Running and Closing a Game

This section describes the behavior of the engine during a game, the process of automatic completion, and options for analyzing the results.

During a game, the engine runs fully autonomously. No manual actions by the author are required after the start.

There is only one rare scenario that requires the author's attention:

• If the last level of your game is configured for a time-based auto-transition (timeout), and some teams left the game and did not enter the interface after the auto-transition time occurred.
• In this case, to correctly record their finish, the author must go to the game statistics page and click the “Check autopasses” button. This will force close the levels for the lagging teams and lock in their final times.

That button and its neighbours — the controls over the running game — sit at the bottom of the statistics page:

• The “Stop the Game” checkbox is not a button of its own but a modifier to that same “Check autopasses”: with it ticked the engine counts the autopasses as if the time were already far ahead, and brings everyone still playing to the finish.
• “Dismiss this level” / “Return this level” — by the level number. A dismissed level stops being handed out to teams and the game goes on without it; that is how a broken level is taken out without stopping the game. “Return this level” puts it back.

• Automatic Transfer: As soon as the game end date and time (specified in the game settings) occurs, the engine automatically moves the game to the archive.
• Player Access: Once archived, the “Enter game” button disappears for teams, and active playthrough stops.
• Scenario Release: If the scenario settings had *“Visible in archive”* or *“Visible in archive, but only to players”* selected, the full game scenario with codes and hints becomes automatically visible to players.

Once the game is over, the player finds a review form on the main page: a star rating from 0 to 5 (in steps of 0.5) and a text comment. Next to the comment is the choice of who gets to see it.

Ratings and reviews are available to the author via a direct link:

https://qeng.org/reviews.php?gid=GAME_ID

*(Replace GAME_ID with the numeric identifier of your game).*

If you want to run an already completed archived game again (e.g., for a new group of players):

• Simply change the Start time and End time of the game to new dates in the settings.
• The statistics of teams that have already played will be preserved.
• Players who have already completed the walkthrough will not be able to re-enter the game.
• New teams will be able to submit applications and play.

Important when restarting: If levels used absolute time references (templates with unix_time tags), those timestamps may have already passed. Before restarting, make sure to update all timestamps in level templates so as not to break the experience for new players.