Game Comment

Hi! It me again! Again I create a website!

https://games.tasuki.org/

It can be used to analyze your games and share your ideas with others. As a teaser, here are thoughts about some of my games:

• https://games.tasuki.org/game/lg/2429654 - torus go against egozolwia
  
• https://games.tasuki.org/game/lg/2439284 - torus go against Malcolm
  
• https://games.tasuki.org/game/lg/2423278 - TwixT 48 against David
  
• https://games.tasuki.org/game/lg/2470736 - Hex against skylineidolon... please someone teach me basics of Hex
  

The supported games are (Torus) Go, TwixT, and Hex. All the board sizes! I'm finding I don't really care for other games very much rn. If you want to add support for a game, it should be like a couple hundred lines, unless the game is very inelegant ;-)

Things I'd like to do:

* Show recent comments somewhere, maybe on the homepage.
* Show the game tree for easier visual navigation (it's kind of usable without, but it'd be a big improvement)
* Allow editing your comments (for now - just post a fixed one and I'll delete the old one)
* Disallow commenting on running games (for now - don't!)

Submit bug reports and suggestions here, or https://github.com/tasuki/game-comment (it MIT license!!)

Tell me what you think!

Hey that looks entirely different than the preview did! On my website the comments look like their previews ;-)

Quibbles, tasuki:

I think that your contributions have been FABULOUS and will prove helpful and instructive to all!
That said, you have made changes to your display board which I hope you will fix.

1. When you step through a game by using the forward button, you first get a little dot previewing the next move, and then you must hit a 2nd time to actually play the move. I don't understand why you made this change, but it is DRIVING ME CRAZY. I hope you will fix this.

2. When I display a new game (even yours, using the above link) the game title on top still displays the players from my last use of the app! Not good. And personally I preferred to see the players names clearly displayed on the bottom of the screen.

Since this app is not downloaded and installed, I understand that you must have a personal server connected to the web, ready and waiting to receive and process requests from this site - 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. This is similar to what Alan Hensel has set up in his kitchen. Well, I don't know if this is costing you anything, but I am certainly grateful for donating your time and efforts to the players at Little Golem!

MisterCat, we'll iron it out! Yes I know it's rough around the edges, but I had heaps of work done I wanted to release. If it's too bad I can even temporarily put the old interface somewhere so people can use that while we iron out the issues with the new one.

When you step through a game by using the forward button, you first get a little dot previewing the next move, and then you must hit a 2nd time to actually play the move. I don't understand why you made this change, but it is DRIVING ME CRAZY. I hope you will fix this.

I'm not sure I understand: the last move should be highlighted with a red dot, and the variations in the game tree should all have the little preview-dot. But! One click of the button should display one more move. Are you saying that when you click the button six times you only see three more moves?

When I display a new game (even yours, using the above link) the game title on top still displays the players from my last use of the app! Not good. And personally I preferred to see the players names clearly displayed on the bottom of the screen.

I also kind of miss the big player names. Are you on mobile? Vertical space is extremely precious on mobile. If we want people to be able to read the comments at all, I can't see how the player names could fit on the screen...

Wrt the server, it costs very little and I host lots of things on it! If anything, the development time is the precious resource. But I'm doing it for my own amusement!

Trying to get a handle on what's going on. It seems that with each press of the forward button, TWO pegs are displayed at once: the next move made along with a ghost peg, appearing to be the next, subsequent move. So each forward button displays 2 pegs at once - the real move and the upcoming move. I don't know where to look! I find it very difficult to follow the game, and making the ghost dot smaller and lighter is not helping. I find it so confusing it makes me dizzy.

And the titles - now I am seeing a HISTORY on top of all the games I have ever displayed! Right now, there are 3 up there, but that's since you made the switch. I tried closing your app and restarting from LG, but nothing changed! The history was still there and also any moves I added- even accidentally, were still there! Permanently. Can't get rid of them!

Under present circumstances I can no longer use your app! Sorry to say this, but keep working on it. I'll try again - someday.

I currently use your mobile app on an android tablet. My PC was getting repaired. I need to hook it all up again, so if the app works better on PC, I'll let you know. mc

Trying to get a handle on what's going on. It seems that with each press of the forward button, TWO pegs are displayed at once: the next move made along with a ghost peg, appearing to be the next, subsequent move. So each forward button displays 2 pegs at once - the real move and the upcoming move. I don't know where to look! I find it very difficult to follow the game, and making the ghost dot smaller and lighter is not helping. I find it so confusing it makes me dizzy.

Hah, I love talking about this stuff, so if you can find the patience, let's talk about it. First, this isn't my invention: Eidogo and WGo.js both do something similar, though they show letters for the variations instead of the dots.

