coan.net: I'd be really disappointed if, in the case Brainking would get multiplayer games, the games were implemented as ponds currently: having to make a move once every 24 hours. Unless it would be games that are over in less than five moves, I'd never play such a game.

AbigailII: Ponds can be defined with 1 hour per move.
Besides that, do you have a better idea?

Fencer: The only thing that I can think of which would make some people happy is to have the ponds (or similar multi-player games) be defined with the option of "move to next round when possible"

And that would be when everyone has made their pick, even if there is time left, go ahead and move to the next round. Possible after someone submits the move in a pond (or similar), have system check to see if all other moves have been made - it so, move on - it not, wait.

I say that it should be an option for the creator to pick since I know some might like to be able to change their pick after they already made one - plus lets say I'm going to be gone for 3 days, I know I can "survive" a 2 day pond since I know from the start of round 1, to the end of round 2 - I will have 4 days - time for me to make a move in both rounds - and if round 1 ended early, I could time out in round 2. Very picky I know - but just a reason why it should be an option to choose and not default.

Fencer: It looks to me like AbigailII doesnt play any ponds at all, and i think her complaint was more directed at her perception that you have to move in a pond every day, and that if there were more than 5 moves that would cut into her weekend and she would end up timing out in all her games?


Abigail, you should give ponds a try, just because they dont allow vacation or weekends, they still have possible time limits of 3 or 5 or7 or any amount of days between turns that you want to play, not to mention the faster limits like 1 hour


Although I would like to see maybe 1 or 3 minute time limits available as well

Fencer: If I were to implement a multi-player game like the proposed Strategy War, I would allow any time control that's now possible with regular games. Which means that if a turn starts, the clock of all players start to run. If a player moves, his/her clock stops. If all players have played their move, the moves become visible for the other players, the system resolves the moves (count scores, etc), and the next turn starts (all the clocks of the players run again). That means if the time control is five days/move, but all players have made their move on the second day, the next move starts on the second day. This still allows the possibility for weekends, vacation days, and even a Fisher clock. I would not allow a player who has timed out to get back in the game - once (s)he has timed out, (s)he's supposed to be out of the game. For strategy wars, the system makes the rest of the moves for the player. In a game like 10000, I'd let the system make non-scoring moves for timed out players. For say, multi-player Ludo, I'd remove a timed out player.

This doesn't answer the question "What to do with players resigning?".

AbigailII: Abigail, I would recommend that you play a pond run or two, and see how that works, I think that would satisfy your understanding of how the time control would work in a game like war strategy, and it would also help you understand better about time outs in those types of games as well!

coan.net: I would suggest that timed out players would have their lowest remaining card played so that they lose any advantage, also I would suggest that their be a field next to each player showing which cards have been discarded sinse the game would be too long to possibly use your memory as to what cards have been played

Vikings: I think he said that the game would show you all the cards left in everyones hand....

also, wouldnt having the people who dont make a move, to lose their highest card discarded to the winner of that rounds pile, be more of a disadvantage to them than to lose their lowest card?

Czuch: if they use their highest card they would have a more likely chance of winning that round, losing their low card virtuly guaranties losing that round

Vikings: Timed out player CANNOT win a round. The rules forbid that explicitely.

Vikings: yea... If a player times out, they do not actually play in the round - and they can not win any points - but that players highest card is just thrown in the pot to give whoever else wins those points - so in hence, punishes them for timing out - yet still letting them continue the next round.

coan.net: Ahh, verry good

AbigailII: In ponds, there's no option to resign too. Sometimes when a player resigns, they just put in a bid of 0, just telling that to their friends, (that's not resigning, that's cheating!).

Still does not answer that question.

What to do with resigning players???

joshi tm: resigning is a hard thing to do in a multi-player simultaneously played game (like ponds & suggested Strategy War)

My opinion: Proper way to do it in a pond is to just bid 1, but do not tell anyone. Do not post that you are doing that, just do it and move on. Telling anyone, even posting it in the game discussion board - I also agree is cheating. For example, I usually play my ponds as soon as they are on my game sheet. So if I make a move, and then someone else comes along and posts that they are bidding one - then all the other players will have information that I did not have - hence, cheating. So again, best thing to do in my opinion is just bid 1 and don't say anything.

Nothing else would work. I've heard some suggest just take a person out of the game where there bid does not count. The same issue as my example above comes into play. Lets say I see someone with 1 point left, so I bid 2. Then they come along, resign so there bid no longer is good. Then all of a sudden my safe 2 bid would be the losing bid - and I never had a chance to know that information.

