Do you miss something on BrainKing.com and would you like to see it here? Post your request into this board! If there is a more specific board for the request, (i.e. game rule changes etc) then it should be posted and discussed on that specific board.
Teema: Re: Finding how many free slots I need for tournaments
pauloaguia: Oh! I had no idea! Thanks for the info.
I guess that only counts for new rounds, not new tournaments, right? Because I see the "please keep at least X free slots" message when I sign up for a new tournament.
Teema: Finding how many free slots I need for tournaments
I'm near the 50-game limit of my Brain Knight membership, and I realize that I'm still in several tournaments where I've finished all my games and am waiting for the next round to begin. As far as I can see, there's no way to tell at a glance how many slots I need to keep open to be sure there's no problem when the new rounds start. I need to click on every running tournament of mine, see which ones I'm advancing in and tally up the slots I'll need. It's not too convenient since I'm in 17 running tournaments.
It would be nice if there were a way to see from the tournament list in my profile which tournaments are waiting to start a new round and how many slots they need. Maybe the tournament list could have an extra column showing whether I'm advancing, eliminated, or if it's still undetermined, and another column showing how many slots the tournament needs.
coan.net: THANKS! I never noticed that. I scoured my settings pages looking for a global option, but I never looked for a per-fellowship setting. That's great.
I'd like it to go a step further and add something else besides PMs to be used for fellowship owners to notify their members of tournaments, ponds, etc. I don't see why these notices should be mixed with personal messages.
I get dozens of fellowship mass messages per day, most of which are simply tournament notices that I'm not interested in. Seems to me like a separate mechanism for this would make things a lot easier. Maybe a simple "new fellowship tournaments" section in the sidebar. Something that could be easily ignored if you're not interested.
Of course, maybe I'm just in too many fellowships. I don't think I've turned down an invitation yet. I didn't see any reason to at the time, but the waves of unwanted messages I get are really becoming a bother, so I'm probably going to leave most of the fellowships soon. I think that's unfortunate.
Teema: "Show move buttons directly below game boards"
I'm not sure if this should be a bug report or feature request, so I'm putting it here and I'll let others decide if this is the way it's supposed to work.
I was just looking at the settings page and saw an option called "Show move buttons directly below game boards". I had it checked (must've done it years ago and forgot the option existed). But it still does not show the move buttons directly below the game boards, which is what I'd really like. It goes game board > Player names/ranks/info > chat box > note box > move buttons. That's quite a lot between the board and the move buttons, and it means that I always need to scroll to finalize my move.
The only difference the option seems to make is that it moves the game info block (that says the game type, tournament, time settings, etc) below the move buttons. That's an improvement, but it's still not "directly below game boards".
If this is the way it's supposed to behave, I'd like to request renaming the option to be more clear and adding a new option to put the buttons DIRECTLY below the game boards. If this is not the way it's intended to behave, then I guess this should be a bug report.
In the progress tables of round-robin (n games for every 2 players) tournaments, it would be nice to have some information on losses, rather than just the currently accumulated points.
The reason is that I often like to see how I stand in a tournament that's in progress, but since people play games at very different rates, I can't tell at a glance. One player may have more points than everyone else, but if that player has finished more matches, that doesn't mean he's really in a better position. He could have more points than other players but also have more losses, putting him in a weak position overall.
If there were another column that contained the win/loss ratio, it would be easy to see at a glance where everyone stands. Or maybe instead of win/loss, make it points divided by the number of completed matches, to take into account draws or games that earn more than one point (if there are any; I'm not sure).
coan.net: I second the request for game-by-game notation settings, but for a different reason. For most games I like to have the notation, simply because it doesn't bother me and is occasionally useful, so I might as well. But with Logik, I'd rather have it hidden, because it requires so many page loads to make each move. Having that extra sidebar there makes it take longer for the page to render, and usually makes the actual content jump around a bit until it finishes, so I can't make my next click until it's all done. Without the notation it's a lot smoother.
I recently bought my first paid membership, and I've joined a bunch of fellowships. I'm a happy camper overall, but there's one thing that irks me: the list of my fellowships always there in my sidebar. I'd love to have the option to remove them completely (or maybe have a show/hide link in the sidebar itself). Many of the fellowships have animated smilies in the names, which I find annoying and distracting (albeit not enough to leave the fellowships :) )
I think you could gain a lot by adding customization to the sidebar similar to the way we can customize the main page.
