Brian1971: Sounds like a good idea to me

I have a request. For October why not reward tournament and pond game winners with bonus points. My thought would be 25 points for a tournament win and 10 points for a pond win or something like that.

Fencer: I haven't been able in the past to do that, that's why I wrote what I did.

DamnCat: But you can join another tournament when your section is finished and you won't play the next round. That's how it works.

As a pawn who can only play one tournament at a time I find it very stupid that you can't join a new tournament until the one you are in has finished its final round. If I am playing a tournament and I am not advancing I should be able to join a new tournament when that round is finished. Why do I have to wait for the final to be finished? I have nothing to do with the final anymore anyway? This is especially annoying when you play with people who make a move every 20 days or so...

pauloaguia: I like that grouping also. It could also be made as an option in settings.

All existing users would default to traditional method and can change any time. All new users default to new method with option to try other method if they like in setup.

Marfitalu: I just didn't placed them in column to avoid a long post. The post only refers to the disposition of the options, I'm not after change in layout ;)

For the hundredth time I've been searching for Game Rules in the top of the Menu so I thought I'd finally suggest it to be organized slightly differently:

(Site - playing)
Main page, New game, Waiting games, Tournaments, Team tournaments, Stairs, Winners, Ratings, Fellowships, Ponds, Statistics, Player list, Who is online, Discussion boards, Game rules

(Personal Info)
My profile, Friends, Blocked users, Online opponents, Message box, Game editors, Settings

(Site - other info)
Paid membership, Store, Support us, Brains, Send invitation, Search, Help, FAQ, Links, What is new, Bug tracker, Contact

Logout
---

I know it will probably confuse all existing members for a while. And make the page a little longer for those using Row layout.
But it will make things look so much tidier for newcomers...
Anyway, I'd like to know what others think about it...

it would be very helpful if
youve send a message to someone and then decide you shouldnt of to retract it before they read it

When you use the discussion board on a tournament, can we have a link to take you back to the game, Please

We have the option here to be cloaked Fencer (strange,but there you go lol).
Could we not have an option to have a list of things like on Messengers like Busy, Away, BRB, Out to lunch etc....
At least then we may know if someone is coming back soon or whatever.

At the end of the Outbox could we have a move to Archive choice. Over time i have saved copies of info etc... i wanted to keep and the Outbox was the only choice. Would be nice to select message and Archive them instead.

BIG BAD WOLF: As I recall, Fencer did change the color of the Extinction Chess border not too long ago. Those of us that play it regularly didn't like it and he switched it back. How can the color of the border around the board make a difference? It says right next to the board what game it is. I'd rather have them all the same color with the name of the variant as it is, right next to the board. I've never had a problem telling the games apart. It says the game clearly in bold lettering. How could you miss it? Let alone from how the game develops or where the pieces get placed.

I agree with you that a victory won from my opponent's bad move is not as rewarding as when it is I that makes a good move, but it comes with the game in either case. This is one of the reasons I don't like the kanji or Japanese marked pieces. I'm at a severe disadvantage when forced to use them as compared to someone that knows them well or is Japanese. The directionally marked pieces put the game on equal footing and I only have myself to blame if I make a bad move, not the pieces that I can't tell apart. And my opponent can use the set that he prefers. Should be the same thing with the borders around the board. Let the player color it as he likes. It is still important to have the game type name next to it. If there are people that can't read or have grown dependent on having the border colored, then my suggestion of having the player himself choose the board coloring and border should work well for them and the rest of us can keep it as it is or add some color to the game as we'd like.

It would be nice if you could sort your games by time left/x but the value of x could be different for each game type.

So for example I could have

Ludo/100
Anti Chess/5
Spider Line 4/2
Chess/1

And all ludo games would pretty much be sorted to the top of the list, an anti-chess game with 10 days left would show up before a chess game with 3 days left but a spider line 4 game with 4 days left would still be after a chess game with 1 day left.

This would be usefull for letting you set the games you like to play more often (I.E. Ludo often requires little thought so I play it more often then say chess which requires tones of thought.)

It would also be good if you could set a threshold to which games always go to the botom of the list.

For example if I set the threshold at 32 hours then my chess game with 24 hours left would be placed before the ludo game with 98 days left.

I have often thought about what's *really* wrong with sorting by "Time left" and possible remedies to fix the issue. I think the main problem people have with "slow players" is not that they play slow, but more that games with long time limits have to wait most of that limit to bubble up the list of games to be played.

