Thad: I agree!!!!!

Not a joke.

Thad: I don't know if its a joke or not, but i do agree something needs to be done...I don't like playing tournaments either when they last 3 yrs and i have one still going on like that...But poor ole domb me, i'm still on the oldest of the oldest webtv's and so i guess the JOKE was on me..Smile :O)

"it's a joke!!"

I agree 100%!! Fencer, FIX THIS PROBLEM!!!!!

I entered a tournament. I can't play in another until it's over, which is fine, except that I've already spent more time waiting for the next round than I spent playing my game. And I expect that to continue for all the additional rounds. And of course I can't get out of it either. I'd resign if I could. The tournament implementation is poor, poor, poor. I guess I've learned my lesson, which is don't play in tournaments here. Now I know.

diogenysos: I third that idea , but sadly until the current move times work for to EVERYONES advantage and not just a certain few what is the point ???

Nearly 4 months now since the last Team Logik Tournament started and still ONE player has not made a move even though they are here most days and all other games are over in the Tournament.

What is the point, do not need any more loop holes, its a joke !!

diogenysos: I'm second for your idea!

As there seem to be many players here who love fast games
and as there are many players surfing with high speed
and as the BK-servers seem to be stable ;-)  - 

why couldnt we have more options setting the time-limits for our games?
A nice chess-game with an overall-time-limit of 10 _minutes_ 
- or a "three-minute-countdown" (per move, in this case, and sure after clicking on a game
with a certain game-time-limit) for logik-games...
and even a 10-second-countdown e.g. for making a decision in backgammon-games!

 Could give us a nice larger variety of thrills within some games...

We still need doubling cube in Grasshopper, Plakoto & Fevga.

Due to a big popularity of dice games I think I may have some challenge for dice lovers. Here is the new game called Dice War:
1. It combines a setting from Gothic Checkers and some ideas from Hasami Shogi plus of course dynamics of 2 backagammon dice.
2. Initial setting like in Gothic Checkers. Two first rows on either site are taken by checkers.
3. Checkers can move in any of 8 directions as many fields as are shown on a rolled dice. But, here are restrictions:
4. Odd number on a die allows diagonal moves and even number allows horizontal or vertical move.
5. Like in backgammon moves can be conmbined.
One checker can move using two rolls or two checkers can split the roll of two dice.
6. Doubles has no special meaning and are treated as any other roll ...
7. Enemy pieces can be killed if the number on a die
correspond to the number of fields that need to be jumped to replace the piece. There is no jumping over pieces of any color. The first row of both sides is a row of heaven for enemy pieces and they cannot be killed after reaching this row. So, when they reach these rows they are safe and can operate freely.
8. The game ends when one site loses its all pieces ...
Hope you like it. It's an easy game with all the dynamics of dice games. Plenty of ways to play, no boring strategies but still many fine points of tactics.
Best regards,
Andy.

MadMonkey:
That would be great if we could be able to change the colour of our pieces. I've brought this idea up many times in the past few years when my friends at IYT complained of the white/black.

MadMonkey: svg images are XML documents. They can take style sheets, including external ones. So, Fencer could use svg images for Five-in-Line/Line4/etc images and tie it into the "external style sheet" option we already have.

Then everyone can define his/her own colours.

AbigailII: Great stuff, wonder if Fencer would like to use them

also, you can go to your settings and click on game filter and make sure that you have the games that you want to see checked off

BrainKing64: You can only see games you can accept to play in the waiting area. Since you can't accept your own game invites, you don't see them, but you can see them at the bottom of your main games page.

I keep checking the Waiting Games and there is never any Reversi. When I create a game and am waiting for opponets I don't see those in the Waiting Games list either. Can I just not see my games?... Is no one else playing Reversi? I still love the site though.

MadMonkey: I've made some simple graphics in a few colours, and a couple of shapes. I've included the dark purple and green from IYT. They are vector graphics, so they can be scaled to any size without problems.

Thad: Me 2 i used to pay there before i found BrainKing. Like i say though, there are a lot of great Line4 & Spider4 players there, that have tried here, but they can not get used to the colour difference. Worse there are a few that have left here to play there, just because of the colour.

To me it does not make much difference, but to expert players i guess just look at a board and can see things. I would of though it would be quite easy, as you only need 1 piece of each colour as they are all the same shape & size lol

MadMonkey: I used to be a paying member at that site you mention. There are a multitude of problems there. Much worse than here. Over there the Pente stones were (and still are) reversed. White goes first, but not at that site.

