ScrollFans

Darnit. If I had known I would have suggested this with my real name so I could boast about it. :D

Go (the game, also known as Igo, WeiQei and Baduk) has a system which allows players of vastly different skills to play on a level field. The lower-ranked player can add stones to the board as a kind of head start (anywhere between 1 and 9 on a 19x19 board, if more is needed they are also given a points lead (e.g. zero or negative komi for white). This is a handicap system.

As it stands in Scrolls it's very difficult for lower-ranked players to compete against those who have better decks. As such I'd suggest implementing a handicap system based on rank. Depending on the rank difference, the lower ranked player can restrict the higher-ranked player in the cells they can use for summons. The actual values would need careful tweaking, but an example might be that a rank difference of 50 would equate to a restriction of 1 cell (so 0 vs. 50 = 1, 0 vs. 100 = 2, 100 vs. 250 = 3, etc).

A handicap game would automatically have to be unranked, as in other games.

The selection of restriction could be done by the player, or a set pattern depending on balance issues. The attached image shows a player-selected three-cell restriction. However, I could envisage three cells restricting the centre row being more of a handicap than three in different rows. As such, an example for a set pattern for 1-3 cells could be centre-row middle, then second- and fourth-row middle, then top-, centre-, and bottom-row middle.

After this point the rank differences would probably have to become greater as four or more cell restrictions could be quite difficult to overcome. e.g. difference of 250=4 cells, 400=5 cells, 600=6 cells. Automatic placement might be along slightly different lines. Four cells might be top-row first and third, bottom-row first and third. Six could be first and third for top, centre and bottom rows.

There is currently no difference in the visual feedback between "Move" and "Summon", e.g. for Brother of the Wolf. This makes it uncertain whether I'm about to move the piece or summon. I'd suggest adding arrows to the "Move" indicator. Visual feedback on mouseover would also be nice, similar to the attached image (created in Inkscape).

So Unity4 has been released... is there any news on a Linux build?

On my netbook (Mini 311c) Scrolls runs fine under WINE (apart from the text being way too big due to the font missing/not displaying). On my main laptop (Dell 1749 with AMD HD5650) WINE likes to shut down the machine randomly after a while. Only with Scrolls - not any other WINE application, and it's not happened with other native games (e.g. SpringRTS).

So, yeah. I'm waiting for a Linux build. :)

I could see a fifth element too (multipass?): Chaos

Growth-Decay
Order-Chaos
Energy-?