Table mode?

[CB Droege]

I just had a great idea!

Well, I think it's great.

I was thinking the other day: "I wish I could play BGA games with my friends while we're just hanging out, especially when it would be impractical to bring actual games along, but easy enough to bring a tablet or laptop along" and it stuck me: That would be an amazing feature!

Imagine it: Next to "Real-time" and "Turn-based" there could also be "Table" (or maybe "Hot-Seat"). This would be a mode with no time limits, no chance for ELO, and all players are run from the same log-in. Essentially, it would allow multiple people to play a game on the same screen by simply sharing the screen, like laying the tablet in the middle of the table at a restaurant or a park, or sitting in a living-room, playing on a TV.

Of course, it would only work for certain games - specifically, games without any necessary hidden information - but for those games, it would be a very cool feature. Games like Carcassonne (with pre-draw removed), Hive, and Puerto Rico don't rely on player-hidden info, and so could easily be adapted to the feature, not to mention classics like Hex, Go, Reversi, Backgammon, and Senet - anything in which all information is known equally by all players (or which can easily be adapted to play that way - like Stone Age, which has some hidden information, but it's not really essential to gameplay that it be hidden.).

I have no idea what the technical or legal challenges would be, but I think this would be an amazing feature for the site.

Thoughts?

[Jest Phulin]

Interesting idea...

First, if implemented, I'd definitely make this a member perk....

Also, I don't think it would be necessary to force a no time limit game. Since you are setting up the table, you can enforce whatever time you want. You will be playing real-time, but can easily set up the table to turn-based to give plenty of thinking time.

It wouldn't even be needed to force no ELO either. ELO calculations are a zero-sum process. Any ELO gained by person 1 will be lost by person 2 (or 3, 4, etc.). This assumes that everyone is using the same login. If three friends at one device want to challenge someone else with a different login, that would be a different matter and could easily be seen as policy violations.

As to technical issues, there would be a few. It might be necessary to put in a temporary name for each player. (Wait, is Joe red this game, or am I?) That may be difficult to overcome, as games have been written to reference the login name.
Another one would be the board orientation. Games are oriented from the player's perspective -- home rows being on the bottom of the screen, goals being to the top. If I recall correctly, all game elements are sent from the server to the browser, then the server tells the browser where to place them. Reorienting between moves would be the same as reloading the table between turn-based moves--the code is there, but it would create a larger server load.

I'd also want any games played in this manner to NOT count towards total plays for purposes of prestige. It would be too easy to play several games of solitaire and claim awards.
It would be nice to just play solitaire sometimes, though, just to learn the rules. I've done this in physical life, sometimes I'd like to do it in electronic form too.

So, long story short (too late, I know). Good idea, I don't see problems that can't be overcome, but not a trivial implementation.

[turtler7]

I have done this with current settings with my friends but using more than one tablet/phone and them on their own accounts. I have sat down in person with several friends and played a turnbased takenoko game using our tablets so we can still talk and socialize like a normal game day but not have to mange pieces, shuffling, and oh yeah I don't own that physical copy yet. If you don't have multiple tablets to work with you might be able to open multiple different types of browsers (chrome, firefox, safari, whatever) and log different accounts into each of them so you can just swap perspectives from one browser to another as you pass it between players.