isn't frappr dead?

ughaibu: As a temporary solution you might exclude unrated members from accepting your invitation, so your opponents are going to have played at least a couple of games to the end.

It would be good to add a number to the "Link" link on s.o.'s profile page, indicating the number of links to find there - just as near the "Started games" link. It would save some clicks to empty lists ;)

Vikings: To be honest - I don't really know. But isn't a Pond with 16 players and 20,000 points a very different game from one with 160 players and 20,000 points? And wouldn't the latter be more similar to a 16 player pond with 2,000 points?

Also I don't think 150 points is a very smart number to go with. There was a post of BBW which Fencer seemed to like: Run around the Pond (coan.net, 2005-01-11 16:04:41), which suggested a set of predefined values. Of course it might be sensible to set an upper boundary for the bonus dependant on the starting points.

Anyway - I don't know if and how to adjust the rating for those Ponds properly, but I'd rather have those options with no extra rating than be bound to the fixed parameters.

Now that so many new games are added it may be the time to implement a long requested change to our beloved Ponds - customizable game parameters:

• amount of points to start with
• amount of the bonus
• minimum number of players

This would make Ponds more interesting and exciting!

coan.net: I don't like moving Halma and Breakthrough to Checkers or moving Cheversi to Chess/Reversi, because that's not were I'd be looking for them. But it might be an idea to list them there and under "Others" redundantly?
But the rest of your suggested categorization: Chapeau!

redfrog: Or you allow multiple persons to vote for the same game and define the weight according to the proportion of votes

srnity: I second that

coan.net: But all those luck based dice games require at least a little bit of skill - in every of those games you have to make decisions about probability - and you can make good and bad decisions. In Even/Odd there are no good/bad decisions. Just lucky/unlucky ones.

Andersp: It would be great, if the comments on brainking.info could be integrated into a special DB an vice versa - that could draw much more attention to discussions about blog posts, but still keep them at the blog.

Maybe that will be part of the new Blog system that Fencer wants to develop. I think it will be highly integrated to BrainKing.com, that's why he wants to make his own..

redfrog: I second that

I did cut my friends list some time ago because it was no help to have that many players under "friends online" - especially as the sorting by last action time makes the order virtually random.

srnity: The RSS feed is not delivered with the page, the characters needed to "promote" it eat not more than 0.16% of the overall page data. This is definitely not causing hourglasses... :)

Eriisa: In multi-win-matches, yes. In multi-game-matches, no. If a 2 games match ends 1:1, it is a draw.

mangue:

jadarite: No - pay for a variety of exclusive features, deleting already started games being one of them.

jadarite: As joshi_tm pointed out already: you have the opportunity to delete games if you become a paying member.

MadMonkey: You're right about that BB example. The button should be named "restart turn" and not "choose another piece". And you're right, an additional "undo last move" might be helpful for some.

I just have a different opinion on the value of "Back" and "Forward": Everybody who uses a browser knows them, uses them and has the same mental model of them and what to expect from them. A lot of sites that use forms for navigation or that use AJAX or whatever hip thing break this model and make them useless, leaving the user alone with nothing than the - often badly designed - navigation tools the site offers them.

I am so glad that BrainKing is fully Back button compatible! The Back button is always at the same spot, it is available and in place even if the page didn't fully load, I can easily click it 3times in a row to go 3 steps back without waiting for the "undo" button to be rendered, it offers a menu to go back for example 5 steps in one, and for me it is just a 4mm movement of my right thumb. I would never use anything else just to go one page back - what an overhead!

So the question is, Do we need all these different options on brainking about navigating the site to boards, next games, tournaments, ponds etc..etc... the answer is no in your case as there is always a way to get there anyway.

The question is a definite yes for me. I don't see any convenient way to perform the mentioned navigations other than by the options offered by BrainKing. It would be very cumbersome. It just doesn't have anything to do with the Back button :)

That doesn't mean of course, that everybody has to use it, and that the other buttons are useless. They seem to be useful for some, if not many, so the changes you propose are reasonable! If we have the "restart" button we should have the "undo" button also. And they of course should be named properly.

MadMonkey: I don't find bugcafe userfriendly at all ;) I feel lost in this terrible cloud of something. BrainKing is very much clearer to me. And I have to back grenv in this point: Back- and Forwardbuttons are two fundamental functions that every browser has, that every user knows how to use, and that every site should use to actually send the user one step back or "back forward".

MadMonkey: you sure can, let me assure you that:)

nabla: or a big french cheese

pauloaguia: good idea

joshi tm: This is a very old discussion, which we had several times. But I still think you're right, and that unambiguousness goes over habit (edit: I am everything but sure that this is the right word ;).

MadMonkey: It would even help if there was something on the last page before submitting that would indicate that you're guessing. Now I started to hit the back button and look at the little red sentence over the board, which tells me wether to shoot or guess. But a graphical indicator is always preferred ;)

In Frog Finder you have generally two options: shoot or guess. I know that it is caused by my own stupidity, but today I guessed two times when I wanted to shoot and I shot one time when I wanted to guess. Very annoying ;)

So what I am suggesting is to have a different marker for the field when guessing. Maybe a flag, similar to the well known Minesweeper. So I would notice that I did click the wrong link before hitting the submit button.

pauloaguia: I would rather have it where it is, but in bold!