How to visually show what variations there are? I can see the following possibilities:

• Do not show any ghost dots for the variations (CGoban2 does this). A valid choice, but it'd require displaying the actual variation tree, which is something I haven't gotten around to implementing yet.
  
• Show ghost dots for the descendants (current behaviour!). A variation of this would be to only show the dot when there's more than one descendant. That should be reasonably easy to implement. We could also show letters instead of the dots, though I'm not sure whether/how that'd help.
  
• Show ghost dots for the neighbors. Sabaki does that. For me that's too late: I want clicking the ghost dot to lead me to the variation.
  

And the titles - now I am seeing a HISTORY on top of all the games I have ever displayed! Right now, there are 3 up there, but that's since you made the switch. I tried closing your app and restarting from LG, but nothing changed! The history was still there and also any moves I added- even accidentally, were still there! Permanently. Can't get rid of them!

Ah, this is on purpose: I hate losing stuff accidentally, eg by browser crashing. If you click the button in the very top left corner, it should toggle between "full view" and "short view". In the "short view" the top bar takes less space, in the "full view" you can see more: also the buttons to close the tabs! I agree the UX of this is atrocious, and I'm all ears for how to improve it.

Under present circumstances I can no longer use your app! Sorry to say this, but keep working on it. I'll try again - someday.

You're almost saying it as if you were doing me a favour by using it ;-)

I'm far from forcing you to use it - I made it for my own amusement.

Understood, re:favor. That was not my point, though. To be more clear, I WANT to use the app, I WANT EVERYBODY to use the app, and especially since it remains the only means of analyzing Twixt 30 & 48 games, it is invaluable. Richard even added the link to the Twixt display, though admittedly this caught you by surprise.
On mobile phone or tablet, it's better than Alan's because it fills the whole screen nicely; useful for folks like moi, with aging eyesight (called presbyopia).
Once I start using on PC, perhaps some of those issues will go away and, as I said, I'll let you know.
mc

" torus go " - Did you share this info in the Go forum? Because I didn't see this post until now. I rarely have time to read posts in the general forum, I'm here (on LG) to play Go-variants (specifically T-Go !) so I often read posts on the Go forum, but I might have missed it.

MisterCat, then let's perhaps work together. I'm a little reluctant to remove the ghost dot altogether. Perhaps when I get around to implementing the tree, but that won't be soon I'm afraid. Wrt filling the whole screen, I sacrificed a lot to fill the whole screen - one of the things sacrificed is the UX. PC vs mobile, I'd rather it kind of work on both? The mobile/tablet interface will always suffer from general lack of screen space to display all the things. Especially for bigger board sizes, it's vital for the board to be displayed as large as possible.

Sighris, I didn't want to spam all the forums at once, and wanted to do it gradually to collect feedback and iron out bugs. I'd already announced it on the TwixT forum some time ago (was a really different version). In hindsight, I should've announced this on the Go/Hex forums first and only then the general forum. No idea what I was thinking...

I am grateful for all your work!
- For Twixt I hope you will reintroduce different color boards for different variations from the game line.
- When I click the browser refresh button (Chromium under Linux) I do not lose the variations I have been looking at, which is good, but I do not immediately access the current position if there have been moves made since I started analyzing, which is not so good. I can delete my analysis by clicking the X in your display, and then from the LG page click on the "tasuki" link to see the current position, but then my analysis is lost. Also, I am unable to examine variations prior to the current position. Ideally for me would be to keep all my analysis and also also show the current position when I refresh, and allow analysis of any variation no matter how early in the game. Did I miss something?

David, I'll try to reintroduce the colours!

but I do not immediately access the current position if there have been moves made since I started analyzing.

Hmm, it should reload the game when you switch tabs (or even just click the game tab title itself).

Also, I am unable to examine variations prior to the current position.

This is very weird! Why not? For each move, there should be little dots on the board for all the available follow-up variations (what Mr Cat has complained about). This should be preserved even for the past moves and past variations. Yes, clicking the X makes the local state forget the game altogether, with all the variations.

Perhaps all of this could be helped if I show a clickable tree of the variations. Alas, it's not completely trivial to implement, so I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Hello Tasuki

It seems like game.tasuki.org is not working properly or is it only for me?
Showing no history and no move coordinates.
Has been so for a month or so.
Cheers, Flemming

Flemming, I changed it so the internal representation is a proper tree, rather than a list of variations. Now I added display of the tree - this was much more work than I thought, and ultimately not worth it, had I known :)

But hey, it's there, half baked, perhaps 90% working. I'll try to make the UI a little nicer if I can think of an easy way.

I have some other ideas for improvement (bring back the colours!), but I'm afraid it'll all take some time.