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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> New Gameroom Page
        
(Message started by: omar on Mar 14th, 2008, 5:22pm)
Title: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 14th, 2008, 5:22pm
I've been working on cleaning up the gameroom a bit.

After logging in to the gameroom, click on this URL to see the new gameroom.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/gameroom.html

If the new gameroom does not work for you, please let me know what browser and OS you are using. Thanks.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by nbarriga on Mar 14th, 2008, 6:07pm
In my system the menu on the left doesn't work very well, sometimes requiring several clicks to open a submenu, and then the submenu is unusable:

Opera/9.50 (X11; Linux x86_64; U; en)

Version 9.50 Beta 2
Build 1823
Platform Linux
System x86_64, 2.6.24.3-12.fc8
Qt library 3.3.8b
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by leo on Mar 14th, 2008, 6:47pm
Nice! I like it better than the current Gameroom.
It needs less popup windows to keep track of everything.

The show/hide commands of the panes (welcome, announcements, my games, etc.) seemed not to be totally responsive but only at first. (Vista/Firefox)
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 15th, 2008, 12:28am

on 03/14/08 at 18:07:02, nbarriga wrote:
In my system the menu on the left doesn't work very well, sometimes requiring several clicks to open a submenu, and then the submenu is unusable:

Opera/9.50 (X11; Linux x86_64; U; en)


Thanks for the feedback Nick. I was afraid the spiffy menu system might not work across all browser/OS combinations. I've put back an older menu system that I originally had and make it possible to switch between the two. See if the other menu works for you.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 15th, 2008, 12:31am

on 03/14/08 at 18:47:42, leo wrote:
The show/hide commands of the panes (welcome, announcements, my games, etc.) seemed not to be totally responsive but only at first. (Vista/Firefox)


Yes, that happens for me too, but only sometimes. I haven't figured out yet what is causing that.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by nbarriga on Mar 15th, 2008, 12:39am

on 03/15/08 at 00:28:06, omar wrote:
Thanks for the feedback Nick. I was afraid the spiffy menu system might not work across all browser/OS combinations. I've put back an older menu system that I originally had and make it possible to switch between the two. See if the other menu works for you.


There is a small problem, that the "change menu" link is behind the new menu, with just the first letter barely appearing so I could click it.

After I clicked it, the other menu works just fine.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by nbarriga on Mar 15th, 2008, 12:41am

on 03/15/08 at 00:31:01, omar wrote:
Yes, that happens for me too, but only sometimes. I haven't figured out yet what is causing that.

Just for the record it happens to me also. And also only sometimes. I don't think it is a major problem.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 15th, 2008, 1:55am

on 03/15/08 at 00:39:15, nbarriga wrote:
There is a small problem, that the "change menu" link is behind the new menu, with just the first letter barely appearing so I could click it.


That's funny :-)
I've made a slight change which hopefully will fix this. Let me know if you can see it OK now.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by nbarriga on Mar 15th, 2008, 11:16am
Now it's completely under the blue menu, so I cannot press it. I think you need to move that menu about an inch down, or move the link to the bottom of that frame.


Is there a way to attach screenshots to this forum?
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 16th, 2008, 8:25am
Nick, I've made another change to try and move the menu down a bit. Can you check if this helps you. Thanks.

You would probably have to upload the screen shot as an image.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 16th, 2008, 10:22am

on 03/15/08 at 11:16:59, nbarriga wrote:
Is there a way to attach screenshots to this forum?

I think you can't upload images to the Forum, you have to upload them elsewhere and link.  May I suggest a free Flickr (Yahoo) account?
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by nbarriga on Mar 16th, 2008, 1:48pm

on 03/16/08 at 08:25:31, omar wrote:
Nick, I've made another change to try and move the menu down a bit. Can you check if this helps you. Thanks.


Now it's ok. And even more, now the blue menu works also :)
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 16th, 2008, 11:41pm

on 03/16/08 at 13:48:20, nbarriga wrote:
Now it's ok. And even more, now the blue menu works also :)


That's super. Thanks for the feedback.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Janzert on Mar 17th, 2008, 12:59am
I see it's now live, looks great.

I'm not sure where with the dynamic menu but could the number of live games be added back to the page somewhere?