Thad: Not on the Froglet subject, though i do thing it is a good idea

If anyone out there is any good at making icons / pieces etc... PLEASE make a set of SpiderLine4 pieces (Dark purple and Green, the same as at IYT).

I know of many players who simply do not play here because they are so used to the IYT colours, they can not get there head round a different set, so they go back there to the colours they know.

Surely it must be so simple , just alter the RGB code to change the colours , still i do not really know, BUT i know we would get players back from IYT (which is always a good thing lol)

Rainbow Road: I'd bet that if someone made a nice set of icon, that Fencer would implement them as selectable in your user settings similar to how you can choose different chess pieces now.

nodnarbo: THe only numbers are on the outside telling you the moves... How many color blind people play on this site? If they love Froglet then than cannot tell which frog is what?
That is why numbers would be needed as alternative for color blind people...

Rainbow Road: but aren't there already numbers on the board

Instead of color frogs use numbers as a alternative...

coan.net: speed rating could help in tournament games if you can set an upper limit to what your rating should be to get in to a tournament.

is the reason I run tourneys with no vacation days and sometimes no days off etc.  I don't join tourneys that have more than 5 days per move.  I know of no easy solution to the abuse but clearly some changes will help alleviate some of the abuse.  I'd like to see it where a person who uses up their vacation days has no possibility of getting new days added one for ANY reason.   Either that or remove auto vac days. 


***BTW, I'm at 0 on vac days left and it's been like that for a few months.  Too bad for me.  Now guess what?  I either move or time out and lose.  That's the way it should be.  In a few days I'll get 40 days vacation.  That's wayyyyy too many.  It's fine for people who use them legitimately but not so much for those that abuse their purpose. 

I get so tired of "MY" games being timed out when I can't get on here-yet others never seem to do so, I play alot of
NO Days off games"  ppl are sooooo slow on here, I still am playing tournament games from 2006!

Just let players set the maximum number of vacation days in any game/ tournament/round allowed when setting up and new game/tournament and the problem is solved. We can set the level of opponent, time parameters, etc. Why not let us allow the maximum number of vacation days? Why do we get to set most of the parameters, but Fencer gets to set that one? Doesn't make sense to me.

pauloaguia & coan.net: Just one thing i would like to add (which i know is not popular) is the ability to purchase extra vacation days. I used all mine up when i had computer problems.

Now i have none, i have to make sure i am here every day, just so nothing times out (sadly i still miss the odd one).

Last month i was away 3 days as i had to go away for a funeral. Luckily, i managed to use a relations laptop to keep an eye on my games. To me i would of been happy to purchase and extra couple of days to save the hassle, but i am not allowed.

Yet i can still come up against players who seem to have unlimited vacation days........its sickening really

How comes mine could not be deducted from next years days as they are already paid for

I know the argument is people would take advantage of any system where you are able to purchase extra days, BUT is that not what we have already. I guess it only applies to certain players

pauloaguia: yes, I agree - it would be better for the system to calculate time-out days without even paying attention if there is a vacation day set - since it won't time out anyway.

(If this is indeed a bug which some are taking advantage of, I'm just trying to come up with a solution to fix it.) People like that give good slow players like myself a bad name

coan.net: Disallowing changes in vacation days is not a good option in my opinion. There are always mistakes or last minutes change of plans and being able to unset vacations seems quite natural to me.
What I don't get is why is it that the system should account for vacation days that haven't even been set. I understand it comes from the old vacation system but the way it is now you can't timeout on a vacation day anyway...

pauloaguia: yea, I knew there was some way to play around with the vacations to get more then you really have - and that is why I would LOVE to have Fencer take a look and see if this person is doing something that is allowed (buying more vacation days), or messing with the system to get themselves more vacation days - which of course hurts the site & is a pain for every other good person on the site. (in which possible either 1. take away rest of vacations for offender, or better yet - fix it so once a vacation day is set, it can't be removed or something similar so the system is not abused.)

coan.net: another one is playing around with weekend days and unsetting previously marked vacation days (if you set 20 vacation days and make a move on a 1 day game it will only timeout 20 days later. If you then unset the vacation days, the timeout is not changed - if the timeout date was set to only 1 day this wouldn't happen - currently if, when timing out, there is a vacation day set the timeout is already postponed 1 day)

I don't even know the game or the name of the player so I'm only guessing...

pauloaguia: Is that what happened in this case, or are you just saying that might be a possibility? If so, then they are purchasing a membership every couple of months to be able to continue to get vacation days. (and if not - would still like Fencer to look at it to make sure it isn't a bug)

I would agree that the practice of getting more vacation days when purchasing another membership should go away.

rod03801: imo you shouldn't even be able to get extra vacation days... but I'm not the decision maker around here, so no point in going any further with that...

pauloaguia: Yes, there should be a limit as to how many times one person can do that in a year. I can see possibly letting someone do it once, but after that it becomes unfair to that person's opponents!

coan.net: You get extra vacation days if you renew your membership (or buy another for someone else in case of Black Rooks).

