apologies if these have already been reported.

The first item involves player ratings.  Sometimes the ratings are reversed, i.e. the rating listed for Player 1 was that of Player 2 and vice-versa.  Note: this is not always the case but I can look for some examples if need be.  It may be more common when Player 2 is listed above Player 1.

The second item involves the tile options for observed player's opponent.  While observing Player 1, the card that was drawn had shapes that Player 1 could not place, so Player 1 was instead presented with the single-square options.  However, when I clicked the button to look at Player 2's board, the choices shown at the top were still the single-square options, despite the fact that Player 2 had room to place one of the original shapes (and would, in fact, do so).  Out of curiosity, I went back and replayed the game from the other perspective (that of Player 2).  Here, the roles were reversed but the effect was similar: the screen for Player 1 showed only the original shapes (the ones from which Player 2 was choosing) despite none of them being playable by Player 1.  Is this behavior unique to replays or does it also occur during the live game?  I would have thought it more helpful to only see the options that are appropriate to the displayed board.

[Jimmy V.]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your nice words. The replay feature is indeed particularly beneficial for Cartographers.

Regarding the ratings, we thought we had fixed this but it does not look like it. Did you observe the issue lately?

Regarding the replay itself, the behaviour is intended. In a live game, you can select the pieces even if you are not looking at your own map (then the map switches to yours). So unless I am mistaken, you only see your option. I don't think it is a big problem as the original shapes are always visible. Sure enough it can be confusing sometimes but I think you can figure it out (and you did) when this happens.

Finally, I'd like to add a word on the replay feature. It was programmed in such a way that we have nothing extra to program once the game is developed. The archiving of the moves is automatic and the replay should work out of the box. But that does not mean it will always work exactly as you would like it to work. Some games will have specificities (like HexRoller that allows undos) that will make the replay sub-optimal. I don't think this will happen often, but keep this in mind. The replay feature may have a few glitches that we would correct if it was the main feature of the game. In a way, the same applies to the screenshot feature which can have a few glitches here and there depending on your browser, your computer, the game itself.

This said, if you see something wrong in a replay, please let us know! We'll do our best to fix it anyway.

Nicolas.