Janzert
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by arimaa_master on Mar 17th, 2008, 5:36am
Where vanished the link "human x human games"? I liked this coz I can track good games for replaying easily.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by woh on Mar 17th, 2008, 7:01am

on 03/17/08 at 05:36:08, arimaa_master wrote:
Where vanished the link "human x human games"? I liked this coz I can track good games for replaying easily.


You can still found them under: Games -> Recent Games and then select HH.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 17th, 2008, 7:57am
I like how the new layout is much less cluttered.

In fact, the "noisy" part of the page is still the Welcome and the Announcements in the middle.  I have hidden the Welcome, and I am glad that it stays hidden.  I don't want to hide the Announcements, in case something important is announced, but it still takes up too much space and attention.

I suggest that instead of having a paragraph about the bot playoff right in the game room, just have one sentence with a link.  Whatever is behind the link can explain what the playoff is and how it works.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 17th, 2008, 8:22am
You can hide the announcements as well and if there is a new announcement, it will automatically still show up.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 17th, 2008, 9:42am
Oh, good, that's a nice feature.  I will now hide the announcements without fear of missing anything.

By the way, is the new game room (in addition to looking nicer) running more efficiently than before?  How many simultaneous logins do you think we could take, assuming no bots running on the main server?
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 17th, 2008, 9:51am
Hey, could you add the refresh hyperlink? I often found that useful.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 17th, 2008, 9:54am

on 03/17/08 at 00:59:31, Janzert wrote:
I see it's now live, looks great.

I'm not sure where with the dynamic menu but could the number of live games be added back to the page somewhere?
Janzert


When there are live games or scheduled games they will automatically appear in the gameroom. The link to the old 'Live Games' page is still there under the 'Games' section of the menu.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 17th, 2008, 9:56am

on 03/17/08 at 05:36:08, arimaa_master wrote:
Where vanished the link "human x human games"? I liked this coz I can track good games for replaying easily.


No problem. I've added this again under the 'Games' section of the menu.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 17th, 2008, 10:14am

on 03/17/08 at 09:51:08, The_Jeh wrote:
Hey, could you add the refresh hyperlink? I often found that useful.


Yes, it probably will be useful at times. I've added it back. The automatic refresh rate is now 20 seconds instead of 30 in the old gameroom.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 17th, 2008, 10:18am

on 03/17/08 at 09:42:30, Fritzlein wrote:
By the way, is the new game room (in addition to looking nicer) running more efficiently than before?  How many simultaneous logins do you think we could take, assuming no bots running on the main server?


Yes the new gameroom, is a lot less load on the server since the formating of the data is done on the client side. I think we can go to 100 simultaneous users without any problem; maybe even more.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by arimaa_master on Mar 19th, 2008, 1:41am

on 03/17/08 at 07:01:37, woh wrote:
You can still found them under: Games -> Recent Games and then select HH.


Thx, I forgot about that.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by arimaa_master on Mar 19th, 2008, 1:41am

on 03/17/08 at 09:56:39, omar wrote:
No problem. I've added this again under the 'Games' section of the menu.


Thanks, thats much more comfortable now.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 19th, 2008, 3:22pm
Omar,

In general, this is a big improvement.  I have a few critiques and/or comments.

For some reason, in firefox I can't load the forum from the link in the menu; instead i get a page about session expired.  The forum link in the upper right works fine, and both links work in Safari.

Your index.html contains a <frameset>, which itself loads main.html and logout.html.   However, logout.html doesn't seem to appear in the window (isn't being used?) and if one loads main.html alone (manually entering the URL) the site functions just fine.  So I'd eliminate the the frameset and just serve main.html as your default page.  This will reduce every access of the gameroom by two hits, reducing server load and speeding up the page a little.

The layout for the main content is about 650 pixels.  Now that you're putting large quantities of text in the central column (announcements, etc) I would increase it to ~770px with the extra space allocated to the center column.  This will help the welcome and announcements sections not take up quite so much vertical space.  (99%+ of current web users have >=800px wide screens, and 80%+ have >=1024px wide creens).

I can't say I'm a fan of the green background of the announcements. :-)  I would likely just use white (like the background of alternate posts on the forum).

There are actually a bunch of other little things I would do to improve the overall appearance.  I was tempted to make a quick pass at them and see what I could do for you with just a stylesheet, but so much of the page is handled with javascript that I couldn't really see much after saving the code of a loaded page.  
 
