Carcassonne’s bugs and interface deficiencies are well known but nonetheless no one from BGA seems to care enough to fix them – even though in at least some cases it should be quite easy. I’m confident this annoys the hell out of many players. For me personally a WTCOC game of (my teammate) Medusahope 4 weeks ago was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He discarded CCCC and of course told his opponent immediatley. Later Alexey_LV was on stream and not being able to see previous chat messages or discarded tiles initially thought Medusahope might have neglected to do so. It definitely wasn’t his fault, but the suspicion irked me a lot.
Long story short: I started coding right away to fix and improve what can be done from the outside. The resulting scripts are available on github and feature:
I tested them in some games and they do seem to work fine in most cases. At least my one beta tester was quite happy. (Thanks Raf!) The discard highlighting/displaying and starting player icon are affected by an unsolved problem, because early log messages can get wiped in later game stages. It shouldn’t be a problem though if you do play live games. Additionally these scripts need configuration if you don’t run BGA in EN (or DE). Please look out for corresponding comments in the script description or code.
I had hoped for feedback from WTCOC organizers, given that at least the permanent display of discarded tiles could be labelled a "memory aid" and hence a rules infraction. But as I didn’t get any reply in the last two weeks I really don’t care anymore. Just be aware that some people might consider using this specific script an unfair advantage – even though the original manual doesn’t specify whether tiles should be discarded face down or not.
PS: Official feedback has arrived and the gist is "any addition is prohibited".
Feedback, suggestions, issues, PRs etc. on github would be great, but I’ll check back here, too.
Long story short: I started coding right away to fix and improve what can be done from the outside. The resulting scripts are available on github and feature:
- Highlight discard messages in the log.
- Show discarded tiles permanently.
- Fix distorted tiles in the log (and if desired align them to the right).
- Border width and colors for last placed tiles.
- Starting player icon (not limited to Carcassonne!).
- Replace second edition tiles everywhere with the original tiles.
- Shrink playerboards on mobile devices or smaller windows (<= 960 px). (With 640 px wide windows distributed over 2 screens you can watch all duels of a WTCOC match and a stream simultaneously.
) - keyboard support for replays
- decluttered game logs (say goodbye to friends’ status spam …)
I tested them in some games and they do seem to work fine in most cases. At least my one beta tester was quite happy. (Thanks Raf!) The discard highlighting/displaying and starting player icon are affected by an unsolved problem, because early log messages can get wiped in later game stages. It shouldn’t be a problem though if you do play live games. Additionally these scripts need configuration if you don’t run BGA in EN (or DE). Please look out for corresponding comments in the script description or code.
I had hoped for feedback from WTCOC organizers, given that at least the permanent display of discarded tiles could be labelled a "memory aid" and hence a rules infraction. But as I didn’t get any reply in the last two weeks I really don’t care anymore. Just be aware that some people might consider using this specific script an unfair advantage – even though the original manual doesn’t specify whether tiles should be discarded face down or not.
PS: Official feedback has arrived and the gist is "any addition is prohibited".
Feedback, suggestions, issues, PRs etc. on github would be great, but I’ll check back here, too.