For example, say I have 5 games, with time limits of 1 day (game A), 3 days (game B), 5 days (game C), 7 days (game D), and 30 days (game E). And now, for the sake of the discussion, let's say that I play all games that have <3 days left to play on them (They're very mind-intensive games and I can only play once per day!). We will also assume that my opponents are *very* fast and move within an hour of me playing.
Day Games Played Time remaining
---------------------------------
1 A 1, 2, 4, 6, 29
2 A, B 1, 3, 3, 5, 28
3 A 1, 2, 2, 4, 27
4 A, B, C 1, 3, 5, 3, 26
5 A 1, 2, 4, 2, 25
6 A, B, D 1, 3, 3, 7, 24
7 A 1, 2, 2, 6, 23
8 A, B, C 1, 3, 5, 5, 22
9 A 1, 2, 4, 4, 21
10 A, B 1, 3, 3, 3, 20
11 A 1, 2, 2, 2, 19
12 A, B, C, D 1, 3, 5, 7, 18

etc,
I think most people can follow this. From my point of view, I'm keeping all of my games up-to-date and playing, on average, 1.92 moves per day. Out of 5 games, that's not horrible, I guess. Now, increase the number of A games to 10, B games to 20, C games to 30, D games to 100, and E games to 50, and the problem becomes much bigger.
The problem is that even though I'm making almost 2 moves per day, I have yet to make a move on game E, even after 12 days! Game D is going 6 full days per move (I only play if there are less than 3 days left, remember).
The days-per-move for each of the games is:
A: 1
B: 2
C: 4
D: 6
E: 29

One potential solution to this problem would be a two-tiered sorting/filtering mechanism. The first "group" of games would be sorted by games that have < X time left (1 day? user-defined setting?) The remaining "group" would be sorted by "percent of time left" or some other similar metric.

For an example of the "percent of time left" sorting, let's take our original example and also play games where "Percent time left" is <= 70% and a first "group" cutoff of 1 day (for the sake of brevity. Perhaps 50% is a better value). The Games Played ordering is by the ordering that they would be sorted by. Let's also change the play style so that a maximum of only 1 non-critical (> 1 day left) game is played per day:

Day Games Played Time remaining Percent Time Left
-------------------------------------------------------
1 A 1, 2, 4, 6, 29 100, 66, 80, 86, 97
2 A, B 1, 3, 3, 5, 28 100,100, 60, 71, 93
3 A, C 1, 2, 5, 4, 27 100, 66,100, 57, 90
4 A, D 1, 1, 4, 7, 26 100, 33, 80,100, 87
5 A, B 1, 3, 3, 6, 25 100,100, 60, 86, 83
6 A, C 1, 2, 5, 5, 24 100, 66,100, 71, 80
7 A, B 1, 3, 4, 4, 23 100,100, 80, 57, 77
8 A, D 1, 2, 3, 7, 22 100, 66, 60,100, 73
9 A, C 1, 1, 5, 6, 21, 100, 33,100, 86, 70
10 A, B, E 1, 3, 4, 5, 30, 100,100, 80, 71,100
11 A 1, 2, 3, 4, 29 100, 66, 60, 57, 97
12 A, D 1, 1, 2, 7, 28 100, 33, 40,100, 93


In this case, my moves-per-day is the same, 1.92.
The days-per-move for each of these games is (the numbers don't reflect the tables above, I've extended the tables for more accurate results):
A: 1
B: ~2.6
C: ~3.8
D: 4
E: ~12

The fast-moving games aren't really impacted at all, but the slower games have sped up considerably, at the expense of the medium-speed games. So even though it's a "slow" game, the 30-move game is being played, on average, once every 12 days. In essence, what sorting by "percentage of time left" does is bubble the slow games up to the top much faster, but still allows them to continue not being played if desired.

Walter Montego: Extinction Chess board is the same color as regular chess. Most Chess variants have a different color border to help users quickly tell them that the game is not a normal chess game - and since Extinction chess plays just like regular chess, except for the rule that you can't lose 2 of the same pieces - it would be beter if the extinction chess board was a different color then regular chess. Nothing worse then having someone lose because they made a mistake about what game they are playing. Much beter to lose because the other person beat you, not because of a mistake (I would rather win because I beat someone, not because they did not relize what game they were playing - at least in my opinion).

maybe default have a different border color, but also the suggestion that people can change the border color of certain games if they don't like it?

joshi tm: I like the Extinction Chess board as it is. Why not allow the individual player to color his board and pieces as he likes?