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 19th, 2008, 6:51pm
On a whim I took a one-our whip at some possible new formatting for the gameroom page.   Take a look:

http://arimaa.idahoev.com/gameroom/gameroom.html

(This is a mostly static page; don't expect the hide widgets, clock, or navigation menus to work).
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Janzert on Mar 19th, 2008, 8:10pm
I have a feeling it's not displaying as you want it to, for me.

In FF3 beta 4:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3015/2345951193_474102a695_t.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/janzert/2345951193/sizes/o/)

In IE7:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2190/2345951247_a6058ac16f_t.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/janzert/2345951247/sizes/o/)

Janzert
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 19th, 2008, 10:00pm
There used to be a link to where I could see my own game record, and my own recently finished games.  Has that disappeared, or am I just not seeing it?
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 19th, 2008, 10:02pm

on 03/19/08 at 20:10:59, Janzert wrote:
I have a feeling it's not displaying as you want it to, for me.

...oops.  I left the stylesheet link pointing to a local URL on my HD where I'd been doing the development.   This, of course, worked just fine for me.

Should be fixed now.  I haven't looked at it in any versions of IE because I don't feel like booting my PC, but it looks ok in FF2 and Safari 3.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 20th, 2008, 1:08am

on 03/19/08 at 18:51:34, IdahoEv wrote:
On a whim I took a one-our whip at some possible new formatting for the gameroom page.   Take a look:

http://arimaa.idahoev.com/gameroom/gameroom.html

(This is a mostly static page; don't expect the hide widgets, clock, or navigation menus to work).


Very nice Evan. You are definitely much better than me at web page layout and design :-)

I'll try to incorporate this into the gameroom when I get a chance. Thanks.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 20th, 2008, 1:18am

on 03/19/08 at 22:00:08, Fritzlein wrote:
There used to be a link to where I could see my own game record, and my own recently finished games.  Has that disappeared, or am I just not seeing it?


You're just not seeing it. Check under the 'Games' section of the menu :-)
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 20th, 2008, 2:30am

on 03/20/08 at 01:08:40, omar wrote:
Very nice Evan. You are definitely much better than me at web page layout and design :-)


Merci!  It's what I do full time-ish as a freelancer, so hopefully I've picked up something the last few years. (I lean more towards the DB work and application coding than the visual design, but I do both for at least half of my clients).   In truth I'm tempted to offer a full-blown design with graphics and all because it would be fun and I could list it in my portfolio, but really I'm already spending less time on my paying clients than I should be.  :-)  Not good with tax day looming.    

Plus, now that I've been knocked off of second place I have to find time to work on Zombie this year!

Quote:
I'll try to incorporate this into the gameroom when I get a chance. Thanks.

Please email me if anything's unclear.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Arimabuff on Mar 21st, 2008, 10:15am
I have a little request. In the old game room, you could tell at first glance whether your game mode was currently rated. It would be nice to have that functionality back.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 21st, 2008, 10:31am

on 03/21/08 at 10:15:09, Arimabuff wrote:
I have a little request. In the old game room, you could tell at first glance whether your game mode was currently rated. It would be nice to have that functionality back.

I would actually prefer that the "unrated mode" functionality be changed slightly.  At the moment if one player opens a table in rated mode, and someone joins the game in unrated mode, the game becomes unrated.  Since the mostly happens with bots, we don't worry about hurting their feelings (although I can imagine a developer wanting his bot to decline unrated games for various reasons).  But recently I have seen it happen a number of times between humans in postal games, which is a more serious matter.

If one person offers a game on one condition, someone else shouldn't be able to accept on different conditions.  Both players should agree to an unrated game, or both players should agree to a rated game, but the preference of one player shouldn't trump the preference of the other player.  
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by arimaa_master on Mar 21st, 2008, 11:05am

on 03/21/08 at 10:31:32, Fritzlein wrote:
I would actually prefer that the "unrated mode" functionality be changed slightly.  At the moment if one player opens a table in rated mode, and someone joins the game in unrated mode, the game becomes unrated.  Since the mostly happens with bots, we don't worry about hurting their feelings (although I can imagine a developer wanting his bot to decline unrated games for various reasons).  But recently I have seen it happen a number of times between humans in postal games, which is a more serious matter.

