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.
Gordon Shumway: I would like an setting so that no one can even invite me to a game. I decline just about 100% of the invites to me because usually I only play tournament games (except for a few new games - which I post in the waiting room).
So if I had an option to say "no game invites", when someone gets ready to invite me to a game, they would not be able to.
AbigailII: Ludo (with both players having autopass and automove turned on, it would be possible that the system finishes the game from start)
I never did understand the popularity of this game! It must be that many people enjoy game playing only as a way to pass their time, without any benefit from using their brains?
Modificado por AbigailII (18. Janeiro 2007, 14:38:50)
Autopass: an option for a player; if this option is turned on (perhaps it can be made configurable per game type, or even per game) the system will play a "Pass" for the player if the player cannot make a move. This may require the system to roll the dice before the player visits the game. Useful for all gammon variants (including Grasshopper) and Ludo.
Automove: similar to autopass, except that the system will move for the player if the player has only one possible move. Handy for chess (specially Anti-Chess and Dice Chess), checkers and variants, Ludo (with both players having autopass and automove turned on, it would be possible that the system finishes the game from start), gammon variants, etc.
A change in the vacation system: instead of giving all the players a years worth of vacation days on January 1, give all the players a small number of vacation days each month (say 1 day/month for pawns, 2 days/month for knights and bishops, 3 days/month for rooks, 4 days/month for black rooks). Vacation days accumulate (so you can save your days you earned in January and February and spend them in March) up to a certain maximum (say the current yearly limits). New players could start with half or a quarter of their maximum. This avoids having a pile of games in the beginning of the year that take a long time to timeout because everyone got a new allotment of vacation days.
Introduce the Glicko rating system. The current rating system considers only the number of finished games as a measurement for how realiable ones rating, and not how long ago those games were finished. Currently, someone who has finished 100 games, 99 five years ago and one 5 months ago is considered to have a much more reliable rating than someone who has finished 24 games, all in the past 7 days. The Glicko system takes activity into account - beside the rating, it tracks a rating accuracy, which increases the more games have been finished, but slowly decreases over time. The rating accuracy can be used to determine whether a rating is established or not (this is what FICS does). The system and its algorithms are in the public domain.
When calculating ratings and determining ratings, a match is currently considered a single game. You can finish 120 rated games, and still have an established rating if all you did was play 5 game matches. Also, winning a match 4-3 gives the same rating change as winning a match 7-0. Not only do matches get underrated in ratings, they also make the white/black win tables on the rules pages far less useful. Consider for instance an imaginary game where white wins 100% of the time, but all the games have been played as 2 game matches. Then the table would show 0% white wins, 0% black wins and 100% draws, given the impression of it being a very balanced game. I think that for certain statistics, an N-game match should be treated as N individual games.
A new time control option: no vacation days before move N (with N settable). This would allow people to have games were they can take vacation days, but avoid having games that no (or a few) moves been played waiting for a time out. This should speed up some tournaments without preventing players to take vacation days at all.
On the page where you commit your move (with the 'move' button), make it configurable for the player to have the move button (and nothing but the move button) right above or below the board. Even with the current "Show move buttons directly below game boards" settings there are the game name, player names, draw offer checkbox, and two text areas before the button, needing one to scroll down a full window heigth. Moving the important thing to the top halves the number of steps you need to take.
With the growing number of games, we probably need some more groups. For instance I would like to see the 'lines' group split into four different groups: Line4 (Line4, Anti-Line4, Linetris, Spider Linetris, Spider Line4) Line5/6 (Five in Line, Pro Five in Line, Swap Five in Line, Connect6), Pente (Pente, Small Pente, Open Pente, Keryo Pente, Small Keryo Pente, Open Keryo Pente) and Other Lines (PahTum, Hasami Shogi, Scrambled Eggs, Lines of Action - although the latter two have nothing to do with creating lines and should perhaps not even be in the lines group; all they have to do with lines is the movement of pieces, but then Amazons could also have been put in the lines category). The Froglet games could become their own category, and perhaps Ataxx and Assimilation as well. Chess is also a large category and could benefit from further dividing.
