oh, and I mean the finished games list in a player's profile, if that wasn't clear.

In checkers, if you choose a different set of pieces (checkers instead of pawns - the usual ones for checkers players), the alternative pieces appear in the board, but for the captured pieces the pawns are still used.
It would be nice, if the used set of pieces would be the same all over the page.
Possibly the same occurs for other game types, too.

could we have some sort of status where we could make ourselves unavailable for any more team matches (if you dont get to read the fellowship for a few days you can end up with new team matches to play ,which sometimes you dont want) , the only safe thing to do at the moment is to remove yourself from the team , would be nice if we could just tick a box or something to make ourselves unavailable from being picked .

Jason: yes i agree

Jason: Its a great idea that was mentioned before. Its a pain keep joining and leaving Teams just to stop games building up. I think people would be more happy to join Teams if its easy to make themselves available or not and certainly help the Captains.

Right now, a fellowship's page is a mess of information. Some fellowships have large introduction texts and you always have to scroll down to see or do whatever you want in that fellowship.
If a fellowhip has lots of teams, and you're in a lot of them it also makes it hard to manage that, like has been said in the previous messages.

Here's my ideas:

• Divide it into multiple pages, like it is on the Profile page. Namely: "Main Page", "Members", "Teams", "Internal Torunaments"
  
• On the Main page, there would be the description as now, indication of the BigBoss and the list of discussion boards. This list, since it's usually small could be on a box on the top right, like the MostVisited DB's in the DB list page. The Main page would also have the "Leave this Fellowhip" feature, at the bottom, like now.
  
• The Members page would contain a list of all the members. With more available space, this list could contain aditional information like how many internal tournaments (s)he won or how many teams the member is in. Maybe even a link for each member that would allow the BigBoss (or anybody) to see what teams a member is in. (Suppose you want your fellowship to enter all tournaments on a given category and you know you have a great player in your ranks. Would be nice to quickly see what teams (s)he is in from that fellowship and if you need to ask him/her to join any more).
  
• Teams page would display the Teams ranks on the top, the Teams in the middle and the Team Matches results on the bottom. These last two could be filtered by game (as happens now on the teams), but could also display "All game types" and "All teams I'm captain of" (so one could manage all the teams more easilly). When displaying all teams, having check boxes to be able to join or get out of more than one team at a time would be a great adition too.
  
• Internal Tournaments would have Torunaments, Ponds and Stairs from the Fellowship.
  </ul>
  
  This is just what I've been making up since I had the idea of spliting the fellowship page in several pages a few days ago. Feel free to comment on my ideas and add your own. I'm sure the more people show interest in this, the faster Fencer will implement it

Jason: I think that if you're in a team, you should be ready to play if needed, otherwise you shouldn't be there.

That said, I aggree that it would be nice to have a feature to allow the captains to if any players are not in the mood to play for a while, or because they'll be on vacations, or busy or whatever. That way, they could contact the player and ask him/her if (s)he would aggree to sign in for a match or not. Of course, if the captain still decides to go ahead and enter that player in the tournament, (s)he could have to face the consequences, like the player forfeiting or timing out in all games, or taking forever to move. But that's something to ponder when deciding who will be in the team.

If you don't want to play for a while you have that option - leave the team for a while. (Of course, if there was a place where you could check the teams you want to leave/enter and just submit it once it would be a lot easier to do).

pauloaguia: I basically leave all my teams that I don't want to play teat challenges on.

My problem was when the last site tournaments came along, I wanted to play on those - joined a team, then found I was in some team matches with other fellowships - some with time controls which I don't like (red/green dot games). Kind of in a no-win situation at that time since I did not want to leave - but did leave as soon as the site team tournaments started.

But would agree that it would be nice if there was some sort of "prefrence" you can choose - maybe an over all "Will play / don't want to play", along with a "Will play vacation, fixed weekend, no days off tournaments choices", along with different time choices - like not playing anything with less then 3 days.

In my fellowships, i try to keep track of what players will play and try to not include players who don't want to play certain time limits and such - but it is very hard to keep up to date and I know many fellowship captains just don't want to put that extra time in.

BIG BAD WOLF: I agrea. I was once put in a team match were it was a 3 day time limit with no vacations just before I was moving. I had to forfeit all games. With school and work I am only capable of playing games with vacation available incase I need the extra time do to sudenly being busy. I like being in teams but I had to remove myself from pretty much all because there are 2 features missing.

1) Ability to set what types of games I will play(vacation and 5+ day, excluding no time limit).
2) The ability to set max number of games. (Set in able to take team games when over 500 games.)

These settings should be for the entire site not per fellowship.

mctrivia Being able to specify all different thing would take alot of sorting out i would think, and i do agree with them.
To start with i think a simple box beside our names in any Team we are in that we can toggle available / not available, just so the Captain or Boss knows.

