ulti-player game help
This form lets you configure the upcoming game to your personal tastes and then
force them on the unsuspecting folks who join in. Lucky for them you have good
taste.
Here's what all those options mean:
Grid size
- How large the board is. Each size has a different feel. In a 4 x 4 you can
often find most of the words. The 5 x 5 game is a good test of your word
mining ability. The 6 x 6 game is often a wordfest, good if you've been
getting some tough grids and want to make sure some words get found.
Minimum word length
- How long a word has to be to score points.
Scoring method
- Longer words are worth more points, but how many more points?
There are two scoring methods. The first one, Fibonacci, awards significantly
larger points for really long words.
That way you can collect your full 233 points should you unearth a
15-letter word. Sequential scoring just bumps up the score one point per
additional letter beyond 4, sort of like paying postage.
Game duration
- How long the player(s) have to type in the words they find. The timer that
comes with the board game runs about 3 minutes. In practice we've found that
to be insufficient for finding the really interesting words, so we've made
longer games possible. Players who take too long lose some of their words.
Computer's skill level
- If you don't want the computer to be a player, select 0. Otherwise the
computer joins your game and plays at a level between 1 and 10. You can have
it play at level 1 just to mock it if you like.
Maximum number of players
- How crowded you'll allow your game to get. Games with a large number of
players (more than 10) weren't very satisfying because it got really tough to
score, and the results page became about twice as wide as your screen. So we
decided that 8 is a reasonable upper limit. Once the game reaches the limit
you set for it, no new players can join. The computer doesn't count toward
the limit if you're letting it play.
Start game in...
- This is where you choose how long you're going to give people to become
aware of the game you're starting up and join it. It can range from 1 to 10
minutes. Once the game has started, no more signups will be taken.
Game title (optional)
- a chance to give your game a theme, like Disneyland.