Incan Gold game log: show number of gems taken when player leaves the temple

[JoshTriplett]

It's a key part of the game that the number of gems inside other players' tents be hidden, forcing others to track it themselves, or ignore it and just hope they have enough.

However, the current gems in front of a players' tent is visible as they play, by design. And when a player leaves the temple, how many gems they take is also un-hidden information. But in the physical game, the speed and process of handing out the gems ensures that there's time to count up how many gems each leaving player gets. In the BGA implementation, the gems get handled automatically without any player touching them, making it much harder to quickly do the math. In some games, this often seems to result in players taking up the first portion of their next move time retroactively figuring out how much each player got.

As an affordance for this difference between the physical and virtual game, could the game log show, for each player leaving the temple, how many gems they took?

[Morgalad]

Hi,
I programmed that game.
I decided not to show in the log the actual values on purpose following the example of Jaipur ... it would be too easy and the tents would be pointless to hide the gems

BUT! you can always replay the last moves

[CB Droege]

I think it would break the game a bit to have a permanent log of how many bits each player took, but it's possible to make a log that gives certain information only for a limited time, like the way it works in Colt Express. I have no idea how hard that would be or if it would be worth it, but it's a possibility.

[Jessicannot Sp eak]

I guess it is a common problem for many games, should there be an option of disclosing secret information that can be obtained through counting? Like Sab 2 and Nautilus? (Not sure if it meets the original game). Developers can set their preferred version as default, but players are still allowed to make changes.

[Liallan]

I guess it is a common problem for many games, should there be an option of disclosing secret information that can be obtained through counting? Like Sab 2 and Nautilus? (Not sure if it meets the original game). Developers can set their preferred version as default, but players are still allowed to make changes.

I would say in general this wouldn't be a good idea. I know Incan Gold so I know what you mean, at least for live play. (I'm doing turn-based, and of course that's about impossible to track because you're not even there when it happens, but that's why we wanted the Notes feature. ) I don't know Sab or Nautilus to know what you're referring to, but in general for most games, I would say no because you would not have that playing live, even if it was something you could just count and figure out. i.e. secret information should remain secret (even in turn-based) and in real-time play it should be up to players to deal with it as best they can, just like when playing face to face.

I get what you mean about Incan Gold - I've played that in person and yeah, you can at least get a bit of an idea while the physical stuff is going on, and for a game like that I see the point. (It's like playing Hearts in Windows - it plays and pulls the cards away so fast I didn't get to see what happened.) So I certainly see the point of the developer making that change for this specific game. But if it's not appropriate for most games, I don't think we should really be over-riding their settings.

[Morgalad]

Hi,
As I said as developer of this game I selected not to disclose any amount on the log. The game is too easy otherwise.

BUT I recommend you to do this during the games:

You don't actually need to count how many gems other players have, you need to keep in mind the "deltas", this is: if a player left the temple after me and I got 7 and he got a 3... he is +3 more than me. That's how I do it.

[Liallan]

Something needs fixed in this game or it's getting pointless to play it turn-based.

Please see the bug report I just turned in. I have NO idea what is going on in the game, and I think "being too easy" is a poor excuse for not showing what is happening. When I'm not there live, I cannot see what has happened while I was gone. Worse, if I go back to camp, the entire display of cards is gone by time it's my turn again. If I were playing this live, I would see all of this.

Since the details are not in the game log, there is quite literally no way to see anything that happened while others were taking their turns. I get the point if you're playing real-time, but this does NOT work when playing turn-based and makes the game impossible to play, so no it wouldn't make it "too easy."

Granted, the game log can be run from any point, but there's two problems. One is the bug I reported, because I still have to keep some kind of notes since it's turn-based. But the notes are disappearing when running the log, so that's useless. But another problem is that the logs here run so fast that I just can't keep up. You might claim that I can figure things out with math, but no I can't if the log runs that fast and I can't track what cards came out, and it's gone before I can even think about it.

I'm very frustrated right now cause I just took a turn, had gone back to camp, the people left went through another 3-4 cards, that display was gone cause the round was over, the replay was too fast to track, then my notes were gone and I lost everything. I have absolutely NO IDEA what happened after my last turn, so I'm going into the 5th round blind. This was NOT a fun experience and I'm just waiting for the damn thing to be over. (Sorry, but perhaps it'll make a difference if you can get how frustrating this really is.)

Fixing that bug would at least help, because I can always run the replay two or three times if necessary. That should be done anyway since it's a true bug. But really, when playing turn-based this kind of issue can make a game impossible to play.

(Which is one of the problems here - there's no compensating for turn-based. It's just ported "as is" and some things just don't work well.)