In Dice Chess, instead of showing the number of pips, show the piece that needs to be moved. The number of pips have nothing to do with the game. And while you would have pips if you were to play this game face-to-face, it's only because dice with pips are common and dice with chess pieces rare. But on BK, we're playing with web browsers and instead of showing an image of 5 pips, an image of a queen could be shown. No need to have to memorize the pips to piece mapping. The dice could be made a configurable option; we can already pick what style of chess/go/checkers, etc pieces we want, adding a "Dice Chess die faces" doesn't seem to much of a stretch.
To speed up game start, in the Boat games, both player should be able to configure their navy simultaneously. From a game perspective, there's no need that the second player has to wait configuring their navy until the first player is done. This is true for other games that need players to set up their boards as well.
An option to automatically reject all invitations. Or otherwise, have the possibility of invitations listed at the bottom of the main page so they can be ignored without being intrusive.
Assunto: Games with no time control (this morning's info)
how about the following proposal:
- only in case of a game with no time control - in case one opponent has been absent for more than 1 month (vacation excluded) - permit the opponent to delete the game by himself at any move, with no BKR / stat change.
WellyWales: Unlike the others I think that it is an excellent proposal. It is very different from controlling one's game number by oneself. It would be much easier if the system could reject automatically challenges, or kick the person out of a tournament when it starts (who can know at subscrition time how many games he will have at the time when a tournament will start?). I think this is the way it works for pawns, so very little more to implement.
Actually, I would have become a paying member much sooner if I could have set a limit on my number of games.
rod03801: Actually move and go to next game with most moves does not work quiet so well since you can easily have a lot of passes and keep jumping on each other putting a game near the beginning after many moves.
mctrivia: Move and go to Next game with most moves, works good for finding Ludo games close to completion. Of course you may run into those Anti-backgammon or other longer games!
The ability to flag certain games, and have a "Move and go to next flagged game" option would also help with this!
WellyWales: You can see how many games u have going by looking at your started games list, that should give you an idea. Or just dont sign up for any. Or, if you have signed up for Tournaments, but not to sure how many you have signed up to, go to your Tournaments tab and click on the "waiting or open" tab, there you will see what u have joined up to.
We hear of so many people saying they have to many games going and trying to cut them down.......is there a way we can impose our own limit to stop us signing up to to many games....most of us are unaware of how many games we have going.
You say "people" complained, but as far as I can tell there was only one: Walter Montego. I agree with him, by the way, that the best solution would be to let each user choose a color for each game type.
In the absence of user-configurable colors, I think it's best to have a different color for each game with nonstandard rules or objectives.
It's true that we could function without any colored borders, by taking the extra half-second to look at the game name. But the current situation, in which almost every nonstandard game has its own color but one does not, is the worst system I can think of. The colored borders used for Berolina Chess, Ambiguous Chess, Loop Chess, etc., lead one to expect that any game without such a border is played with standard rules and objectives. And while it only takes half a second to glance at the game name, one has to make a conscious effort to do this.
grenv: No - I have 300+ games (too many, but hopefully I will get that down soon) - Anyway, I usually play my games in order of time left - so 1 game will be backgammon, next chess, next battleboats, next dice chess, next etc.....
So no, i do not remember my strategy from my previous moves (probable why I'm not a good chess players) - for games like the line games, i will leave myself notes in the game so I know what I'm doing when i have the next 4 moves planed out.
But usually, i'm trying to make my moves as fast as possible to get to the next game - so when a game comes up, my eyes go directly to the game board - and if the game board looks like backgammon - my mind goes into backgammon mode - if the board looks like a chess board - my mind goes into a chess mode. But unless something stops my mind (like a colored border), i will miss what type of chess game I'm playing - and hence with the Extenction chess being a game in which you play completely different from regular chess - and if something isn't there to jump out at me, I end up playing it like regular chess which of course can be bad. (All the other chess games which look like regular chess but with different rules are already OK with different color borders - it is just this one for some reason that is not colored.)
