LuxOpponentFinder ReadMe v0.72 LuxOpponentFinder Copyright © 2005-2007 Randy Boring. http://home.swbell.net/rkboring/LuxOF A companion to Lux (by SillySoft, http://sillysoft.net/) for choosing the Lux game that is most worth playing LuxOpponentFinder helps you evaluate which game, of those currently being hosted, you should join. It uses two kinds of metrics to do this that I've found helpful in picking a good game of Lux to join: Fun and Profit Fun metrics (make the game more enjoyable): bonuses for friends and good hosts, penalties for enemies and bad hosts whether you can get in the next game only 6 players can play at a time, so 4 or 5 players currently is a very good time to join bonuses for certain maps (I like Middle Earth maps!), someday customizable speed of turns, someday customizable currently fast turns are better than slow ones, as long timers can be very frustrating when someone wastes your time by not ending their turn when they're done card sequence, someday customizable My preference is for standard or faster cards good words and bad words in the description, someday customizable "bots first" is good! Profit metrics (get and maintain a good score): the average raw score of the players is compared to yours Higher raw scores makes a player valuable to play against for a couple of reasons. Beating a person with a high score gives you lots of points! Playing people with high scores gives you lessons in how to play well, even when you lose to them. Beware of playing people whose score is a lot higher than yours, though: they may beat you too often for it to be fun, and you may annoy them. (If your score is much lower than yours, they have nothing to gain from beating you, but much to lose if they don't win.) they may purposely take you out early to protect their score this may not be a 'good' reason to attack someone, but think about it, they lose more when they lose to lower score player than they do losing to a higher score player the 'seededness' of the players being seeded indicates that this player has a long history of winning mostly this is a negative, since you will likely NOT beat them! If you are seeded yourself, the effect is much smaller their historical win percentage Combine these two categories as you wish with the slider: Move it Leftwards to concentrate on the Fun factors, de-emphasizing the impact on your score Move it Rightwards to concentrate on gaining and maintaining a high score Other features: One host and one friend are eligible for being used to notify you when they are on-line. Growl is used for notifications and is automatically installed, if you don't have it already. The scores of all the bots is recorded and displayed in a simple text window. Consulting this list when you are hosting can help you always have the highest ranked bots to play against. The highest ranking bot and its score are displayed at the top of the main window for quick reference A list of all players the program knows about is maintained You can narrow filter this by any combination of hosts, friends, and enemies that you have added with the "Names" button If you narrow this list to just friends or hosts or enemies, you can edit the adjustment numbers for each Interface: Launch the program and it automatically gets the rankings of all current players, then gets the list of games currently hosted and shows them in the main window, which is... The Currently Hosted Games Window: Click the "Refresh" button to refresh the host list ("Find Opponents", Cmd+R) Click the "Bots" button (or "List Bots", Cmd+B) to get a list of the bots and their rankings Select a row (a game) to show the player (and guest) names, each with their last known Raw Score Drag the Fun/Profit slider to weight whichever you feel more like optimizing at the moment The range is 100% Fun (and 0% Profit) on the Left to 0% Fun (and 100% Profit) on the Right In the middle, it averages the two partial scores. Early in the week (after a raw reset), I like to play (and host) more for Fun, Later, when I have a score to maintain, I move it rightward. Get fresh rankings for all players with "Get Fresh Rankings" (Cmd+Shift+R) (When it finishes it then gets a fresh host list, too) Get the current seeded players list with Cmd+Shift+S (When it finishes it then gets a fresh host list, too) Do this after every reset The Names Dialog: To put a player in any special category click the "Names" button (or "Edit Names", Cmd+N) Make Mine saves the entered name as the name relative to which all calculations are made Do this as soon as possible to customize the game for you Favorite Host puts them on the Host list with a default positive adjustment remember the name and make a Growl notification if that player is hosting Best Friend puts them on the Players list with a default positive adjustment remember the name and make a Growl notification if that player is playing Currently, only the latest name entered will generate notifications If you add a new friend, but want to be notified when a previousely added friend is online just re-add the previous friend. It won't reset their adjustment score, it will simply make them the notified friend (Best Friend) Worst Enemy puts them on the Players list with a default negative adjustment The Player List Window: select "all" from the popup to view all players that something is known about this includes all currently active players, all currently seeded players, and all players that were active or seeded since you first ran LuxOpponentFinder select "friends", "hosts", "enemies", or "friends and enemies" to view AND edit players that you have specially categorized select other combinations to view them only you cannot edit them, as it is ambiguous, which list you wish to edit (hosts or players) the adjustment shown is the host adjustment plus the friend-or-enemy adjustment Cost: Free to use unregistered, with some impairment; shareware fee: $6 registered it fetches stats much faster, and adds a few features Thanks to all those who have given useful feedback: furball dustin jt Kef AquaRegia teefal Kain Mercenary Frodo Ken Grigsby