MadMonkey: that works for everything except games of types you do not want to play.

I would like for logik to show the pegs emedietly after you submit it because I like to make notes about the results write after I submit. There is no advantage to the first player to show them since you still play in the same order so there really is no reason to black out the pegs.

mctrivia: Eh ? If i am in a Logik Team and available, i can play.
If i am in Logic Team and not available, i cant play.
If i dont want to play a game type at all i would not be in the Team

mctrivia: I see no reason why player 1 could not see their own results before player 2 moves - BUT I like it how it is now where player 2 DOES NOT see player 1's move until both players move.

As player 2, if I could see player 1's result before I had to guess - that information could change how I guess - that is normally I take the first few moves to figure out the colors before I start to make guesses - but if I see my opponent almost get my code, or worse - has the correct code - I would then start making more wild guesses in the chance of getting lucky. So player 2 knowing what player 1 guesses can effect how player 2 plays.

But I see no harm in player 1 knowing themselves how their guess was.

MadMonkey: When I say game type I mean like vacation allowed, 5+ day time limits only.

BIG BAD WOLF: Ok that does make sense. And your idea of letting player 1 see there results emedetly gives me what I want. I want to be able to play all games on "move and stay here" then make notes about results.

I know this would probable not be easy to program, but I think would be great if it is possible.

I would love to play different combinations of chess - for example, Crazy Screen Chess board setup, played as Dark & Knight Relay. Or Capablanca Random Dice Chess (with of course a few extra numbers on the dice to cover the extra pieces)

Currently there are basically 2 types of Chess games - one with special setup, one with special rules.

So for Mix-n-Match.

First have player pick board type. So choose 1:
Regular Chess, Corner, Fortress, Janus, Embassy, Capablanca Random, Screen, Crazy Screen, Amazon, Fischer Random, Legan, or Grand. (I left out Horde, Maharajah, & Los Alamos - but those might work also)

Second have player pick Game Rules: So choose 1:
Loop, Anti, Extinction, 3 Checks, Dark, Atomic, Cylinder, Berolina, Knight Relay, Ambiguous, Dark, Recycle, or Ice Age

Third - I think there are a few of those rules which would work good doubled up - while others not so much - so third, possible pick a second rule: So choose 1 (in addition to the one before):
Dark, Cylinder, Knight Relay, Recycle, Ice Age, or NONE (just stick with 2nd choice)

Again, probable too much to program - but I think it would solve the issue of not making a many many many new games of variants of variants - but a fun way to come up with interesting combinations for people to play.

**edited because I forgot about Recycle Chess**

BIG BAD WOLF: So crazy screen Grand Loop Chess is not possibel?

joshi tm: Good Point - actually the screen & crazy screen should be 2 types which can be added to any of the special setups. So maybe a choice 1a that would let you choose screen & crazy screen in addition to the other "Choice 1" games.

Most of below was written of the top of my head - so I'm sure a little more fine tuning would be needed.

BIG BAD WOLF: Or you could....

1. Choose board size; 6x6,8x8,8x10,10x10
2. Choose two or three rules (or at random....)

BIG BAD WOLF: Legan is an example of having both a special setup, and special rules: the pawns move diagonal and hit straigth (somewhat like Berolina, except that there's no choice in direction). And the pawns don't promote anywhere.

But I like the basic idea of your suggestion.

You could go even further:
- pick a board size (no reason to limit it to the 6x6 .. 10x10 we have now)
- pick a set of pieces to play with (standard pieces, janus, amazon, archbischop, marshall, grasshopper, nightrider, etc (lots of pieces to pick from at chessvariants)
- pick a setup (standard, legan, fortress, legan, screen, crazy screen)
- pick zero or more additional rules (loop, recycle, cylinder, berolina, dice, ice-age, dark, atomic, anti, 3-checks, etc)


So, wanna play anti-atomic-ice-age-dark-cylinder-dice chess on a 13x7 board, using 10 janusses each?

AbigailII:
So, wanna play anti-atomic-ice-age-dark-cylinder-dice chess on a 13x7 board, using 10 janusses each?



The only problem I see (besides tons of headaches for Fencer) is BKR/Ranking. I think those games would have to be special/fun games and always unrated. But I definitely like the going-mad factor :)

it woul;d be nice if there were somewhere that explained the cost of membership in USD($). There may be such a place but I can't seem to find it.

ColonelCrockett: That's a good one...

