User Interface (UI) suggestions
The player startpositions could be done with a small image (like in old version it had) or by hovering mouse over the map image: it would change the view to the (currently in use) rotated version.
I took some time and this is what i came up with, hope you like it:

Compared to current version:

Basically i made chat box smaller since it felt too big, and rearranged some confusing stuff. And i moved the flag before the rank or player, not after it, felt confusing to me for some reason (current image doesnt have it, but on player list you can see). Also i removed the rank rectangles... those things that have stripes in them, i dont know what they are for when there is already the rank icon (with stars in it). that took a lot of unnecessary space! Also the player list is a lot thinner now, that looks better IMO, didnt feel like a player list when it was so wide, felt more like chat box.
I also removed the useless game name box, since nobody has ever used it. i therefore suggest the game name would automatically become the host player name!
The chat box can be easily lowered in height to get more space for players if we allow more than 4 players in the future.
The map image could be made smaller in my version, so it matches to the width of the input boxes below it.