BIG BAD WOLF: But when you click on the game to play, don't you know what game your clicking on? When you see the position, don't you remember your strategy from the last move?
The problem is when the board looks just like another, it is easy to confuse what game you are playing. All other Chess variants which look the same as regular chess but have very different rules are a different color except for 1 - Extinction chess. (which of course the easiest solution is to give it a different border.)
Berolina - redish border Knight Relay - Dark Green border Legan - Bluish border 3 checks - light green Cylinder - greenish Amazon Chess - Green Ambiguoues - Blue Atomic - Dark Blue Loop - Light Blue Anti - Red
All the rest either play just like chess (Crazy screen), or have a completly different setup (Maharajah) that you don't need a border since it is easy to tell you are playing a different game.
Extinction Chess looks just like regular chess, but you can't play it like regular chess - you have to play it differently, yet it does not have a different border color.
And it's not about memorizing the colors - seeing a different color for me at least quickly tells me there is something special about the game, which then leads me to look at the game name.
Heck - if it is such a big deal that this one game does not have a color - then lets get rid of the colors for all the Chess games. Of course I'll stop playing those also.
Modificado por toedder (17. Janeiro 2007, 16:02:44)
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.
Gordon Shumway: Oh, you're right...:) I just don't pay attention to the colors. It's way easier to look at the name of the game than remember all the colors...
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.
Modificado por toedder (17. Janeiro 2007, 15:48:43)
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 ;)
BIG BAD WOLF:" To lose a game because you did not know what game you are playing is just stupid - it is a stupid way to lose, and a stupid way to win against someone else. To lose because you got beat in the game you are playing - then that is OK."
I hope you dont borrow someones car and put diesel in instead of petrol ... oh but i guess you would make sure you know what fuel to use before filling up , .
KotDB: I would agree with you that games with the same board, but having different rules needs something like a different color border to make the game 'stand out' and tell you not to play the game like regular chess. Of course I've stopped playing Extinction Chess since when I start playing games, my eyes go strait to the board and don't spend the extra time looking closly at the name of the game - so I end up playing it like regular chess which of course is bad.
Since there is a small amount of players who do not like this game to have a different color, then what Walter Montego said would be a great suggestion.
Make a "chess board color" tab in the settings.
Have 3 options - (1) All boards with same white border, (2) default BK with each board different - having a different color picked for each game (default choice - like current, except all games having different color boarder), or (3) Pick colors for each game below
Then list each game with a drop down box that list 25 colors in which the person can go through each game and click the color they want for each.
Anyway, bottom line in my opinion - if the boards look the same, and the rules are different - there needs to be a different border color for each. To lose a game because you did not know what game you are playing is just stupid - it is a stupid way to lose, and a stupid way to win against someone else. To lose because you got beat in the game you are playing - then that is OK.
KotDB heavenlyemma: And I'd like to repeat that I like the border as it is. I did suggest that Fencer enable the settings so each player could change the border for each game. Then you could have your pink border and I could have it as it right now.
Why are Froglet's games mixed up with "Other" games? Battleboats is a category with 3 similar games. Same with Go. Why not a Froglet category then? Now that I'm at it, Attax and Assimilation are very close to Reversi games too. So, maybe they all should be included in the same category?
Just a simple request Fencer, that i found a bit of a pain when sorting Teams out. We have dots telling us if we are in a Team entered or not in a Team. Could the Bosses have another colour dot so we know which Tournaments we already have Teams for. Once the first few Teams are entered and people join various Teams, and with different Captains, its very easy to lose track where the Fellowship has got to entering what Team Tournaments when there are so many. Maybe a blue dot on the Team Tournament page to just denote, Fellowship has a Team entered in that Tournament.
emmett: That I wouldn't aggree with. You may want to test some openings with a particular color, or choose some color to give some advantage to your opponent when you're playing with a weaker friend or trying to teach a new game...
how about, when creating a "new game", in the colour choice, add to "black" and "white" also "random" which means that the color will be selected at random when the invitation is accepted.