ColonelCrockett: There is. It is here: http://brainking.com/en/PaidMembership?p=2 I think Fencer needs to make this link Bold +3 font size and blinking before people will see it.

mctrivia: With a big red flashing arrow

Rose: No 4 of them one on each side

emmett: Well, at least he didn't ask what is EUR

pauloaguia: Why not quote all the prices in NZD

Could you do one of the following of each set please(A is my preference):
1a) After pressing a colour you can click as many places as you like and pressing another colour switches colours
1b) Pressing a colour fills them in from left to right

2a) Allow first player to see there peg results imedetly.
2b) Blank out pegs(empty boxes no holes) for first player so you can't accidentally think none of the colours you selected are present.

Today a lot of rubbishy pop-ups have appeared every time I look at messages. Is this a new "feature". If so, can it please be removed.

pgt: Please be more specific. A "rubbishy pop-up" can be anything.

Fencer: there are certain words that have a double blue line under them - that when you move the cursor over - pop up an advertisment of some sort - i feared it was part of an automatic upgrade on my puter - but maybe its specific to this site? - guess i gave away how much other browsing ive been doing lately.... lol - scroll down to the post by Gordon Shumway on this page - the word chess is the sample - who knows - maybe it will be on this post too...

redfrog: Yes, I know. It's funny, isn't it?
Just go to the Settings page and uncheck all checkboxes at the "banner ads". It's a big advantage of a paid membership to turn it off.

Fencer: i dont mind leaving it on - if you/the site benfits from users that leave it .... its good to know im not going crazy though

Fencer: It was a "Congratulations you're the 999,999,999 visitor and have won squillions of $$$$" type message. I have now blocked pop-ups and it's fixed. Funny thing is, I thought I had already blocked popups. That's the first time I've ever seen that sort of garbage on Brain King, but it's ok now.

pgt: Instead of blocking popups, you should visit the Settings page and uncheck everything you don't need.

Fencer: Thanks - I'd already done that, and can't for the life of me think how they got unchecked - maybe I did it inadvertently, but I have not been to the settings page recently, nor changed my browser settings. I'll do a virus scan and see if there are any nasties hanging around which may have changed something.

The current state of Fischer Random Chess has one very quirky "feature" to it.
When someone puts out an invitation, he or she can see the board position after it is submitted. Anyone who sees the invitation (be it a public invitation, a tournament game (this matters less), or a personal invitation) can also see it.

This allows the inviter to only set up games that he or she likes, as well as allowing those choosing from the "Waiting games" list to choose the same.

Can the 1st and 8th rows be listed as ?'s, and have the board position randomized on acceptance, rather than during creation?

Hieronymus: this bug is present in Shogi as well... if you are using the Japanese pieces and have the option to promote, the piece on which you must click to complete the promotion uses the default shogi piece graphic.

Could you put the move number (in parentheses, so it's visually differnet than the score) where the dashes currently are on tournament pages? Seeing all those dashes for incomplete games is poor use of real estate. Let's put something meaningful and useful there. In backgammon, the current score of the match could appear there.

Could the number of visible ponds on main page be costumized, like the number of visible games (even if it has to be the same number). I have 57 ponds at the moment waiting for the deadline, and they occupy most of my main page

At the bottom of a fellowship page there is a list of finished matches. Scrolling down it, there is no way to tell who won or lost.

I request that we have a red dot next to an opposing team name if they won on the list of finished matches on the fellowship page. That, or something more explicit, would be helpful to establish successes and failures at a glance.

emmett: I did mention this before when Fencer sorted out the order of Team Matches. I thought that in the finished list the 'Match Type' & 'Time Control' could be replaced with 'Match Winner' & 'Match Score'.
Either that or have the hover work on those links so they could be seen easily rather than having to open each one all the time.

MadMonkey: I've suggested replacing "Match Type" and "Time Control" too. Looking at a long list of finished matches, that information isn't as pertinent as who actually won. I suggested the red dot this time because I thought it was another way to approach the problem.

Thanks for your support.

nabla: i must of missed this somehow but i also think its a great idea it would solve alot of problems im having right now but it would also benifit alot of new members who get carried away joining tournaments for the sake of it
i know alot of members want a cap on the amount of games ppl can have on the go at once
but ppl have various reasons for having that amount of games and would never agree on the amount it was set on to low to high so this way that problem would be solved to

"Snoopy": Yes! I agree, it may stop people compaining they have to many games going, we do get carried away sometimes

Regarding the new Games filter, where a player can challenge you to a game: Does this affect captains of teams for team challenges?

For example, if a captain of a team has his/her settings so that no one can challenge him/her as an individual in any game, does this also affect whether any team can challenge that person if they are a captain?

I hope you know what I mean<?>...

emmett: Or an all game tournament invitation

A certain competitor just released its 6th version of a game corner sabotage.. what are the odds of eventually going the path of either that or a 4 way espionage game? Espionage however has just released its 5th version here and i doubt that we could have another so soon! It's just a suggestion for a later date! thanks