Running and Closing a Game

While a game is on, the engine runs by itself: levels are handed out, codes are accepted, hints open on time, auto-transitions fire. No manual action is required after the start.

Everything you can step in with, though, sits in one place — in the black admin block above the table on the game statistics page. The author of the game and the domain admin see it.

The block has up to five rows, and some of them are not always there:

• “Assigning sequences to teams” — a collapsible row; it is only there for a game that has at least one sequence of its own. Each team is given one, “Regular” being the default sequence. It is safe to assign before the start or on a first placeholder level: for a team already playing, a change of sequence changes the order under its feet.
• “Sending a message to the players” — a text editor and the “Send” button. Every team in the game will see the message after any page refresh — there is no separate notification, and it will not arrive instantly. The row is only there while the game is on: a game that has not started and a game that has ended do not have it.
• “Hide a team from the statistics” — by the team id, with the “Hide” and “Show” buttons. A hidden team disappears from the table and does not take a place when the results are pushed into the season rating. This is how a test team or the organisers' own team is taken out of the table.
• “Check autopasses” with the “Stop the Game” checkbox — see below.
• “Dismiss this level” / “Return this level” — by the number of the level in the sequence. 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.

At the bottom of the page, under the table, there is one more row — “Add the game to the season rating”; only the domain admin has it, and it has a page of its own: The Season Rating.

“Check autopasses” is needed in one rare case: the last level is set to a time-based auto-transition, and some of the teams have left the game and have not entered the interface since that time came. An auto-transition is counted when the team refreshes the page — and it does not refresh, so its finish is not recorded. The button walks over every team still in the game and counts the transitions for them.

The “Stop the Game” checkbox is not a button of its own but a modifier to that same “Check autopasses”. With it, the engine counts the autopasses as if the time had moved three years ahead, and brings everyone still playing to the finish. You still have to press “Check autopasses” — the checkbox does nothing on its own.

This is not the same as the game ending on schedule. The checkbox closes the sequences for the teams; the end time stands in the game settings and works by itself.

• Automatic transfer. As soon as the end time from the game settings comes, the engine moves the game to the archive. Nothing has to be pressed.
• Player access. From that moment the “Enter game” button disappears for teams, and playing stops.
• Releasing the scenario. If the scenario settings had “Visible in archive” or “Visible in archive, but only to players” selected, the full scenario with codes and hints opens to the players.

Once the game is over, the player gets a review form: a star rating and a text comment.

• Half a point is the left half of a star. The scale runs from 0.5 to 5, and under the stars stands the grade in words: “Very, very, very bad game”, “Very bad”, “Bad”, “Bad in places”, “Average”, “Not bad”, “Good”, “Very good”, “Splendid”, “A masterpiece”.
• The score is saved on the click, before any text. The comment is sent by a button of its own, so abandoning the form halfway does not lose the score.
• The comment carries a choice of “Everyone” / “Authors only”.
• The form comes twice: on the “game over” screen and then as a row on the main page — for a month after the game ends, until the player rates it or closes it.

Not everyone who dropped in may rate. The form goes to a player who played with exactly one team and opened at least half of the levels their team opened. Testers are not shown it at all. If a player asks why they have no stars, this is usually why; the form explains it itself.

The average score of a game is visible in the list of recent games and in the “Authorship” section of a person's page. The texts of the reviews themselves are currently open to the author and the admin only — via a direct link:

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

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

To run an already played archived game again — for a new group, say:

• change the start time and the end time in the settings to new dates;
• the statistics of the teams that have already played are kept;
• players who have already finished will not be able to enter again;
• new teams will be able to apply and play.

Important when restarting. If the level texts used absolute time references (templates with unix_time tags), those moments may already lie in the past. Before restarting, update every timestamp in the templates so as not to break the game for the new players.