The ordering of the games on the main page has changed recently. I have mine sorted by time left, ascending. Games without time control used to be at the top in this case - now they're at the bottom. I don't like that
I am used to have a couple of games without time control which are sort of "privileged". I play them with real life friends, and I like them to always show up at first in my list. And I like to immediately play them back as soon as they make their move when I am online.
On the other hand I understand that games without time control are not those with the least time left ;)
I therefor ask for an individual setting wether to have games without time control at the top or at the bottom of your game list.

Fencer: It would be helpful for those that desperatly need autopass to have the option to make the invitation invalid if the opponent doesn't accept it. A "only invite if autopass is accepted" - checkbox. So autopass-wannahaves can play each other, autopass-ohnos can play each other and everybody can play against autopass-idontcares like me and be safe before sending the invitation :)

pauloaguia: Good point(s), that sounds reasonable :)

Andersp: I don't understand that either. In my humble opinion, a red message "Your opponent is using Autopass", just as the auto vacation message would perfectly do the job. You wouldn't be surprised by an offline opponent passing back every game to you in an instance, and everybody who wants to take advantage of it could do so.

And I really like pgt's suggestion of a "use autopass as long as I can't move" option when you own the cube - the chances that I want to offer a double get smaller not bigger when I can't move several times in a row, I guess

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 :)

Fencer: Ahhh, that makes sense :)

Could - just like in Battleboats - the information on how good our guess was (the black and white pins) be updated immediately after we made the move instead of when the opponent enters the room? We could use the "stay here" option then instead of waiting until the game comes back to us.

plaintiger: It's not an opinion but a matter of logic. A lifetime contract is always personal - otherwise it would be a as-long-as-humans-exist-contract, because you could easily give it away to your descendants before you die and so on. Lifetime is always personal!

BIG BAD WOLF: That would be a nice feature which could automatically be activated for pawns with 20 games going!

AbigailII: You can reject all invitations but just not automagically - you have to do two clicks ;)

1) mark the check box "mark all invitations" or similar
2) click the decline button

Pedro Martínez: You're right about the remembering - I don't remember any color, but the fact alone that the board is of a different color makes me aware that I am not playing the default variant. And the fact that every chess variant is of a different color makes my brain - which is kind of lazy - believe that I am playing normal chess if there is no border. This doesn't mean that I won't notice it at all - but at least the chances are very much higher that I'll ignore the name of the game.

And Extinction Chess is a special case I think. In most variants either the possible moves are different - as in BB+ - or the effect of them is not of any difference - as in Pro Five-in-Line. While in E.C. a normally not-so-bad move could make you lose the game without further notice.

Jason: I think this is an odd comparison. Think of a situation where there are about 20 different kinds of fuels around which you may not mix - and you can easily determine which one to take by the color of the car. Except fuel No. 12 and No. 7 cars are both black.

Pedro Martínez: Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't there different colors for pro-5-in-line and bb+? And small fast esp is easily recognized by the lack of vulcans ;)

El Cid: But there is a green dot on the team tournaments page :)

Can we have three more characters for our user names? *hiding*

Pedro Martínez: It won't help people that already have such games, but it helps avoiding such situations. If you get an invitation for a game without time control, you are explicitly warned that it could be never-ending. Any other game will, as already noted, time out after some time. And please note the ";)" at the end of my post about that "solution" ^^

pauloaguia: Simple solution: Only accept games without time conrol against people you (personally) know ;)

Fencer: thank you :)

Since the "go to next game" dropdownlist is now customizable (yeeha!), and new options don't disturb everybody I think it is time for the "go to the next game with a friend" option :)

grenv: But that is what kleineme suggested! The only thing I said is that adding 12 players as an option for creating a single elimination tournament is bogus. It's not bogus to have 12 players, but to say: this tournament is for 12 ;)

xmas is soon: Adding 12 as an option sounds kind of bogus to me. I think there are two reasonable options:

1) Keep the current system. In this case, if you know you won't get 16 players, you'll have to set up a tournament for 8 players. But everybody has the same amount of matches to play.

2) Change it to what kleineme suggested: Every tournament can be started, and if the number of players is not a power of 2, pick those who advance to the second round randomly, let the rest play it out. Or you could even pick them by BKR (if the tournament isn't random, hm )

MadMonkey: As long as this feature isn't implemented, you might have a look at Resizable Textarea, which is a firefox extension that let's you freely adjust textboxes' sizes with the mouse.
(It somehow doesn't work on the inline reply-box on the boards)

grenv: why not just notify you when you attempt to write a pm to someone who has you on block? you would simply stop immediately ;)

Fencer: There was this suggestion by BBW to color it by default but let it be changed by those who don't want the coloring. There seem to be two types of players - those who "click through" and that relay on board colors and those that take some time and that recognize the "Extinction" next to the board.
But however: I think everybody will get used to it after a short while. Of course some won't like it for the first days, because it means a change in their visual recognition of the board, but that will disappear after a short while - I guess... It simply adds a great amount of usability for the rest of us.

Amandakmg365, MadMonkey: Who might that other player be?