What about these:

Fellowship statistics(eg number of played games, won games etc.)
Cylyndrical Checkers which eliminate the strong sides of the board.
And a colored border for Extinction Chess.

plaintiger: That option exists already. It's called "Stay here".

Fencer: hmm, yeah, i think that would work...though i might like to see the board again even if i didn't hit a boat, just so i could plan my next move.

Fencer: What about an option to select which options we want to show in the option box? It's getting cluttered and at this rate will become useless in a month or two :)

I like the stay-here-if-I-hit-a-boat option (or if I reveal an opponents piece in Espionage or a new chess piece in Dark Chess)

King Reza: lol, intersting idea.

Fencer:I suggest: Move and stay here if I hit a ship, otherwise undo the move and reload the page.

plaintiger: Someone suggested the "move and stay here if I hit an opponent's ship, otherwise go to the next game" option.

What about this game?

King Reza: grenv is right, Ambiguous Chess (Atomic Chess too) is a perfect information game, you get no extra information after playing your move, you have to wait for your opponent's move to get this information... exactly like in standard chess ! For all these games there is no special interest in selecting "move and stay here".

grenv:Oh sorry.  My mistake.  The question meant immidiate showing of the result after a player moves.  In Ambiguous Chess the result is not shown immidiately.  I somehow understood the question incorrectly.  Thought it meant the result is shown after a player moves, no matter 'how long after!'

grenv:Well, when there are more than one piece that can move to a certain square, and you choose that square, you cannot see the result unless your opponent has made a move!

King Reza: Ambiguous chess? Assuming you weren't joking, you can't see the result until the other player makes a move.

plaintiger:Dark Chess and somehow Ambiguous Chess.

grenv: ah, okay. thank you. it still seems an obscure thing to me, but i'm glad it got implemented for those who value it.

nabla and pauloaguia: thank you. the more games it applies to the more practical the feature will be.

anyone: are there still other games where a player might want to see the results of their moves but can only do so after the move has been submitted? Atomic chess shows the results of the move before the "move" button is hit, right?

nabla: Espionage

plaintiger: Yes, I like your request, it seems logical for all games where you may get an info after you moved, so also for Dark Chess (are there others?).

plaintiger: I play backgammon and chess variants. I like to play one or the other sometimes, so i'll run through all the backgammon games and leave the chess until I have time to think about them.

first a small rant: i personally don't see the usefulness of the "play next game of battleboats plus" link - why would it matter whether the next game you move on is battleboats plus or not? it's not like playing a different type of game between two battleboats moves can break your concentration - battleboats doesn't involve concentration! i understand that the feature was implemented because people asked for it - i just don't understand why they asked for it.

:: end rant ::

now then: what i think would be a *real* improvement would be the ability to set "move and stay here" as the default action for battleboats variants only. that would save me having to manually choose "stay here" from the popup menu after every battleboats plus move while allowing me to keep the default for all my other game types as "move and go to next game."

thanks, Filip!

yes! another vote for mini shogi, or even micro (poppy) shogi:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/geodun/poppy/shogi.htm

re: "mark as unread" and "delete and next" buttons: go, *Fencer!* yesssss! thank you!!!

pedrored: Plakoto.Yes please,better than any of the others... >:0)

Jason: http://www.bkgm.com/variants/Plakoto.html
http://www.bkgm.com/variants/PlakotoExpress.html
http://www.bkgm.com/variants/Moultezim.html

Maybe it's time to start discussing good possible gammon variants again on the Backgammon discussion board - I know there were a few good suggestions on the board awhile back.

pedrored: where could i see these versions ?

What do you think about backgammon variants PLAKOTO and MOULTEZIM?

hexkid: If you make it look like the "move" button, too many people will start clicking on that thinking they are taking a move. I think the way it is now where it will go to the next game as it is set up in your setting is good enough for the "play later" option. (in my opinion)

When viewing a game where it's our turn to play we have the option to "Play later". In the interest of completeness it could have a dropdown with the options available on the "Move" button when we're submitting a move.

[Play later] and * go to the main page
                 * stay here
                 * ...
                 * go to the next game with Fischer's clock

EDIT: LOL

[Play later] and * stay here

While the "show time between moves" feature is a good idea, this isn't a place to pick apart other players.

alanback:

King Reza: Love your photo, very topical :)

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to see a statistic that would tell you the average time it takes a player to move, from the time the move appears on his move list to the time he submits a move?

*Edited to remove names

rabbitoid: wouldn't that be a "play my games for me, while i go get a beer" feature?

Fencer: may I at least have a "move and go get me a beer" choice?