MadMonkey: Well I hope Fencer will look into it. How a person has used up to 75 vacation days (should have 45 vacation days at most for Black Rook) - and still have 13 left.

If it's a bug - it needs to be fixed. If it's not a bug, then how is it done?

coan.net: Its not just my game, its every game in that Tournament that player is in. I thought Logik was a pretty quick game.

What is worse it the player is still getting entered into Team Tournaments. I actually refused a Team challenge yesterday until the player was removed.

Crazy

mctrivia: Speed rating would not help in tournament & team tournament games when you don't pick the person you play.

In MadMonkey's game, I'm curious if the other person is using vacation days or somehow getting around them since doing quick math - July 7th - 15 weeks - can use 5 vacation days a week (2 weekend days) = 75 vacation days used!!!!!

If this is indeed a bug of some sort, then it needs to be fixed. The current system should work pretty well - yea, someone can hold up a game, but not forever like it seems some are able to do.

MadMonkey: nope not fair but unfortnetly there is always a down side to changing the vacation rules. someone will be un happy no matter what. My proposal of giving people a speed rating they can use to see if they want to play a game with someone has no downsides because it is not changing things just giving us more information to make intelligent decisions by. It will not guarantee a game will go fast but will at least let you avoid those chronic dodlers if you care. If such a system is implemented then you should be able to set limits for games and tournaments.

Something should be done about vacation days. I am in the last Logik Team Tournament (well quite a few of us are) that started on July 7th, that is getting on for 3 months.

My opponent has yet to move, that is hardly fair is it

There should be a user-definable maximum number of vacation days that can be used in any game/tournament/round. I played in one tournament where a player used OVER 100 vacation days. That's just stupid.

There should be some implementation of restarting timed-out games. This opens up a whole new can of worms in tournament situations, but there is surely no reason to forbid a timed-out game between friends from being restarted.

I should be able to save the default time for games that I want. I prefer Fiscjer's clock with 7/0/7, but I have to change it every single time I start a new game. This should probably be done on at least a family of games level. I.e. I should be able to set my pente games to default to 7/0/7 and my espionage games to 30/.5/30, etc.

trohat: Imagine you play e.g. 5-win match and because of bad time management (reason can be some family business or easily some unexpected party with friends) you lose one of those games on timeout. Would you like to lose the entire match ??

Well, yes, I would like that to happen. You'd lose the match if it's a 1-game match anyway - family business or unexpected parties or not. I don't see why a multi-game match should be an exception. Heck, I can argue that in BK, it would even make more sense: considering that for ratings, win/loss ratio and tournaments a 1-game match has the same weight as a 21-point cube match or a 5-win match, BK treats a multi-game match to be a single game, so it kind of make sense to do that for timing as well.

trohat: To make my argument stronger, imagine that this game is with a very weak opponent and the loss would ruin your BKR

It wouldn't ruin it any more than losing a single game match on timeout, so I don't see why it would be 'too hard'.

AbigailII: Again, this would be too hard. Imagine you play e.g. 5-win match and because of bad time management (reason can be some family business or easily some unexpected party with friends) you lose one of those games on  timeout. Would you like to lose the entire match ?? To make my argument stronger, imagine that this game is with a very weak opponent and the loss would ruin your BKR :)   

And if someone stops playing many-game gammon match ??
Since you have rook membership, you dont have to care about game positions. So you just make the first move many times and just let the game "sleep" in the "opponents turn" games, where you dont even look too often, so it doesnt bother you.

I forget to add two more points.

• When playing a multi-game match (being it a cubed match, and N-wins match, or an N-game match), the time control is for the entire match - no resetting between games. So if you saved up a lot of bonus time, you carry it over to the next game. And if you time out on a game, you lose the entire match. No more waiting for many months if someone stops playing in a 21 game gammon match.
  