There are probable some complex things that could be done, all with problems of one sort or another - so again, easiest is for the person to bid 1, not say anything, and move on.

Now the questions - what to do with someone who wants to resign a game of Strategy War. Well my suggestion is to have a "resign button" - then from that point on, have that person "auto-timeout" - that is their highest card "points" are donated to the pot for the rest of the hands. They no longer win or gain any points.

coan.net: How about if you don't move in Ponds, or click "resign" if that exists, then you automatically get the maximum number possible for that round (and zero next round). No problem with lack of information then.

coan.net: I can see some problems with someone who "times out" (doesnt play a move in one turn) and then is allowed back into the game again. It might be better to just make it so if you time out once, then you are done for good?

On this page http://brainking.nl/nl/TeamTournaments , the emoticons are not displayed. Can anyone fix that?

joshi tm: That should be BugTracked

(from Tournaments)

I was reading through THIS PAGE the other day

Every boat variant (well most lol) you can think of

MadMonkey: I really like that do or die one with the dice, that looks fun!

MadMonkey: Every puzzle boat variant :)

MadMonkwy: Wow.. They might be fun to figure out.. :)

If I look up a particular game to join a Tournament, I gat all the Tourneys, including the ones which are 'Full'.
Please could you just show those tournaments which still have spare places.

tonyh: Although that feature would be nice, I prefer it the way it is... I like to be able to go in and see the running and full tournies when looking at a tourney that also contains games that don't have enough players to start yet.

Could we please have the option to turn off our Friends online list as well as the Fellowship list.

I can check my games with friends using the Friends page or with the filter which is set to display my friends right at the top of the list and I can check my fellowships on the f/s page or in my profile. I don't need these things on every board page.

I would much rather just have my favourite boards list and add the main f/s pages that I read in there. One simple list.

Thankyou

Linda

TarantinoFan: If I could expand on that, being able to turn on or off these lists and organize them in a way that each individual wants them would strive to give individuals more of a custom feel to Brainking... Is that a possibility?

TarantinoFan: I use a style sheet option to turn that off. div#status-fellows-section {display: none} turns it off for me. (Although I don't have a friends list, and I'm not a member of a fellowship, so you may have to twiddle it for you to work).

AbigailII: What you just said was gibberish to me! I have no clue about stylesheets or code. 

rednaz23: I see your point; then , perhaps fencer could instal a select button, saying whether the player wants to see ALL tourneys or just those that have vacancies (which is what I want).

TarantinoFan: On the http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=136 board, if you read down far enough you will find some talk about style sheets.

Simple version - you can use different style sheets to change the way the page is viewed. Like the Castle View, no font view, etc... those use different style sheets.

In Settings , you can put an external style sheet in the External style URL: area, and click the "Activate external style" button next to it.

For example, if you put in: http://coan.net/coannet3.css which is what I use, it will display BrainKing in more of a "classic" view - with many of the same classic colors and such before the castle theme was introduced. You will also find the "Move" button near the top of every page, and in Dice Poker - the dice near the top so you don't have to scroll down every dice roll you take. (It may not be very pretty - but works VERY well for me.)

Anyone is free to check out that style sheet. If you don't like it, simply go back into setting and uncheck "Activate external style"

http://coan.net/coannet3.css - what I use, explained above
http://coan.net/coannet2.css - same as above, but dice poker roll are back in "normal" spot
http://coan.net/coannet.css - um... been awhile since I used that - forget what the change was between that and #2. But when I make a change, I keep the old version in case others are using it.

- - - - -

As a side note about the Right Hand Column, there is a setting in Settings called:

Show menu column on game pages

That will remove the right & left hand columns on the game pages which speed up the page load a lot for me.

Fencer: On a Team Tournament RESULTS Page, its great to be able to hover over Teams, to see how all players were doing in a particular Team.

We also have all players results on the next page, BUT do you think we could have either the hover available as a page to goto, or maybe on the Players results page we can sort by Team, Wins, Losses so we can see a Team together (at present default is by most wins), just so we can post links in Fellowships for players to look at

Thx

coan.net: Thanks for that. I will check it all out. It was already suggested to me by a friend that I try your external style and I was going to ask you about it. You beat me to the punch. LOL

And as for the menu columns, I already have them turned off in game pages. I even have Notations off as standard and only view them when I need to.

