Overall Decline in Quality

[GTSchemer]

About the replay speed, it depends on implementation. One of the prolific developers (Tisaac?) even wrote a guide several years ago about how to make replays faster when you develop a game module: https://bga-devs.github.io/blog/posts/a ... play-mode/

Given your knowledge of this, is replay/are replays being implemented by the individual game developers or handled site-wide? In the past, I've submitted bug reports on replay speed varying depending on players' preferences during play, but I'm now wondering whether those should have been directed to the individual game bug sections instead..?

As far as I know, it should go to the individual game bug section. Note that many games are maintained by volunteers, and depending on how the game works, it may not always be easy to investigate and speed up the replay speed.

Common principles should apply though, and hopefully the guide is still applicable even though it is older.

[Meeplelowda]

BGA's need to play 'through' the game until it reaches your turn, tells me that the structure of the turn table is very likely dependent on externalities that require resources to recreate. Considering that the 'Game Turn' is a fundamental data structure, I would assume that the process of rebuilding it is daunting. To quote the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, "That's the impression that I get."

This is essentially correct. Each instance of a game operates on the state machine paradigm, and prior states are not preserved (*in general) so to get to a particular state, you have to recreated all the state transitions from the beginning of the game until the present.

As for the "in general" part, some implementations like Yinsh and Dvonn in the GIPF series have an in-game replay function allowing you to step back and forth through the moves without using the "Replay from this point" function in the game log. I'm not sure how it works, but it seems like that's an easier thing to implement for a pure abstract game where the board state can be represented in a fairly compact text file.

[Timm-E]

BGA's need to play 'through' the game until it reaches your turn, tells me that the structure of the turn table is very likely dependent on externalities that require resources to recreate. Considering that the 'Game Turn' is a fundamental data structure, I would assume that the process of rebuilding it is daunting. To quote the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, "That's the impression that I get."

This is essentially correct. Each instance of a game operates on the state machine paradigm, and prior states are not preserved (*in general) so to get to a particular state, you have to recreated all the state transitions from the beginning of the game until the present.

As for the "in general" part, some implementations like Yinsh and Dvonn in the GIPF series have an in-game replay function allowing you to step back and forth through the moves without using the "Replay from this point" function in the game log. I'm not sure how it works, but it seems like that's an easier thing to implement for a pure abstract game where the board state can be represented in a fairly compact text file.

The same developer also created Darwins Journey, which has the same Replay functionality. So it seems possible with complex games as well. I wish every game uses this kind of replay functionality!

[Evilgenius1979]

How about BGA staff get involved with the community and reply with feedback on these forums and give us updates on the improvements they are making. Doesn't require a lot of investment to communicate and that would give us some hope that quality is being looked at and potentially improved.

[lefalaf]

How about BGA staff get involved with the community and reply with feedback on these forums and give us updates on the improvements they are making. Doesn't require a lot of investment to communicate and that would give us some hope that quality is being looked at and potentially improved.

Yeah - regular communication, as well as listening to users and adjusting priorities where warranted, would go a long way. There is no need for a gaming site to be so top secret.