Feature - Implemented Make the relay browser more obvious

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darkcodelagsniper

Member
[8:45:43] aduine: WOW
[8:46:13] aduine: mafia in a browser... i never understood why everyone was using mafia. for me the last 3 years it was when i was in a hurry and wanting to burn 200-300 turn at the same spot
[8:46:28] aduine: insane! thanks
[8:46:53] darkcodelagsniper: haha yeah, it should be more obvious really
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I think the average mafia user plays almost exclusively via the relay browser. However, relay browser functionality is far from obvious for new users. It's hidden behind an unlabeled GUI button, and mafia appears to be an entirely unfamiliar and intimidating interface that's very different to vanilla kol.

I'm not sure what the best way to advertise the functionality would be. Maybe a minimal tutorial wizard when mafia is first opened, which points users toward the web interface they'll be familiar with?
 
Bale

Bale

Minion
I'm thinking that kolproxy's approach is not a terrible idea.

When KoL finishes starting up, automatically open the relay browser so that the user can begin playing there. This would get a lot of first time users to be a lot more comfortable with KoLmafia since they'd be playing before having to worry about all the extra stuff it can do.

There should of course be a preference to disable this behavior.
 
fronobulax

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
Bale said:
automatically open the relay browser
Click to expand...

I won't argue for or against this, because I will set the preference to false, but at one point launching the relay browser was an adventure because of differences in operating systems, environments/paths, whether the user had set a browser preference or not and whether mafia thought it was headless. We obviously know how to do this. My concern is that when it failed it almost always required some kind of user intervention to resolve. Since this feature would presumably default to ON to entice new users, the implementation needs to consider how to handle a failure so that the failure message and mitigation steps to not overwhelm the user.
 
lostcalpolydude

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
Having it open by default is as simple as changing the default value of initialFrames.

I don't remember anything about those problems to know what, if anything, is needed for handling them. I would expect the relay browser to just fail to open, worst case, and that wouldn't be any worse than the current situation.
 
Theraze

Theraze

Active member
Having a configuration wizard on initial launch would be decent. Changing the defaults will just end up with confused people posting bug reports because they don't know why it's happening.
 
Bale

Bale

Minion
Theraze said:
Having a configuration wizard on initial launch would be decent. Changing the defaults will just end up with confused people posting bug reports because they don't know why it's happening.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea! I'd say that there are just a few checkboxes needed:

☑ Open session in your browser
☑ Show spoilers for choices and puzzles
☑ Cast once-per-day skills (and items) at login
 
matt.chugg

matt.chugg

Moderator
Theraze said:
Having a configuration wizard on initial launch would be decent. Changing the defaults will just end up with confused people posting bug reports because they don't know why it's happening.
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I believe mafia pops open the preference dialog on first run of kolMafia anyway? Could a Welcome pane be added to this, this could give a little overview, point to the wiki, and here etc, and give some basic preferences.

it looks like the relay browser settings are preselected when I open preferences, so perhaps it's possible to preselect a welcome pane if first run, but allow normal behaviour if accessed from general menu
 
lostcalpolydude

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
Maybe someone else feels differently, but I have zero interest in making this proposed setting panel that only opens the first time mafia is loaded, and then never shows up again.

I note that currently adding LocalRelayServer to initialFrames would try to open the relay browser even if isGUIRequired is false (which I think would just result in an eventual error message after some wasted processing in a headless environment). Adding a check for that would be simple though, without affecting someone manually opening the relay browser after logging in.

I plan to add it as a default window tomorrow, with that extra check added, unless someone sees a reason why it's a bad idea.
 
Theraze

Theraze

Active member
People who have already used mafia won't run into issues with it. We'll still get people whining that it's a change, but... KoL changes continually. Deal with it.

That being said, nobody's updated the writeup on how to configure mafia in... 7 years now? At some point if people get confused enough, someone with good explaining skills should try to sort through the standard questions again, whether that should live in the Wiki or offsite.
 
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