The last process time was over 12 minutes ago (at 02:58 AM UTC); the server is not processing games until the cause is found and games are given extra time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to the questions people often ask in the forums; click on a question to expand the answer.
The gameplay is quite self explanatory, but if you're unsure about something read
the intro to webDiplomacy, and feel free
to ask for help or clarification in the public forum.
The GNU Affero General License
(Open Source Initiative approved),
which basically says you can download and change the code as you like, and put it up on your
own website, but you can't claim you wrote it, and you have to give any changes
you make back to the community.
See the credits for information about the
small elements which are under different licenses.
This software used to be called phpDiplomacy until version 0.9.
Sorry for the confusion, we hate name changes too, but for our user-base the old 'php' prefix wasn't
the immediately recognizable label that it was intended to be.
The green icon appears when a player is logged into the server. This
means that if the player has accessed the server in the last ~10-15 minutes they will have the green icon next to their name.
If you see an icon/button/image and don't understand what it means try hovering your mouse over it,
it may give you a tool-tip helping explain it. If it doesn't feel free to ask on the forum.
Red order choices are unsaved; if you see a lot of red in your orders you should
save, or you might forget and lose them by closing the browser window or chatting to someone.
'Save' saves your order; your red, unsaved order choices will turn green once they're successfully
saved. 'Ready' means you have finished entering your orders, and are ready to continue to the next turn. If everyone is 'Ready' the
game continues right away, speeding up the game.
Often in the forum people discuss points, or
want to link others to games/user accounts/other forum threads. To make this easier certain forum-codes are recognized and replaced
with proper links/icons:
'[number] points'/'[number] D' will result in
'points' / 'D' being replaced with the points icon ( ).
'gameID=[number]' / 'threadID=[number]' / 'userID=[number]' will have
a link to the appropriate game/thread/profile substituted into the message.
After a page is loaded JavaScript runs, making a few changes
(e.g. putting GMT/UTC times into your computer's time zone, making your posts bold, etc) which enhance the page.
We use the DATC to lay out exactly how all sorts of tricky
situations are processed, in the cases where there is ambiguity in the rules. (This sort of stuff doesn't come up
in usual play though.)
See our DATC page here.
It's done as the DATC recommends:
It's the furthest from your home supply centers. Distance is defined as the smallest number of moves to get from the unit's position
to a home supply center. When calculating the smallest number of moves armies can move across seas, but fleets can only move across
seas and coasts. If there are two units both the same distance from a home supply center then fleets disband before armies. If there's still a tie,
the territory which is first alphabetically is removed first.
You can't run out: Your total number of points include the number of points which you have 'bet' into games you're currently playing in,
as well as the points you have in your account. Your total number of points never falls below 100; whenever it does
you're given your points back.
To put it another way; any player who isn't currently playing in any games will always have at least 100 points, so
you won't run out!
In a draw the points are split evenly among all the survivors still in the game,
regardless of the number of supply centers each player has.
Read the points guide for more info about the points system.
We constantly get new ideas for the points system, but usually they're either missing
out in some aspect (the points system serves multiple functions), or they improve in one area but are worse in another.
The points system does the job fine, so it's unlikely to be replaced.
(See this page for an
explanation regarding the role of the existing system, and what a replacement would have to do.)
There's no real way to express how good a player really is in a single number, the points system as it is is
probably good enough for now, and there's definitely no agreement on what would replace it.
Sometimes (usually only shortly after code updates) a software bug or server error may occur while a
game is being processed.
When this happens the problem is detected, all changes are undone, and the game is marked as crashed.
Admins will see a message whenever a game crashes, and information about the crash is saved so that the problem that caused it can be fixed quickly.
Once a mod or admin has marked the game as OK the game will continue where it left off again.
If your game has been crashed for a long time try asking about it in the forum.
When the server detects that no games have processed for a while
(over 30 minutes or so), or a moderator/admin sees a problem and hits the panic button, all game processing is disabled until
the problem is resolved.
After the all-clear is given games will usually be given time to make up for any during which orders couldn't be entered, and
processing will resume. Until that point if a game says it will be processed 'Now' that means it would process now, except
processing is disabled.
You may also see it if you a games timer counted down to 0 while you were viewing the page, in which
case you should refresh the page to view the newly processed game.
Occasionally we get this complaint, but every time we have checked the
input logs to see what order was actually entered it turns out to be the mistaken order.
Also the mistaken orders are often the 'Bulgaria'/'Budapest' sort of mistake which are easier to
imagine human error than a bug.
Try finalizing your orders and then checking them over, so you can be sure of what you entered.
Unfortunately it does seem that sometimes people will claim that their orders came out wrong to cover up the intention of
their actions. (e.g. "I was going to stab you, then read your message and changed my orders so I wasn't going to stab you,
but my old orders came out instead of the new ones! Oh so sorry about that!")
This is against the rules, as it makes work for admins over made up bugs. When someone
tells you a bug caused a mistake in their orders you should reserve some skepticism, and remember that the official server alone
receives and processes over 20,000 orders per day (as of Feb 2010) without mistake every minute of every day for years on
end, so sudden bugs which change whole order-sets around simply don't seem to genuinely happen ever, despite checking every
single report.
Before reporting this as a bug double check that you entered your orders correctly and you're
not misunderstanding the rules. 99.999% of the time "adjudicator bugs" turn out to be a misunderstanding.
If you're still positive there's a problem let us know in the forum.
webDiplomacy isn't currently completely web standards compliant,
so there may be glitches. We would like to get webDiplomacy working on everything (within reason) but we need users
of alternative browsers to let us know what's wrong and tell us how to make it look right in that browser.
A better forum would be good, but getting it to fit in and appear as part of webDiplomacy, rather than just
a separate site, is difficult, and would likely use more server resources than our efficient but lightweight built-in forum.
At the moment we are trying to improve our existing forum in small increments.
If a variant has lasting appeal, is well balanced, isn't gimmicky, has been tried and tested on another server, and was
created by a reputable developer, then it's up for consideration to be included in the standard release.
You can discuss this in the variants section of the webDiplomacy
developers forum.
Also creating your own variants or porting
existing variants to the webDiplomacy variants system is easier than ever, from simple map-change variants all the
way to strange rule-changing variants, the system is flexible enough to accommodate your variant ideas.
Feature suggestions are best made in the developer forums,
elsewhere they're likely to be missed. Remember that unless you can back-up your suggestion with code even good ideas may not get far.
You sure can: if you're an HTML/CSS/JavaScript/PHP 5/MySQL/SVG/Canvas developer,
graphics/icon artist, or want to learn, check out the dev info,
and if you get lost you can get help/discuss ideas in the developer forums.
Markers are given for donators based on total donated to date; this lets everyone
see who is helping keep the site online and who has put value in their webDiplomacy account, but no extra
functionality is available to donators.
Not all orders are drawn on the small map. Below the small map there is a set of icons;
the one in the middle () opens up the large map, which contains all orders.
Also at the bottom of the board page is a link to open up a textual list of all the orders entered in the game, if you can't see
something in the large map.
, 
, etc)
).
) opens up the large map, which contains all orders.
