Hive - More tournament-ready?

[Friff14]

Hive's premiere tournaments have traditionally been held on Boardspace.net, which runs a Java applet to play the game. As you may know, Mozilla and Google have both entirely dropped support for NPAPI plugins, including Java; Microsoft is going to jump on that wagon soon; and it doesn't look like Oracle is doing anything about making a different Java plugin any time soon. So, the big Hive tournaments look like they will need a new home.

However, BGA's version of Hive just isn't very tournament-ready. There are a few features that would make it more standardized for competitive play, and I would like to help develop them if possible.

First, the whole thing needs to be rotated 30 degrees. This way, there is a distinct up-down line instead of left-right. This makes it possible to notate the games.[/url] (Bonus: if, instead of "Friff14 places a new Grasshopper" the logs said something like "Friff14: BG2 \WS1" for standard Hive notation, that would be excellent!)

Second, the pieces need to be differentiated. Since there are 3 different Ant pieces, they need to be marked somehow. Boardspace does this by rotating the pieces (the first one points up, the second one up-right, the third one down-right). Other methods include putting a dot on the first one, two dots on the second one, and three dots on the third one placed.

Is there any way to implement these changes? Could I take a look at the source code and try to change it myself if the developers don't have the time?

[Een]

Hi,

Looks interesting! This would go well with our intention to make a tournament creation feature available.

First, the whole thing needs to be rotated 30 degrees. This way, there is a distinct up-down line instead of left-right. This makes it possible to notate the games.

This shouldn't be too hard, since it's only about on screen presentation of the pieces.

(Bonus: if, instead of "Friff14 places a new Grasshopper" the logs said something like "Friff14: BG2 \WS1" for standard Hive notation, that would be excellent!)

If implemented, this should only be a user preference option for the game and not the default. People discovering the game or having never played competitively would find this a little confusing

Second, the pieces need to be differentiated. Since there are 3 different Ant pieces, they need to be marked somehow. Boardspace does this by rotating the pieces (the first one points up, the second one up-right, the third one down-right). Other methods include putting a dot on the first one, two dots on the second one, and three dots on the third one placed.

Since all pieces rotate to face the opposite queen, the second method might be better here.

Is there any way to implement these changes? Could I take a look at the source code and try to change it myself if the developers don't have the time?

Yes, please register on BGA Studio. In the meantime I'll ask the two developers for Hive if that's allright for them to have you make some improvements, then give you developer access to the game.

Best,
Een

[Friff14]

All right, I've signed up as TannerGriffin0. Have you talked with the developers in charge of the game?

[Een]

Yes, I got their feedback today, and they told me "sure, no problem, we are actually pretty curious to see where this will go !"

So you are set, I gave you read/write rights on the "hive" project in the studio.

Have fun hacking your changes into the game!

Cheers,
Een

[Quodlibet]

Hi Friff14, do you have some news about your improvements in Hive? Greets!
Christian

[veme]

Just came across this thread and I'd love to see these changes made to the Hive implementation along with a few others to make it better for serious competition (some kind of 'zoom' or 'piece size' function so the whole hive can be visible at once, UNDO/CONFIRM BUTTONS, maybe even force standard orientation). I also have programming experience and wouldn't mind poking around in stuff if Friff14 doesn't want to anymore - I am veme0 in BGA Studio, if the powers that be felt so inclined...

Also, as a high-level player there are some other things that I'd like to bring up about the implementation as it stands. First of all, being able to go backwards in replays would be hugely helpful (not to mention being able to try alternate moves while in the replay...). Having this ability available greatly increased how quickly I was able to learn this game on boardspace.net, and encourages players to review games together afterward to talk about alternate moves and resulting options/possibility trees. You learn more and make more friends!

Also, the introduction of the recent color preference option has resulted in the possibility of black making the first move in Hive. While the rules don't forbid this, I feel like white first is pretty standard at this point and it confuses understanding of replays when there is no set starting color. Especially when you can't go backwards in the replay

[Een]

I also have programming experience and wouldn't mind poking around in stuff if Friff14 doesn't want to anymore - I am veme0 in BGA Studio, if the powers that be felt so inclined...

Access granted, it's Xmas after all

being able to go backwards in replays would be hugely helpful

Unfortunately, this is not possible with the current BGA framework. Maybe sometimes in the future, though.

the introduction of the recent color preference option has resulted in the possibility of black making the first move in Hive

This has been reported in other threads too. We'll add Hive to the list of games unaffected by color preferences.

Best,
Een

[RobertBr]

I personally do not like the point down arrangement. It is counter-intuitive for most people. The idio-syncratic notation system that requires it is also not my ideal way of recording the game - its possible to notate a Hive game without marking the pieces or giving them a particular orientation. If this was implemented I would strongly suggest allowing players to retain the older, and nicer, implementation.

[Victoria_La]

I am currently in process of fixing Hive to implement some suggestion from this thread.
What I did so far

• Tournament style notifications and related changes
  -- Board rotated 30 deg
  -- boardspace notation is used for placement but now its mixed with user friendly notation, i.e. "bob [wG3 /wS1] places a new Grasshopper". Not sure what is the best way?
  -- I added ugly dots to mark the pieces, since they have to be distinguishable. I think better approach would be use rotation, but rotation is used to point to the queen bee now.
  -- My question to hive players is what is the best way to present this? Maybe only have notation and dots when playing in "tournament mode"?
• Confusion about the confirmation, its not obvious game is waiting for confirmation
  -- I added blinking on a piece when its unconfirmed, it looks better imho
  -- I added same conformation on new placement as well to make consistent with move
• I also noticed some bugs like game proposing wrong moves, it fixes itself after ui refresh. Is this just me or somebody else noticed it?

Screenshot

notation.jpg (148.94 KiB) Viewed 4592 times