If one person offers a game on one condition, someone else shouldn't be able to accept on different conditions.  Both players should agree to an unrated game, or both players should agree to a rated game, but the preference of one player shouldn't trump the preference of the other player.  


Yes, this happened to me many times, especially with games against Kruschak, however we didn´t know that this was caused due to Kruschak "unrated mode" on.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Arimabuff on Mar 21st, 2008, 2:55pm

on 03/21/08 at 10:31:32, Fritzlein wrote:
I would actually prefer that the "unrated mode" functionality be changed slightly.  At the moment if one player opens a table in rated mode, and someone joins the game in unrated mode, the game becomes unrated.  Since the mostly happens with bots, we don't worry about hurting their feelings (although I can imagine a developer wanting his bot to decline unrated games for various reasons).  But recently I have seen it happen a number of times between humans in postal games, which is a more serious matter.

If one person offers a game on one condition, someone else shouldn't be able to accept on different conditions.  Both players should agree to an unrated game, or both players should agree to a rated game, but the preference of one player shouldn't trump the preference of the other player.  

I think it's a new bug. I used to play rated games against humans while being on unrated mode. I don't know why that's changed. As far as I can remember the unrated mode for bots have been on for at least two years. I believe that you need better objections than that to suppress it, after all the other player can refuse to play as well if he sees his game becoming unrated. It takes two to tango.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 21st, 2008, 4:07pm

on 03/21/08 at 14:55:32, Arimabuff wrote:
I used to play rated games against humans while being on unrated mode.

I think there may be a difference between accepting an invitation that pops up in a window and sitting down at game that is displayed in the game room.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Arimabuff on Mar 21st, 2008, 4:48pm

on 03/21/08 at 16:07:56, Fritzlein wrote:
I think there may be a difference between accepting an invitation that pops up in a window and sitting down at game that is displayed in the game room.

I see your point.

However, that seems to me like an honest mistake, why assume the worst? After all, as I said it takes two to tango, if you see that your proposed rated game has turned into an unrated one, you can always resign with no harm done.

And if someone keeps doing it again and again (with malice forethought  ;) ) then he is the disturbance not the feature itself.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2008, 1:13am
You're right Pat, I need to show if Unrated mode is turned on or not.

I think we started the Unrated Mode option because the
bots would always created rated games, but sometimes we wanted the game to be unrated. I've used this feature many times. It makes sense that when a rated game is started by a human we don't want the second person joining that game to be able to turn it into an unrated game.

I may at some point need to also make it possible for bots to leave the game if it becomes unrated.

What about if a bot creates an unrated game, but the human player joining wants a rated game; should we allow the game to be made rated in this case?
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Arimabuff on Mar 22nd, 2008, 1:58am

on 03/22/08 at 01:13:18, omar wrote:
You're right Pat, I need to show if Unrated mode is turned on or not.

I think we started the Unrated Mode option because the
bots would always created rated games, but sometimes we wanted the game to be unrated. I've used this feature many times. It makes sense that when a rated game is started by a human we don't want the second person joining that game to be able to turn it into an unrated game.

I may at some point need to also make it possible for bots to leave the game if it becomes unrated.

What about if a bot creates an unrated game, but the human player joining wants a rated game; should we allow the game to be made rated in this case?

I think a game displayed in the room should stay the way it is (rated or unrated), though I seem to remember that when a game is displayed unrated you already can only play it this way; So there may be an asymmetry there (as for matter and antimatter  ;) ). A bot available in a list could come with the option (rated/unrated, rated only, unrated only) that should settle all the arguments.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 24th, 2008, 9:18am
Gameroom now shows if unrated mode is turned on. A small 'U' appears next to your username.

Changed the join game logic so that if a human player
created a rated game it cannot be made unrated by a player
who has unrated mode turned on. However, I have not tested this. Please let me know if you notice any problems.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 27th, 2008, 1:07am
I've done a bunch of design and coding work on the gameroom, it's currently up at http://dev.arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom.   I would appreciate it if a few people could test it out to see if there are any bugs or unexpected behaviors.