• You don't get a whole lump of vacation days at the beginning of the year. A new account gets a few days to start with, and one gets a new vacation day every N days you make moves. (So non-active people don't accumulate vacation days, and you don't have time-out free months early in the year. No strategical buying of membership either). N would vary on the membership levels. In BK's terms, I'd set N = 35 for pawns, N = 15 for bishops/knights and N = 10 for rooks. Of course, there would also be maximum of saved up vacation days.
  </ul>

trohat: As I said, if you're playing in such a style that you need to move in the few hours you have available, or else lose the game, you're doing that at your own risk. Note that if you have a 24h time grace period, a max pool time of 24h (1d), and some kind of bonus time, you have to play faster than even the very fast stairs on BK, and you still won't time out if the server is unavailable for one evening.

And note, my post didn't contain a proposal. It just something I would do if I had the chance.

grenv: I disagree, when you have 200-300+ games it is impossible to move on every one every day. not allowing someone to move and take vacation on any one day would discourage some people from moving on the games that they would be able to move on. It is much easier to be allowed to move whenever you want.
Of course, like anything else people will find ways to misuse anything, purposely not moving on certain games and such, but I believe removing that ability would do more hurt than good.

I think a simple change would be good:

Autovacation should not be allowed to happen if you've moved already on that day. However if you select a vacation day in advance you can still move if you want to.

AbigailII: One big disadvantage of your proposal is that it is too complicated and difficult to understand to somebody who just comes to play Backgammon or Ludo (there are people who NOW have problems with understanding to it, so what would it be after making it more tricky).
Moreover, many people dont want to bother about the game time and just use the automatic settings when sending an invitation. In your system, they would have to set pool: 0/0, move (any), bonus: 0 (or, if it would be automatically set, at least think about it if it doesnt mean something they dont want)

By the way, I dont agree with number 6. Imagine, that you go to work every day (it happens sometimes :)) ) and you have no possibility to play BK when at work. So, you have time to play only in the evening. And you have some games which need to be played today (or they will timeout tomorrow during the day). Now, if the server is unavailable during all the evening, you can lose all of them, this is why you need 24 hours.

mctrivia: What I would do if I had the power to decide timing:

• No weekends. No special days (holidays) without time outs as BK used
  to have.
  
• Time control consists of:
  
  1. A grace period.
     
  2. Pool time, both initial and max.
     
  3. Move time.
     
  4. Bonus time.
     </ol>
     You loses a game on time if your pool time goes below 0.
     
     
     If it's your move, you first have "grace period" to make your move before
     it starts eating away from your pool time. Because people live in different
     timezones, grace time should be at least 24 hours. I'd require a minimum
     24 hour grace period for rated and tournament games. In the BK system,
     playing a non-Fisher clock game with 3 days/move equals having a grace period
     of 3 days, and no pool or bonus time.
     
     
     Pool time is the amount of time you have to make all your moves (after
     running out of your grace time). This is the time you have in a Fisher
     clock game on BK. There's an initial pool time, and a max pool time;
     equivalent to the first and third components of BK's Fisher clock.
     Pool time runs down when it's your turn and haven't moved within the grace
     period, it can be added to if you make a move with "move time"; the amount
     added to the "bonus time". If "move time" is set to infinity it means you
     get your bonus time for each move, just like bonus time does in BK's Fisher
     clock games. Pool time can not exceed its set max, except for the case
     explained below.
     
     
     Note that both current clocks can be simulated with the system I described
     here.
     
  5. Vacation days must be set in advance; they won't be automatic. If you
     set a vacation day, all your games get 24 hours added to their pool time,
     regardless whether it's your turn on not. (In this case, pool time can exceed
     their set maximum). You cannot make any moves while on vacation. If you
     come back from vacation and make a move, if after your move your pool time
     exceeds its max, it's set to the max.
     
  6. Short server unavailability isn't a reason to grant another 24 hours to
     your pool time; if you time your games you'll time out on a short
     unavailability, it's your risk. In general, if the server hasn't been
     available for X hours, everyone whose turn it is gets X hours added to their
     pool time.
     </ul>
     Now, this isn't a proposal. Fencer wouldn't want to implement it anyway.
     

     
     BTW, Fencer, you need to clean up your HTML parsing. The system doesn't recognize </ol> and </ul> tags. Probably caused by the misbelieve the closing tag of the LI element is mandatory, judging by the closing tags the system adds at the end of my posting.