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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Twice time counting
        
(Message started by: arimaa_master on Apr 19th, 2007, 8:06am)
Title: Twice time counting
Post by arimaa_master on Apr 19th, 2007, 8:06am
I wonder why the game time is counted twice. I mean why my time is ticking although this is not still my move (so I guess that If I am able to move - I have six sec less - this is really annoying especially with blitz time control).

I must wait those 6 sec - so if I have 15 sec per move - actually I have only 9 sec per move. I think this situation prevent to bring new faster time controls (like 10 sec per move or 5 sec per move). But main reason is that it shouldn´t be normal behaviour!

I "re-noticed" this thing today when I wanted to know how much time was used by bot_arimaa_score_p1 and p2 respectively.
But I saw only that they both used only 0.10 min (6 sec) per move  due to problem mentioned above (actually they moved promptly).

Am I alone who thinks that it should be fixed?
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by RonWeasley on Apr 19th, 2007, 11:33am
I suggest that a side's timer should not start until the display completes the opponent's movement.  Only then does the player know the game state in which the next move is to be made.  This means that there would be a dead time between moves while the display changes where neither timer is decrementing.  This account for any transmission lag time as well.
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by arimaa_master on Apr 20th, 2007, 1:59am

on 04/19/07 at 11:33:23, RonWeasley wrote:
I suggest that a side's timer should not start until the display completes the opponent's movement.  Only then does the player know the game state in which the next move is to be made.  This means that there would be a dead time between moves while the display changes where neither timer is decrementing.  This account for any transmission lag time as well.


Good, it should be the solution. Thanks for replay Ned.
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by Janzert on Apr 20th, 2007, 11:30am
The problem is there is no way to know for sure on the server when the client has finished displaying a move. The client can send a signal back but you can't trust the signal since someone could modify the client to give them extra time before sending the signal.

About the best you can probably do is add a fixed amount of time to each move to compensate for network lag and any client display delay. Personally though I don't think it's worth it, just play at a longer time control if needed. It's the exact same effect except for the psychology of it. ;)

Janzert
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 20th, 2007, 1:06pm
Or you could do what the Internet Chess Club did to compensate for lag.  Have the client report the actual time taken client-side, and encrypt the message, and make the client binary-only so that it is harder to hack.
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by Janzert on Apr 20th, 2007, 7:34pm
Yes, the key part there being that it makes it harder. :P

Any client side information can be hacked and the chance that it actually will be hacked seems to approach unity as the popularity goes up. :-/

Janzert
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by seanick on Apr 22nd, 2007, 8:36pm
its always possible to hack, but then again, its possible to hack the arimaa server too, and as the security designed into the client improves, that might become the easier of the two problems to solve.

And, although I really like this approach, I think for time sensitive games, there is a really easy way to exploit it- don't allow the current client to update after sending your own move- then use another computer which you aren't logged in to to observe the opponents move- thus you can see what their move was without starting the timer for your own, and you can take your time to respond.
I would think that for games like that it would have to withhold the info from any of the spectators until the client from the user whose turn it had become sent confirmation that the user had seen the move on their display.

I tried to design a game where the offset from the time the user saw the move to the time the user sent theirs was used to determine who actually made their move the fastest after the condition happened (the game was egyptian war, where you can slap the stack if there is a match between the last two cards played, in order to pick up the whole stack). Unfortunately I got sidetracked with .NET framework issues and up until now still havent resumed work on it. Maybe I'll go take another look while its fresh in my mind...
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by omar on Apr 22nd, 2007, 9:36pm
While developing the Arimaa client/server I had decided that all real time used during the course of the game should count towards one player or the other.

My reasoning was that in an OTB situation with a regular chess clock all real time counts towards one player or the other. There is probably about a 100 ms delay between when a player finishes making a move on the board and when they hit the button on the clock. This is about the same as network delays in sending the move from client to server.

I also decided that it takes a human player some time to comprehend the move that the opponent made. Thus, the time to animate the move counts against the player. If the client program were to show the move instantly (without animation) and start ticking your time, you would probably still want to hit the "Show" button to see what happened. However some human players require less time to comprehend the opponents move than others. So I think the real solution would be to have the client program allow the user to control how fast to animate the opponents move. The user should be able to select down to 0 seconds for the animation speed. The new client will have this feature.
Title: Re: Twice time counting
Post by arimaa_master on Apr 23rd, 2007, 3:51am

on 04/22/07 at 21:36:31, omar wrote:
While developing the Arimaa client/server I had decided that all real time used during the course of the game should count towards one player or the other.

My reasoning was that in an OTB situation with a regular chess clock all real time counts towards one player or the other. There is probably about a 100 ms delay between when a player finishes making a move on the board and when they hit the button on the clock. This is about the same as network delays in sending the move from client to server.

I also decided that it takes a human player some time to comprehend the move that the opponent made. Thus, the time to animate the move counts against the player. If the client program were to show the move instantly (without animation) and start ticking your time, you would probably still want to hit the "Show" button to see what happened. However some human players require less time to comprehend the opponents move than others. So I think the real solution would be to have the client program allow the user to control how fast to animate the opponents move. The user should be able to select down to 0 seconds for the animation speed. The new client will have this feature.


Great! Thanks!


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