Muffinhead found a German site which has a bunch of board games on it that can be played online, one of which is the game Carcassonne - and some of you will remember it from the WCG as pretty fun. A few of us have played it several times since yesterday, and as the user interface is such a horrible, duanting mess to get used to, I thought I would provide a few pointers to get those who are interested. I'll try to keep it simple and straightforward in my instructions, and provide links for those who want to learn more.
Firstly, the game site where all this is taking place is: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/, you will want to go to this page to register. The thing you will probably notice immediately is that the site is in German - or some gibberish language of your choice if you don't recognize it as such. To clean some of this up, click on the tiny british flag just below and to the left of the center image of severl colored doorways. This should translate the important stuff on the screen. To register, you want to go to the "community" page, then select the "registration" menu. Nicknames have to have no spaces.
From that page, you select the client of your choice (and yes they have a MacOS X client) and follow the rather simple installation instructions. The first time the client launches, you will probably have to wait a bit while it goes through the connection and download process - this can take up to several minutes , but just let it go through until it finishes. The subsequent launches should be much shorter. When it connects, it will take you to the main game interface and a login popup.
Now that the client is running and you are logged in, you should see a confusing mess of colorful tools, weird German names, blurry pictures and arrows. This is normal. From here, there are two ways to proceed to play Carcassonne: the joining a game way and the starting a game way.
1) Joining a game of someone who knows how to start a game. If you are trying to find a game that someone else is starting up all you have to do is find that person by using the "/hook person'sname" command in the chat. The window for entering commands and chat is at the very bottom of the client interface, a little grey bar beneath the main chat window. E.g, if you wanted to be transported to a game that I was starting, you would type "/hook WangDangDoodle" (case sensitive) and it would relocate you to my game room. From there, you just type "/join" to join whatever game we are about to play, and then we start it. Simple enough.
2) Starting a game. It gets a little more complicated to start a game, but here goes. The client interface has one important tool that you can use to start and find games. It is called the "SPV-Channel" and on the toolbar it looks like two white statues facing each other (icons on the toolbar disappear once they are launched, so if the SPV-Channel window is open already you won't see it in the toolbar). In the SPV-Channel you will see a list of games in white font, some of which you might recognize, some of which you will not recognize because they are abbreviated and in German. The game Carcassonne is in the list, as are "CCErwelterung" - the Carcassonne expansion, and "CCJuS" the new Carcassonne game known in English as Hunters and Gatherers. By clicking on the game name - not the boxes to the left of the name, ignore those - you are taken to a new menu with a graphic in the upper left. Below that graphic are a list of game rooms which all start with "C#-#". These are rooms where the game is played. To the right of the picture is a list of people either playing (if they have an asterisk by their name) or waiting for a game. To start a new game, scroll down the list of game rooms until you find one without any other players in it (players are listed in parenthesis after the room name) and click on that room name. The room names are in both German and English, so if you have a choice go to an English room as that will probably be easier for other English speakers to find.
Once in the game room, you will see the game interface for the game type you choose in the first SPV-Channel menu. All you have to do from here is type "/join" to join the game, wait for the other players, and then type "/start" to begin. Oh, and if you want the 12 additional river tiles in either the normal or expansion version of Carcassonne, type "/option fluss" before starting the game.
So those are the basics. Now for those of you still wondering what the hell I am talking about here are some links to help you out:
Hopefully, this will help any of you wishing to try the game out. Orgianizing a game is probably best done via hotline, and there are several of us who know how to start games and can help others through the learning experience. Personally I like to play the expansion version of Carcassonne and would like to try the new version. But there are dozens of games I have never played that I wold love to learn if other people have an iterest. Hope to see ya'll online...
Comments
Firstly, the game site where all this is taking place is: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/, you will want to go to this page to register. The thing you will probably notice immediately is that the site is in German - or some gibberish language of your choice if you don't recognize it as such. To clean some of this up, click on the tiny british flag just below and to the left of the center image of severl colored doorways. This should translate the important stuff on the screen. To register, you want to go to the "community" page, then select the "registration" menu. Nicknames have to have no spaces.
Once you are registered, what you really want is the game client download page here: http://www.brettspielwelt.de/en/Community/download.html
From that page, you select the client of your choice (and yes they have a MacOS X client) and follow the rather simple installation instructions. The first time the client launches, you will probably have to wait a bit while it goes through the connection and download process - this can take up to several minutes , but just let it go through until it finishes. The subsequent launches should be much shorter. When it connects, it will take you to the main game interface and a login popup.
Now that the client is running and you are logged in, you should see a confusing mess of colorful tools, weird German names, blurry pictures and arrows. This is normal. From here, there are two ways to proceed to play Carcassonne: the joining a game way and the starting a game way.
1) Joining a game of someone who knows how to start a game.
If you are trying to find a game that someone else is starting up all you have to do is find that person by using the "/hook person'sname" command in the chat. The window for entering commands and chat is at the very bottom of the client interface, a little grey bar beneath the main chat window. E.g, if you wanted to be transported to a game that I was starting, you would type "/hook WangDangDoodle" (case sensitive) and it would relocate you to my game room. From there, you just type "/join" to join whatever game we are about to play, and then we start it. Simple enough.
2) Starting a game.
It gets a little more complicated to start a game, but here goes. The client interface has one important tool that you can use to start and find games. It is called the "SPV-Channel" and on the toolbar it looks like two white statues facing each other (icons on the toolbar disappear once they are launched, so if the SPV-Channel window is open already you won't see it in the toolbar). In the SPV-Channel you will see a list of games in white font, some of which you might recognize, some of which you will not recognize because they are abbreviated and in German. The game Carcassonne is in the list, as are "CCErwelterung" - the Carcassonne expansion, and "CCJuS" the new Carcassonne game known in English as Hunters and Gatherers. By clicking on the game name - not the boxes to the left of the name, ignore those - you are taken to a new menu with a graphic in the upper left. Below that graphic are a list of game rooms which all start with "C#-#". These are rooms where the game is played. To the right of the picture is a list of people either playing (if they have an asterisk by their name) or waiting for a game. To start a new game, scroll down the list of game rooms until you find one without any other players in it (players are listed in parenthesis after the room name) and click on that room name. The room names are in both German and English, so if you have a choice go to an English room as that will probably be easier for other English speakers to find.
Once in the game room, you will see the game interface for the game type you choose in the first SPV-Channel menu. All you have to do from here is type "/join" to join the game, wait for the other players, and then type "/start" to begin. Oh, and if you want the 12 additional river tiles in either the normal or expansion version of Carcassonne, type "/option fluss" before starting the game.
So those are the basics. Now for those of you still wondering what the hell I am talking about here are some links to help you out:
Carcassonne rules:
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/en/Hilfe/Anleitungen/Carcassonne/index.html
Carcassonne expansion rules:
http://privat.ub.uib.no/bubjb/EnglishTown/help/cce/index.htm
Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers rules:
http://privat.ub.uib.no/bubjb/EnglishTown/help/ccjus/index.htm
A website which does a decent job at explaining the UI:
http://markjohnson.150m.com/bsw.htm
Client commands:
http://www.brettspielwelt.de/en/Hilfe/kommandos.html
Hopefully, this will help any of you wishing to try the game out. Orgianizing a game is probably best done via hotline, and there are several of us who know how to start games and can help others through the learning experience. Personally I like to play the expansion version of Carcassonne and would like to try the new version. But there are dozens of games I have never played that I wold love to learn if other people have an iterest. Hope to see ya'll online...
-Wang