Connect Four

[T_Law]

Hi everyone! Connect Four is now available for everyone to play in its Beta Release!

Thanks a lot to Savaggio for helping me check the code, to Clappy for drawing the game elements and to everyone that helped me test the game while in its Alpha Release!

I personally love this classic game so I'm happy that I can now play it here on BGA, it brings me back lots of memories from my childhood and I hope this simple implementation will satisfy all of you just as much.

For those of you that never played it, the rules are easy to learn: your goal is to connect four discs of your color before your opponent does the same, but the main thing to keep in mind is that the game board is vertical, so your pieces will fall down to the last row available in the chosen column!
Easy right? Still, this game will make you think a lot if you want to become a master!

Finally, as a developer, I will do my best to mantain the game, so if you have suggestions or bugs to report feel free to do so, I'll look into them!

[aesche]

As I already told you directly yesterday: Awesome and great that you developed that game for BGA, that really was one of THE most badly missing abstract games here! I hope it will see lots of activity.

Except the starting issue that we discussed already (we need to rally to BGA that they also implement something like that for the arena mode, that‘s pretty pointless in such a game otherwise), I didnt find any further issues yet - though it would be awesome (and also important somewhat imho) if there were someone helping to improve the graphics!

Does someone know what happens when BETA is over? Score reset? Or just nothing?

[aesche]

I was thinking about the reward system. In a game where the opening player wins if he plays right and where there are no other possibilities to make this up (opener swatch as in Hex and other games), I think that this should be reflected in the points rewarded somehow.

E.g.
Opener wins: ELO gains & losses reduced by 1/3rd
2nd player wins: ELO gains & losses increased by 1/3rd

Also, while ELO loss/gain for draws between two uneven players is bad in draw-games such as Nine Men‘s Morris, here, I feel like it would be ok if the 2nd player were rewarded with some points if he draws

E.g.
Draw: ELO gains & losses as if 2nd player wins, but reduced by 2/3rd.

Going from the observation that draws here currently give 0 points for both, while in Nine Men‘s Morris the higher player loses considerable amounts of points, I assume that it technically is possible to implement this on a individual game basis, right?
What do you think about this, T_Law?

Also, what do others think about this?

EDIT: Additionally, as we already are on this and if you actually can influence this on a game basis, I think it should never happen that a win rewards 0 points (currently happening in other games when a Master wins vs a Novice). In the games where there isn‘t tons of activity, especially at the high levels, this totally takes away the point of playing once you reach the top ELO levels, because there are hardly any other top levels around (that want to play vs you / you want to play against), and the lower folks that are looking for opponents are pointless to approach as 0 gain possibilities, but large loss risk only.

[sprockitz]

you could do a 2nd player swap option as there is an opening move which is neutral (perfect play afterwards results in a draw).

[polettix]

you could do a 2nd player swap option as there is an opening move which is neutral (perfect play afterwards results in a draw).

... or have a setup option to initialize the board with one second player's piece in that neutral starting position, and let the game start there.

[sprockitz]

you could do a 2nd player swap option as there is an opening move which is neutral (perfect play afterwards results in a draw).

... or have a setup option to initialize the board with one second player's piece in that neutral starting position, and let the game start there.

yes I like that option. much less fiddly.

[aesche]

I much prefer the suggestion of sprockitz - leaves way more flexibility to the game. If someone opens in lines 1-3, let them have it, if someone strong opens in 4 swap, and leave it if a weak player starts at 4.