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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Arimaa Wishlist
        
(Message started by: 99of9 on Oct 2nd, 2003, 12:35pm)
Title: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Oct 2nd, 2003, 12:35pm
I thought I'd start a wishlist so that everyone can post the improvements they'd like Omar to make to the gameroom.  Omar's already been doing some good stuff recently, and I'm not sure if he has time, but at least we can make him aware of our suggestions.

So here's my first one:
I'd love to be able to chat realtime with others who are in the gameroom.  That way we could talk about games that just got played, or we could arrange games slightly more easily.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by clauchau on Oct 3rd, 2003, 6:01pm
I'd like a warmer background color and softer sounds  :)
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Oct 5th, 2003, 10:19pm
I've been meaning to do this for a while now. I need
to search around for some nice chat servers and
evaluate them. If anyone has experience with them
please feel free to recomend one.

Omar
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Oct 5th, 2003, 10:22pm
Claude, don't you like the "shallow blue" color  :)

Feel free to send me the sound files you would like
used. I can change that very easily.

Omar
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Oct 6th, 2003, 4:13am
Don't you find the sounds get softer when you turn the volume down?   :P
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by clauchau on Oct 6th, 2003, 7:37pm
:)  However I cannot make Arimaa sounds low when my dear wife also uses the computer to listen to CDs.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Oct 7th, 2003, 7:02am
Perhaps then we just need a special Claude's dear wife button which turns Arimaa sounds off?
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Oct 18th, 2003, 9:26pm
Added a comments column on the 'Recent Games' page so we can leave comments about the games. I'll add it to the other pages soon.

;)
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Oct 20th, 2003, 4:59pm
I like this feature, it will help to have permanent annotation on interesting games.

As for recommending chat applets... I personally have no idea, sorry!  There do seem to be quite a few around when I search on Google.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Oct 20th, 2003, 5:31pm
Actually I just tested a few chat applets out.  FreeJavaChat.com seems alright, though it connects you into a whole IRC network, so I'm not sure you'd want that.  You can try it out on their site.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by fotland on Nov 20th, 2003, 4:20pm
I have two wishes:

First, please add the user's rating to the current game list, like it is on the other lists.

Second, I'd like to see commented games stick around longer in the recent games list.  With so many games being played lately, a commented game falls off the list in a few days.  Perhaps you could add a new link for recent commented games, and show the most recent 50 games with comments.

-David
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Nov 21st, 2003, 8:48am

on 11/20/03 at 16:20:20, fotland wrote:
I have two wishes:
Second, I'd like to see commented games stick around longer in the recent games list.  With so many games being played lately, a commented game falls off the list in a few days.  Perhaps you could add a new link for recent commented games, and show the most recent 50 games with comments.


Actually there's a trick to this one that I already use.  If you click on "Recent Games", and then sort by comments, it actually sorts in all the 50 most recent games with comments.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Nov 21st, 2003, 8:51am
Here's my latest suggestion:

Don't allow "guests" to play postal games.  It looks like Naveed and Haizhi have got themselves into neverending games with guests (unless they resign).
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by haizhi on Nov 21st, 2003, 3:24pm
In fact I can't even resign.

Omar, help!!!
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Nov 21st, 2003, 7:56pm

on 11/21/03 at 08:48:06, 99of9 wrote:
Actually there's a trick to this one that I already use.  If you click on "Recent Games", and then sort by comments, it actually sorts in all the 50 most recent games with comments.



Oh no, I'm wrong... it just sorts the number of comments alphabetically, which may work fine for now, but soon the 1 comment games will disappear.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Nov 28th, 2003, 9:20pm
I just added the ratings and country code to the 'Current Games' page. Thanks for reminding me about that David.

No time limit games which have not been started get deleted by a cron job after about a month. But I will clean them out now.

Omar
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Nov 28th, 2003, 9:26pm

on 11/21/03 at 19:56:58, 99of9 wrote:
Oh no, I'm wrong... it just sorts the number of comments alphabetically, which may work fine for now, but soon the 1 comment games will disappear.


The first time you click on the 'Comments' link it sorts the most recently commented games first. The next time you click on that link it sorts based on the number of comments.

Omar
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by fotland on Nov 29th, 2003, 1:57am
Another possible bug.  I think you are using 12:00 AM to mean noon rather than midnight.  Either that or the time sorting is incorrect.

David
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by 99of9 on Dec 2nd, 2003, 9:48am
I think we should consider extending the number of moves before a game is evaluated by the scoring function.

Generally this is set to 100 at the moment.

I recently played a great game with speedy which went to 79 moves!  I definitely wouldn't want to see a similar epic suddenly ending and telling me I'd won or lost on score.

I guess the idea of this rule is to prevent people stalling indefinitely?  I don't think either speedy or I were doing that, so I'd prefer a larger limit.

What do other people think?
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Dec 2nd, 2003, 10:54am
Not all games have to have an upper limit for the game time (or maximum number of moves). In tounaments or matches where such a limit has been established, all players are aware of it well in advance.

In general we would not have any control over what the upper limit would be set to. It could be set to whatever the tournament directors find convienient.

For the 2004 WC playoff games it is set to 5 hours, because it would allow 100 moves given the one and a half minute per move time control. I just didn't want to obligate people's time too much on this. I think it is bad enough as it is. I thought about using a 1 minute per move time control, but it seemed too fast.

Since very long games are not that common I don't think this will be too much of a problem.

One thing I've been considering is changing the way the outcome is decided should the game end by time. Instead of using the score to determine the winner, how about if the player who used the least amount of total time during the game wins. So instead of showing the scores the java client would show how much total time the players have used. The reason I like this better is because as the game nears the end, the players will be competing with each other to make sure they have used less time then their opponent; this will cause them to make more moves and thus increase the chance that the game will end before the game time is reached. Also it is not specific to Arimaa and could be used in general with any game.

Omar
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by MrBrain on Dec 2nd, 2003, 1:40pm

on 12/02/03 at 10:54:40, omar wrote:
I thought about using a 1 minute per move time control, but it seemed too fast.

I'm certainly glad you didn't go to 1 minute per move!  For me, 1:30 is already too fast for me to play a quality game.  To really start being able to think about strategy and not just tactics, I need about 3 minutes per move.  The quicker you make the time control, the more the game moves from strategy to tactics.  Same thing in chess.  This is why in long games, the top players can still play virtually even with computers, yet in action games (faster time control) computers are already completely dominant.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by RonWeasley on Dec 8th, 2003, 12:09pm
I would be interested in seeing a repositry of annotated "master games".  As in chess, this would be a great resource for beginners and students of the game.  We've seen a few novel positions in the human versus human games that were very entertaining for me to watch and would serve us all with a few comments from the players about how they set them up.   This would aid bot developers who might be trying more "human" approaches.

I'd like to see time per move with each move to indicate where the players did their planning.  Maybe an indication of reserve remaining too so we could see the forces of time pressure.

Ned
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by MrBrain on Dec 8th, 2003, 3:54pm

on 12/08/03 at 12:09:57, RonWeasley wrote:
I'd like to see time per move with each move to indicate where the players did their planning.  Maybe an indication of reserve remaining too so we could see the forces of time pressure.

Yes, I think this definitely is needed.  In recent games I've played at the 1:30 time control, the amount of time on my clock was often more important than the position on the board.
Title: Re: Arimaa Wishlist
Post by omar on Dec 19th, 2003, 10:19pm
I've started saving the times now in the game archives, so maybe in the future we can display the amount of time the player used to decided the move (and also how much reserve time they had).

Omar


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