pauloaguia: you would most likely be stuck with no autoplayer from both then.

mctrivia: I meant Fencer might be more pressured to improve the site's autoplayer in that case...
But yes, I understand what you mean. The AutoPlayer / AutoPass / AutoMover was never a project Fencer was much interested in...

pauloaguia: Maybe you just need to give him more of an assentive. Try getting the names of 10 people willing to become black rooks if he will implement a autopass/automove system that does not require the oponent to also use.

Any chance on getting a "move" and "go to anywhere on BK but this page" button - it's gotta actually work tho

srnity: We could get a 'I'm feeling lucky" button!

who the heck had this appalling idea to swap the gray color with green in the logik game? it destroys every color sense, psychological feeling in started games, notes for oneself, remembering of certain moves, and so on... Fencer could at least have implemeted it now for every NEWLY STARTED game...
i can see the reason that it is much better to distinguish from the other colors especially for visually impaired people. BUT why such a terrible color? there are so many beautiful kinds of green...
and, how about a feature that allows each user to decide wether they want to play with green or gray?
i loved the gray color and the nice combinations you could do with it. will miss it alot!!

currylms: I like the green. It helps me to calm down.

Fencer: Don't you mean "I like the green. It helps me to calm down " ?

currylms: In my notes, I use 2 letter abbreviations for colours. If Gray is replaced with Green, I'll have to replace all "Gr"s with "Gr". ;-)

pauloaguia:Nope. Only the Dutch can get that green with ease :)

currylms: I like the green. I also put my settings to show the numbers too. It strikes the logical side of me.

currylms: You can set the Gray at the Settings page.

and on the subject of the blog about the new colours. Where is the link to Wikipedia? The name is a link back to the same page!

Fencer: hey i got my gray color back!! thank you so much, Fencer!!
and thanks for caring for the visually impaired AND me...

TarantinoFan: Look for the colors, in the text

pauloaguia: Yeah I eventually found it. But it doesn't show as a different colour on my screen. I had to run my mouse over the text to get it to change colour and even then it only became a little lighter. Usually a link is a lot more distinct than that.

Loking at my Ponds list in my MainPage, I can see it makes up about 25-30% of the page's source code. I'm signed up for 57 ponds and over 200 games. Yet, I can restrict the space that the game lists occupy on that page, but I cannot do it for ponds.
There's a visual impact on the page, which makes me scroll down to see the top of my games list, but that I can more or less solve that problem with a stylesheet already...

But picking up on the work being done to lighten the site, maybe this list could finally be trimmed and see a "(more)" link added like it happens with the game lists on that same page?

Several ways I can think to reduce bandwidth:
1) Allow all of the options on my CSS maker to be done server side(why send me code I don't look at) http://www.mctrivia.com/bkcssmaker/

2) Fix RSS Publication date bug(well this only reduces bandwidth for my autoplayer)

3) Give option to replace images with text in game boards

4) XML output so your programing customers can write low bandwidth apps for use on Cell Phones and slow internet(this would also let some smart people make real time play possible on this site) RSS feed is already XML output for the game list you just need to fix publication date see 2

5) Use Ajax to replace periodic complete refreshes with refreshing only changed data.

In my opinion, creating an analysis board would be a great improvement. Did you already took a look at www.schemingmind.com? You could better understand what I mean. It is "only" a board were you can freely move pieces like on a really board, not an "intelligent board".

Could someone suggest me a software in that way, I would be grateful. Despite my researches with Google, I didn't found any.

Is there any chance at buying different color rooks? Say blue, pink, green, yellow, orange, red, etc.? There has been discussion in one of the FS's I am in, and we think it would go over well. You could charge an extra buck a month or whatever and people would do it. Those that would do it would be those that are already paying for a rook or a knight or other, and would be willing to pay a little more to differentiate themselves. :-) I like it, and I know of at least one person that is wanting a pink rook for Valentines day. :-)

rednaz23: I think that's a pretty cool idea too. People paid for the gold rook.

P-G: I completely understand your comment about cats in your home. I thought you'd enjoy the photo currently in my profile, taken while I was trying to analyze a Lines of Action position. This cat clearly had some ideas about the preferred move.
She's also a keen chess-player: a true king-hunter in the spirit of Tal, she makes moves that even super-grandmasters would never anticipate. (Her biting of the king's head afterward is the coup de grace.)

rednaz23: That would be an interesting idea. Something like:

2 or 3 EUR for a change to a different color for 1 month

or

10 EUR for a change to a different color for 1 year


.... or possible do something like above for "basic" colors like red, blue, purple, pink, etc...

Then do an "advance" one for some "special" colors for even a little extra money - like Gold, or even a "multi-color" rook.

