Zombie turns in a 2-player trick-taking game

[salty-horse]

One of the items in the pre-release checklist is implementing zombie turns.

Is it a hard requirement?

I'm working on a 2-player trick-taking game. It doesn't make sense to skip the zombie player's turn, since everything happens as In a 2-player trick taking game, it doesn't make sense to implement a turn skip, since everything happens in reaction to each other.

I can make it act randomly, but how useful would that be?

Speaking of automated moves, should I automate the last move in a hand, when both players have just one card to play, and no choice in the matter?

[Victoria_La]

Zombie work has to work, but its possible that its not applicable to 2 player only game - i.e. zombie won't be created - if one player exits, he lost
and that is it.

And second question which is totally not reated to first, yes if there is only one choice - players usually ask to automated this.

[salty-horse]

Thanks. I ended up making the bot play randomly, similar to how it's implemented in Ninety-Nine.

I never tried this mode before, so didn't know the remaining real player can choose to end the game with the zombie, if they wish. As an optional feature it's useful, and helps with testing the UI

I'll automate the last turn of the hand.

EDIT: I assume I should NOT automate playing the single playable card from a hand that has several cards, as a quick automated response may reveal some information to the opponent.

[Kayvon]

Automating that is a great player option. Some players appreciate streamlining things to go faster while others value the secrecy.

[Gulchen]

This would be complicated - and I don't know if BGA even supports this type of really real-time behavior -
but you could possibly allow players to choose one of a family of probability distributions for amounts of time,
where for players who have chosen one, if that player has a single playable card in a hand that has several cards then

an amount of time will be chosen from the distribution and approximately displayed to the player
and
if the player neither plays that card nor cancels the auto-play before that amount of time passes
then that card will be automatically played once that amount of time passes

.

[salty-horse]

I'll stick to automating single-option open information choices. I think it's good enough for the players' needs.