The frustration is the main page and DB pages like this one. I cannot turn the menus off for these pages and countless times I have gone to click a game on the main page and Firefox kicked the page sideways and I clicked one of the headers and changed my list. EG. I list my games in time ascending and I have clicked the Games header and listed them in Games order instead. Then it takes another load to get my page back how I want it.

TarantinoFan: You can always use my dynamic css builder.

http://mctrivia.com/bkcssmaker


I have not yet writen a nice page to put the addresses together for you but I am sure you can figure out how to use it

mctrivia: This page leads to nothing at the moment... you might need to modify your link.

rednaz23: thanks for pointing out the typw I have corrected and the address should be: http://mctrivia.com/bkcssmaker

mctrivia: I think you will find a lot of people using that Matthew, its a very useful thing to have

Now just do the left hand column as well, BUT more selection would be great.
e.g. Being able to remove whole sections OR keep certain links (i.e. in games keep Main Page & Waiting games, in Profile keep My profile & message box)......well you know what i mean

Best talk about it in user scripting Fellowship

mctrivia: Can you get rid of the 'Castle-Simple-No fonts titles at the top left-hand corner of the Main Page, please?

tonyh: ok I will do that when I get back

mctrivia: I dont know if it is a coincidence or what, but since I took off my fellowship list etc, some of my pages are actually loading slower?

Czuch: it will definetly not speed things up since the data is still there just not visible. It could slow thing sown because you are now downloading off two servers but my server is very fast so it should not make much of a difference.

CSS will only change looks not speed(at least not improve).

Why don't we move this discussion over to http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=136 board.... with of course the original feature request of having more options on what to show on the page without having to use the style sheets as still a good request.

coan.net: ok I will go there.

i know it has been asked for many many times before but Fencer could you explain to me why tournaments can not go onto the next round instead of having to wait sometimes months for a game to finish that has no bearing on the next round
i know im far from being alone in this request and i know for a fact that many pawns wont become members because of this problem

Snoopy: I would think that pawns would want to become members to alleviate this problem since they would no longer have to wait for the tourney to finish once they are a member... Instead they can enter as many tournies as they want! I highly doubt any pawn thinks this such an issue that they won't become a member... in fact it should only make them want to be a member more!

Ensuring that every tourney can be handled would be quite tidious, for someone would have to verify every tourney automated decision (likely), and as BK grows, that would only become a bigger and bigger job... The only tourney style that I could see an automatic system working for is single elimination, which could speed up the overall tourney time to completion a little, but for all of the other tournies, this simply isn't feasible since you have so many elements coming into play on who is going into the next round (S-B is affected by every other game, so every player must be finished in order to calculate the overall standings for all of the other players! Hence, tournies using that feature to determine who plays in the next round can not be started early.)

So long story short, single elimination might work well, but the others... not so.

rednaz23:
they have it on IYT and if i remember correctly also on GT where the next round of a tournament starts as soon as the winners of the last round is known and any remaining games can be finished if the players want to
and im actually more concerned about team tournaments where the next round is already known but everyone has to wait another 6 months for a game that had no bearing on the result was finished

rednaz23: most of the time SB doesn't even come into play. It's only a tie breaker, one can often find out the winner without calculating the SB.
A simple algorithm based only on the points (total wins) would be simple enough to implement (a sure winner is found when (s)he has more points than every other player in the section, even if they'd win all the games still pending). Like I said, it's simple enough to implement, I think, and still far better than not having one at all for many situations.

As it is now I have almost as many games going as I have tournaments. And trust me that not all those games are from tournaments, so I have many tournaments pending where I have finished all my games a long time ago (and in many of these it's obvious who the winner will be)

One more thing - this algortihm would naturally be executed whenever a game in the torunament was finished and a winner was not already determined for that section.
By the way, all the elements required for the algorithm to work are already accessed when a game is over - when you get a message warning you of the game's outcome, those elements are all there - points per player; games still pending per player; section winner (if already determined).

(CORRECTION as of some hours ago, I have more active tournaments than active games)

pauloaguia: that formula works well. I use it often on tournaments. I agrea it should be implemented. One of my tournaments has been running since january 1st but I know who wins every section already. and it still has not gone to round 2

pauloaguia: I support that 100%. Even when one is a black rook it is a bit frustrating to wait so long before the next round of a tournament when the last games have no importance.

I suppose you all are correct. Good points! ;-)