Why don't I use my winbolo.net account when I play?

Yeah that is pretty cheap to play against yourself or even play against a bot if you played winbolo a couple dozen times all ready.

i have also noticed MANY ppl, in locked games by themselves, i wonder what it's like to play urself. :roll:

Elvis wrote:

FireIce wrote:

ps. As an aside one of my dissapointment with WBN is that I can't even change name during a game as I used to before, even when I'm not logged on WBN. That kind of cuts down on the fun of changing name during a game.

You can change your name as frequently as you want in a game if you are not logged in.

There are bugs with the player change during the game that renders it unusable.

If i play logged on WBN and then I quit the current game, go uncheck "log in WBN" and join a game as non-wbn player, the "change player name" remains unhighlighted and uncliable.

Now, if I quit winbolo completely and restart it, the "change player name" re-becomes highlighted and I can change the name for myself. However, nobody else in the game can see the change - only I can see my new name. This was true in Winbolo 1.13 and I just ran a test now to see if people in 1.14 can see the change - they can't. They still see me as the name with which I originally joined the game.

I think this is one of the reasons some people don't buy into the wbn ranking system, because players are all spread out over 10 or 15 of their own nicks! Sheeps is ranked 6th, Tolan is ranked 14th, zapoteca is 16th. I'm ranked just one spot below Sheeps, in 7th. So does that mean that I'm better than the average sheeps personality?

People don't buy into the rankings because you can get yourself into a top rank and yet be worst then people below you. I myself got myself into a top 4 rank or so back when I played a lot of 1v1. A number of top players believed they could beat me, and yet they were ranked lower then I. (I have since then artificially lowered my rankings to relieve that kind of pressure) Then you look at DZ and how he used his fake names to boost his rankings. Now I'm scored pretty low - a lot of people are above me in the rankings, and yet both them and I know I can beat them. I don't mind that, but it shows that people don't believe in the rankings because it doesn't reflect the skill level.

Furthermore, we aren't robots. There are days, and weeks I play much better then other days - and I would naturally (if I wanted to rank myself high) play 1v1 only when I feel at my best. But in normal games I play a lot (especially lately) even when I know I'm in a suxy mood or have a poor setup (no desk and have keyboard and mouse on knees) but I play for the fun of it and because I get such a trill playing with my new skin.

Personally I wish the rankings were referenced more, but not enough people have faith in them. And some of those that are concerned about rankings are sometimes too afraid of damaging their ranking to play under their registered name. Again I ask Elvis if this was his intent. Hopefully when the sun goes up down under he'll tell us.

Personally, I wish I could play games without people knowing who I am. There is a lot of pressure associated with being regarded as a skilled player and of having to feel like you have to carry the team to victory. I, like sheeps am truthful about my skill level, but I know a lot of top ranked players who deceive others about their skill level when ppl don't know who they are…so that makes it almost impossible to play set games without having to reveal who I am.

Of course it seems to me that not too many people play 1x1 anymore, but that's another thread for another day.

Maybe that's because of the rankings? Maybe people feel too much pressure of seeing the rank change of WBN to play 1v1....or if they play 1v1 without WBN they are tired of being accused of been pussies by the better skilled player for not playing a registered game? I don't know, I'm just theorizing.

However, although I seem anti-WBN login, I am very happy about having WBN login capabilities because it's easier to know a fake player from a real player now. Also, Fermat's log viewer rox hard.

Posted a bug report yet then?

Where? The forum for bug reports notes that it's for Winbolo.net only bugs. If you mean email through that obscure report thingy - as I've mentioned before, I'm not going to file a report if I have absolutely no way of knowing if 30 other people have already filed it - there are too many bugs in Winbolo to file a report on every single one without knowing if someone else has reported it or if you already know.

Maybe make a forum for all bug reports? That way we can check it and see what bug have been reported or not and make reports. That would probably encourage bug reporting. Or change the current bug report forum from winbolo.net to ALL winbolo related bugs.

Or you could publicly post all the bug report received (or summary), and do it in a systematic/automatic way, so we can check it to see if you are missing a bug or not - then I'd (and I bet many others would) be willing to file bug reports.

Oh yeah, one reason I've stopped or slowed down registering WBN names is because we can no longer put spaces in the names. Some of my favorite names to play under have spaces in them - like "Lord of the Clouds", "Lord of the Kings", "Pink Dolphin", "Blue Elephant", "<-- please don't shoot me!" and many others I've forgotten. Putting the underscore for spaces kinda ruins the fun of that name.