I'd like to see result in the SGF files of completed go games.
SGF files normally include a special tag that says who won and how. The tag is called RE), and it goes in the first node of the SGF, along with other tags like SZ (size), HA (handicap) and KM (komi).
For example, if white won by resignation, the tag would be RE[W+R]. If it was a timeout, RE[W+T], or if black won by 10-and-a-half points, RE[B+10.5]. Ties should be RE[0], but I don't think ties are possible with the rules BrainKing uses, anyway.
This is especially useful in games won by resignation or timeout, when there's no other way to tell who won.
Teema: Re: Disabling auto-refresh while editing text
mctrivia: That's what I thought. Since the page is re-built anyway when I go to add/edit a note (the text field does not exist when simply viewing the game), basically anything is possible. Or am I missing something?
Teema: Re: Disabling auto-refresh while editing text
mctrivia: Are you sure about that? I notice that when I go to add or edit a note, it loads an entirely new page. Surely the auto-reloading code could simply be un-included from that page (and only that page), right?
A couple times now I've been editing a comment or note in a game after I've played, and then the autorefresh kicks in, reloading the page and erasing everything I've typed. Eek!
Would it be possible to have BrainKing disable the autorefresh while the user is adding/editing comments or notes?
rednaz23: I'd also like to see something like that. Playing Logik with the notation at the right is a little annoying. The content jumps around a lot as the page loads, so you need to wait for the entire page to load to click, otherwise you're bound to make misclicks frequently. This isn't a problem for most games, but since Logik requires so many page loads per move, it can be a hassle.
Because of Logik, I generally keep the notation off. But really, I prefer to have it on for almost all other games. Putting it at the bottom would be a good compromise. Adding game-specific settings would be good, too, but I'm not sure if that can be implemented sensibly.
I have a small request for Knight Fight: to show the values of the previous moves instead of just the locations. So in the game notation on the right, instead of saying "j4", it would say something like "j4 (76)". Or in the case of doubles it would say something like "j4/d7 (55/88)".
The way it is, I find myself going back to previous moves a lot to see exactly what just happened. It's a little disorienting, especially when you're playing many Knight Fight games at once!
Just adding information about the last move would be good, too, if you don't want to change the notation of the whole game.
AbigailII: "And any rating system worth its salt should not consider a match won 6-4 to be equivalent to a match won 10-0."
I disagree. Isn't the whole point of a match to treat a group of games as one game? The way you propose it, it seems like it would be more like playing 10 normal games separately, which IMHO defeats the purpose of a match.
CryingLoser: Interesting idea. It would certainly make the rankings seem more "serious". But is that a good thing or a bad thing? Putting aside that philosophical debate, I do see a couple problems.
It would create a problem for those below rook level, who have a limited number of game slots. What if their slots are full? To solve that problem, I'd recommend making these "title" matches operate outside the normal game limit. So a pawn could play 20 games + any number of title matches.
Timing would also need to be considered. Would there be a standard time structure for these official "title" matches? Some people cannot play quick games. Others (like me), mostly below rook level, don't like to play slow games.
Furthermore, if the new top player really does want to stubbornly hold onto their title, they could just slow the game to a snail's pace. Playing one move a week would take years for a long game like Go, and that would kind of defeat the purpose of forced matches. Enforcing a fast time system hardly seems fair, though.
I can't think of a good way to solve the timing problem. Any ideas?
I've just started playing Logik, and I've noticed that it takes an awfully long time to play each move, since it takes 10 full page refreshes (click on peg color, click empty space, repeat for all 5 spaces). It takes me about 30-40 seconds to enter a complete move.
I'd love to see a text-entry field that would allow me to enter my turn all at once, by typing it. After submitting that, I'd be taken to a page with all those pegs placed, where I could finalize my move or play around with it like normal. (It shouldn't replace the current method, just be there as an option.)
The text format could either be full color names (e.g., "red blue green yellow white") or individual letters (RBGYW). (Since we have three colors starting with B, you could use K for black and N for brown.) I realize this might be hard to localize, though. If so, perhaps numbers could be associated with each color and shown underneath them, and we could just enter the numbers.
Honestly, the details aren't that important to me. Whatever the format, I'm sure I could get used to it, and I'm sure it would make things much speedier.