I think it is a great idea - plus a way to get the site a little extra money.

coan.net: ...or a Color Palette -> Select you own color

coan.net: Only 1 disadvantage I can see. I would have to download an extra 229bytes for each new colour. This is not bad as long as we don't go adding 1000 different options.

rednaz23:

I like the idea for different colors, but not sure I really want to pay more as I have already givin Fencer about $500 of my hard earned money 

they need a 2nd resgin option...
resign game or resgn the whole series...

Blue Duck: do you mean like in a multi-point match?

redfrog: yes multi match...
some people leave and not come back and if you have a multi match going it is pointless to wait for the main win...

Blue Duck: it would certainly save a lot of time when you want to resign in those situations.... good idea....

wetware: Thanks! Funny answer

rednaz23: well - it sounds like a good idea right off the bat - but i hope new users wouldnt be confused by different rook colors and if they were attached to ranking in the games.... thats really the only drawback i can think of....

redfrog: maybe if you only color the top part of the rook like the golden rook.

P-G: Actually, I was thinking about that years ago. But it's not easy to build it on top of the current game framework.

Eriisa: Or an animated picture? Black, gold, black, gold, ...

Fencer: LOL, Coen would be the first one for that, i bet!

Fencer: Ok. Thanks for answering

Eriisa: I might jump on something like that... There seems to be a lot of different black rooks, and I certainly feel willing to 'be more' than a black rook... hmmm... Something for Fencer to consider I think.

Something else that would be nice... if someone replies to a post I wrote, if I could turn on something to receive a message that it has been replied to. That would be nice... I know many wouldn't want it, but some would... like me. ;-)

Fencer: But even nicer would be a good autopass feature in gammon games (I'll probably not renew my rook membership next month - the important feature requests seem to be ignored)

pgt: There is a good autopass feature is gammon games. A good compromise. And I am the one who decides which feature requests are important.

rednaz23: Okay, try it.

Fencer:
Yes, I agree, you are the one who decides which feature requests are important - to you.  But I am the one who decides which feature request are important to me. 
I was about to resign my membership after some years of pleading for a cube implementation on backgammon seemed to fall on deaf ears, and just before my membership expired you implemented a great cube version of the gammon games.  Because I love the site, I renewed my membership for the past two years, in the hope that some of the features which I consider important might be implemented in the future.
The current implementation of autopass is totally unacceptable for the cubed game, and several suggestions for improving it have been made over the last couple of years, but have been completely ignored.  It might be nice to have gold / silver / bronze rooks, but it does nothing for me - unless perhaps maybe I could be a gold pawn when my subscription expires?
I'd be happy to renew my subscription if I could see some evidence that gammon players requests for feature improvements were taken seriously and scheduled for implementation in some realistic timeframe.

pgt: Did you ever try mctrivia's autopass program? Its still evolving, but works nicely for quite a few games.

pgt: If you do start using mine I have my own feature request board on my site so any improvements you can think of I will add when I have the time.

http://bk.mctrivia.com

Fencer: 5 points match with doubling cube (#1)
Stairs: Fast Cube Stairs
Game ID: 3011070, Match ID: 250788
Your expected BKR change: win: 2203 (+7), draw: 2195 (-1), loss: 2187 (-9)
It is pgt's turn.
Score: Puckish: 0.0, pgt: 0.0
Score of finished games (Puckish - pgt, Backgammon): 4 : 6 (= 0) (show games | Show all games)
Time per move (?): 1 day, standard vacation (27. January 2008, 19:50:06 is the last term before timeout for this move)
Public game (visible for other players)
Rated game (the result will be calculated for players' BKR)
Layout: No fonts (change)
Board size: 2 (change)
Weekend days: Monday and Tuesday (change)
Your opponent is using the automatic vacation. (?)
This game uses auto pass.



It says here that this game uses auto pass, but it in fact does not?

Is this something coming soon, or some mistake or bug?

Puckish: Not autopass...its "a good compromise"

Puckish: What you post is just a set of game parameters, it says nothing about the game behavior.
But, of course, when you have an option to offer a double, it cannot be ignored by the autopass.

i recently joined a tournament from Flake in which the participants can select which games will be used as random games

so there are 8 participants .. each may chose 1 game type .. in the end there will be a random game tournament with 8 game types with those 8 participants

i like this idea a lot!!! maybe something like that could be added in the options for a tournament ?

another idea which comes from that is to be able to give a certain weight to a specific game type .. by this you have some influence which game types will appear more often than others .. so it would be nice when creating a tournament of random games you can determine the chance of a specific game type to appear (if the chances are not filled in then every game type has the same chance)

any opinions ?