FireIce wrote:

Where? The forum for bug reports notes that it's for Winbolo.net only bugs. If you mean email through that obscure report thingy - as I've mentioned before, I'm not going to file a report if I have absolutely no way of knowing if 30 other people have already filed it - there are too many bugs in Winbolo to file a report on every single one without knowing if someone else has reported it or if you already know.

uh, quite honestly fi, thats a lame excuse .... "I don't know who else has filed a bug report ... so I won't file one" is pretty weak .... let me explain why I say that (so that you don't just assume this is another personal attack against you ... as you would normally) .... When someone codes a peice of software, they rely on the people using it (in this case .. us) to file accurate bug report information ... especially if 30 people have already reported the bug ... adding another person to that list of people reporting the bug ... means that the developer (elvis) can more easily find out whats cuasing the bug to occur (for example a particular version of a dll file, or some other outdated windows component) ... he needs to know if its one person, or 2 people, or everyone thats having the problem, he needs to know if its everytime, once in awhile, just on one of your systems, etc ... every person that encounters a bug in any peice of software they "want" fixed ... should report the bug, even if your buddy reported it, even if your horde of buddies reported it .... you should also give as much information as you possibly can so that the person developing can attempt to find the bug your refering to ..... btw, I also have noticed the namechange bug that your refering too....

Min

aye.

IP-Rolodex? Yeah, thats me. I catch 95% of all trolls. Unsure of whom a player is? I either know or can find out.

As for playing with WBN disabled, that's not my bag. You can also ask why people leave WBN enabled. For me, its a matter of security. When you see the asterisk, you know that it's really me. I've had my nick used by more than one player and then proceeded to fling insults and racial slurs at other players unprovoked.

While I may not totally agree with the way the 1x1 rankings work, it's a good concept. I like to keep track of my stats. Sure, it can be a pain when you get an error stating that your player name is already in use in a game that you aren't actually in (ghosting, I suppose you could call it), but its not that big of a deal.

i use it...i dont see a good reason not to...except mabye to "escape" the ratings

Sometimes I use WBN when playing. A lot of the time I find I get a number of errors about already being in the game, then if I want to join I must disable WBN and use another name. So for a big part I find it more trouble then its worth. Have I filled a bug report? Yeah, but the last I knew the CGI mail scripts on Jolo’s server were broken, I did ask him to fix this but haven’t checked.

I believe the best way to report and track bugs would be to use a Bug Tracker. It would allow people to post about bugs, and allow others to submit other information they may know about the problem and help each other. This should also make things much easier for you Elvis, then you won’t have to sort through all your emails when looking for info about a particular bug. I participate in many software communities that utilize Mantis Bug Tracker, which make things much simpler for everyone involved. With a better reporting system I believe people would be more inclined to report bugs. Anyways, that’s just my suggestion for better handling of bug reporting, and if you like I can also find a place on one of my servers to host a resource such as this.

I haven't been following this very closly but I want people to know that I use my account pretty much solely for the reason my name is displayed at the active games menu. This way people know i am playing and can play with me with relative ease. The same goes for when i am looking for someone in the games.

Sorry if someone else touched, or hit exactly, on what i just said.

Min,

Thanks for your explanation of why you thought my answer was lame. (I say thanks because with your explanation, I know it's not a personal attack). Your explanation is from the software developer's viewpoint and it's probably valid. However, my answer is from the software user's viewpoint.

And software developers must always keep the software user's viewpoint in mind.

My answer may be lame, but it's the truth of why most of us don't file a bug report. Maybe it's not just because other report might have reported it too, but it's the "blackbox" idea of the whole "submit your report and you will never hear about it again - you won't know if it's been read, you won't know if it even matters". It may matter, but we don't know unless it's publicly done.

I really did not know that Elvis had no idea the name-change bug existed - I figured Elvis by now knew of all the bugs.

If we had a public way of doing bug report - like in the forum, I'm guessing a lot more ppl would posting about it. I know I would start posting more, even if to say "I agree I saw those bugs" to let Elvis know it's not one time thing that one person may have seen, like you did with the info I posted about the name-change bug. It won't hurt to try.

I agree fi, elvis has to change how bugs are reported .... either by creating a forum for winbolo bug reports, or some other method that is alot more userfriendly than a cgi on some distant website..... Personally I think he should create a little program that dumps your computers info to a file, and then force people to attach that to bug report emails, or paste it into forum posts so that he gets a better idea of the information he requires from users, such as OS, and other system spec's ... I've found in the past, elvis is pretty much the last person to know about bugs, becuase he doesn't play the game nearly as much as other people do. I recall a number of times that I've chatted with him and asked him if he was aware of a wellknown bug, his reply was usually "no" .. as far as he's concerned if noone is filing bug reports .. it must be working good? .. which brings us back to needing a better way of dealing with bug problems.

Min

I use 1 account but have 2. the 2nd one i use when playing my friends

WBN all together is great. As a player it is a lot easier to get in a game, then tring to use the tracker :evil: i've used it everytime i play since i heard about it. thanks

Back when this thread was a little newer and the discussions about bug reports. I decided I’d setup a little demo bug tracker. Anyone interested in what I was talking about above can view a quickly thrown to gather demo here. THIS IS NOT WHERE YOU REPORT BUGS! It’s only for demo purposes!

Mantis Bug Tracker could be edited very easily and adapted right into WBN, requiring people to provide Elvis with what info he requires and allow others to add additional info they have about the bug to the same report.

Some times its just more fun to use alternate names. There are several things that win bolo.1.4 needs and when I get a chance I will put them down on a paper. For right no you gotta think up a way to link alternate names to the same score table. Also it would be cool if you added maybe say a missle for the tank :oops: I hope thats not pushing it :lol: .