In particular, testers using IE6 would be appreciated.  I do not have a way to test it in IE6 at the moment.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Mar 27th, 2008, 1:28am
Thanks Evan, it looks really nice. It worked great in FF. In IE 6 the +/- icons to show/hide were not working. Other than that it worked pretty good in IE also.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by IdahoEv on Mar 27th, 2008, 1:40am

on 03/27/08 at 01:28:43, omar wrote:
In IE 6 the +/- icons to show/hide were not working.


That's pretty odd.  Except for the fact that there are images in the links instead of the words "show" and "hide", those are unchanged from your original- i didn't edit those javascript functions (the toggle functions, specifically) at all.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Janzert on Mar 27th, 2008, 1:46am
Hmm, it won't let me log in to check out the dev version. It says my email is invalid and I've triple checked it's the same one I use to log in to the regular room.

Janzert
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Janzert on Mar 27th, 2008, 2:10am

on 03/24/08 at 09:18:19, omar wrote:
Changed the join game logic so that if a human player
created a rated game it cannot be made unrated by a player
who has unrated mode turned on. However, I have not tested this. Please let me know if you notice any problems.


If I were to modify the bot interface script1 to accept an argument to create a rated or unrated game and the bot cgi2 to use this variable so people could start unrated games, would you consider get rid of unrated mode altogether?

I know I was initially confused, then a bit perturbed when it was used after I put opfor up for some games. I also recall at least one other bot had code added to make it play senseless moves in unrated games.

Adding the option to start an unrated game with the bots hosted on arimaa.com would allow people to still play unrated against the established bots if they want to practice and also let developers have control of the rating on games they put up.

Janzert

1 Both the regular perl interface and my custom one of course.

2 I do not have a copy of it, just looked at it in the process of setting up opfor, so would need to get that if you accept this.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 27th, 2008, 7:54pm
There appears to be a bug with the invite flags.  I was open for games tonight, but The_Jeh says it appeared to him that my flag was off.  Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever seen anyone open for invitations in the new gameroom.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by 99of9 on Mar 28th, 2008, 2:30am

on 03/27/08 at 02:10:18, Janzert wrote:
I also recall at least one other bot had code added to make it play senseless moves in unrated games.

That is Gnobot, but it only plays a "senseless" opening setup, then plays normally.  Therefore, you will still get a good game against it, but can't re-use move sequences tested in unrated mode.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Janzert on Mar 28th, 2008, 5:52am

on 03/28/08 at 02:30:00, 99of9 wrote:
That is Gnobot, but it only plays a "senseless" opening setup, then plays normally.  Therefore, you will still get a good game against it, but can't re-use move sequences tested in unrated mode.


Ahh. I must be misremembering, I thought there was a bot that played one step moves in unrated games.

Janzert
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 31st, 2008, 7:04pm
I can now see the invite flags of other people, but there seems to be a new issue.  As I write, ArifSyed is playing a game, but his flag shows him as being open for invitations.  I liked the behavior of the old game room better, where you didn't show as open for invitations if you were playing.  Actually, one could improve on the old game room with a three-state flag: open, not open, and playing.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Apr 1st, 2008, 8:36am

on 03/31/08 at 19:04:26, Fritzlein wrote:
I can now see the invite flags of other people, but there seems to be a new issue.  As I write, ArifSyed is playing a game, but his flag shows him as being open for invitations.  I liked the behavior of the old game room better, where you didn't show as open for invitations if you were playing.  Actually, one could improve on the old game room with a three-state flag: open, not open, and playing.


The old gameroom recognized if you were playing and automatically disabled the invite while the game was in session. I just updated the new gameroom to check for this also. Thanks for mentioning this.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by Werner on Apr 4th, 2008, 6:13am
I cannot log into the original gameroom.

The message "Gameroom: session id is invalid or expired" was shown when I was trying to access the original gameroom.
Title: Re: New Gameroom Page
Post by omar on Apr 4th, 2008, 3:17pm

on 04/04/08 at 06:13:41, Werner wrote:
I cannot log into the original gameroom.

The message "Gameroom: session id is invalid or expired" was shown when I was trying to access the original gameroom.


The original gameroom has been decommissioned. The new gameroom which I had made is still available, but not recommended for regular use. The new new gameroom which Evan designed is the one I suggest using. If you just go to:  http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/ and login you will be taken to it.

Was there a particular reason you were trying to access the original gameroom?


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