The Admin Panel

Structure

The Admin Panel, that you can access at <url>/admin is made of two parts:

• The monitoring tab

• The configuration tab

The Monitoring Tab

Here you can create and run batches of game, monitor player statuses, and export the data.

The Configuring Tab

Here you can create factors, to then make treatments, to then be used with lobby configurations when creating batches.

Deleting Game and Player data but keeping Treatments, Factors, and Lobby Configurations

In the Monitoring tab, you can click on Reset and then Reset Games to clean the data from previous instances/tests. It will remove the current batches, games, players but it will keep the treatments, factors, and lobby configurations.

Deleting all the data and settings of an experiment

In the Admin Panel, in the Monitoring tab, you can click on Reset and then Reset Entire App to clean the whole database. It will remove all of the data in the database.

Retiring Players: How players can play again, even if they got gameFull, LobbyTimedOut, etc.

Players can only play once. If there was a problem (e.g., the lobby timed out or the game was full), or if you want players to play again, you can retire them which allows them to play again.

In the monitoring tab, in the players tab, you can see the status of every Player. At the bottom of the page, you can select a type of exit status and retire every player with that status.

Once retired, players can refresh their page/return to the link of your game and they will be randomly allocated to a game with the same treatment as before. They are allocated to a game with the same treatment so that they don't discover a game with different conditions or instructions.

I tried to retire a player but got this error: Failed to return players: Error: ID cannot exceed 256 characters in players update [400], what should I do?

This means that the player id of the player was too long. If you go to your data base you can find that player and modify their player id so that it is not as long.

Lobby Configuration

In the Configuration tab, in Lobby Configurations, you can set important aspects of the Lobby such as:

• The Timeout Type (whole lobby or individual)

• The Timeout Duration in Seconds

• The Timeout Strategy (fail, ignore)

• The Extend Count

What happens when the Lobby times-out?

When players start a Game, they go through Intro Steps, and when they have finished the Intro Steps they arrive at a Lobby where they are set as ready and they wait for other players to join until there are as many ready players as the number set in the playerCount factor.

However, it is possible that there won't be enough players and you don't want players to wait indefinitely in the Lobby for others to join. Hence, you can set a time after which the Lobby times-out.

This is set in the Configuration tab, in Lobby Configurations. What happens when the Lobby times-out depends on these settings.

If Timeout Type is set to Lobby then the countdown to the timeout starts as soon as the first player reaches the Lobby. Here the Timeout Stragety determines what happens when the Lobby times-out:

• If set to Fail, the Game will fail (it will be terminated) and the current players waiting in the Lobby will be sent to the Exit Steps set for them with their Exit Status set to gameLobbyTimedOut.
• If set to Ignore, it will start the Game anyway, even if there aren't enough players.

If Timeout Type is set to Individual then a different countdown starts for each player when they reach the Lobby. If the Lobby times-out, the player will be sent to the Exit Steps set for them with their Exit Status set to playerLobbyTimedOut, but the Game will not fail (i.e., players can still join the game). With Extend Count you can set the number of times the player needs to timeout before they are sent to the Exit Steps. If Extend Count is set to 0, then after one timeout the player is sent to the Exit Steps, if it is set to 1, then after two timeouts the player is sent to the Exit Steps.

Importing and exporting my treatments, factors, and lobby settings

In the configuration tab there are Import and Export buttons.

The Export button will produce a .yaml file of your treatments and factors.

The Import button will allow you to select a .yaml file to set the treatments and factors.

If you want to share your app with someone, it is important to provide this .yaml so that they can use the same treatments and factors as you.