Redstone, a Go variant, now at BGA

[MarkSteere]

Redstone, a variant of Go, is now played here at Board Game Arena.

https://www.marksteeregames.com/Redstone_rules.pdf

https://www.abstractgames.org/redstone.html

https://forums.online-go.com/t/redstone ... rena/43188

[RicardoRix]

Hi.

The co-ordinate option should be on by default. Not sure why you'd ever not want it.

When you send a notification, you should be able to send it with the player name coming up in colour. and can the colours be black and white?

When you send 'not legal placement' notification it should only go to the specific current player, not the opponent.

This example does the colour and the specific player:

Code: Select all

$this->notifyPlayer($player_id, "not_legal", '${player_name} not a legal placement', 
			['player_name' => $player_name]); 

Some of the stones are off-centre.

The game progression is a 100% and there are legal moves left....?

It would be a nice touch, if when near the end of the game (10% legal placements left?) that it automatically switches that feature on. Or maybe you could have a not legal placement counter for each player and auto turn it on after 5 in a turn or something.

[T72on1]

The option to turn on coordinates doesn't seem to work at all in my game.

[MarkSteere]

Hi.

The co-ordinate option should be on by default. Not sure why you'd ever not want it.

When you send a notification, you should be able to send it with the player name coming up in colour. and can the colours be black and white?

When you send 'not legal placement' notification it should only go to the specific current player, not the opponent.

This example does the colour and the specific player:

Code: Select all

$this->notifyPlayer($player_id, "not_legal", '${player_name} not a legal placement', 
			['player_name' => $player_name]); 

Some of the stones are off-centre.

The game progression is a 100% and there are legal moves left....?

It would be a nice touch, if when near the end of the game (10% legal placements left?) that it automatically switches that feature on. Or maybe you could have a not legal placement counter for each player and auto turn it on after 5 in a turn or something.

Hi RicardoRix,

Thank you for your feedback. Sorry about delay in response. I didn't realize I could subscribe to a topic, but now I've done so.

I have the coordinates turned off in Redstone (and all the other games I've programmed with a coordinates option) for aesthetics. Personally, I never like to see coordinates, and I want the UI to have a simple, clean appearance by default.

Hmmm. I have ten games on BGA now and this is the first time anyone has suggested putting the names in the history panel in color. Good suggestion, and it would be possible, but*... The player names are in their colors** in the player panel, the title bar, and in the history panel when the pie (switch colors) rule is invoked. **I use blue text for the white player because white text is invisible against a white background. I'm sure there's a way to do black outlined white text, but*...

*But I think I'm too lazy to do these non-essential things. I'm going to the countryside today for 5 days to visit my cows and think about a new design. I don't think many, if any, of my current remaining designs would be ideal for BGA. For example, to me Zola is an outstanding game, but it's barely registering a pulse here. Has to be simple. Btw, I just uploaded Fractal and I'm waiting for management to move it into alpha.

Good suggestion about the colored names though. I'll seriously consider that for future games.

About the "not a legal placement" notification. I like each player to see what the other is doing. Like if you select a point which could be capturing or non-capturing, and then unselect it, your opponent sees that. I think it makes the game feel more lively if there's some visual opponent awareness than if you're just sitting there in the dark until - boink - your opponent finally manages to complete a move. If it's embarrassing when you click on a non-allowed move (basically trying to move into an enemy eye), you can turn on the Highlight legal moves option and you will be much less likely to make that (fairly obvious) mistake.

Game progression. To make this even semi accurate would require a program component ten times larger than the whole rest of the program. Yes, of course there are legal moves remaining when you win. You can win with less than half of the board filled. If it had to be 90% filled, you'd never get anywhere near that. Game progression is just supposed to be a very crude estimate to prevent people from accepting your challenge, meking 3 moves, and abandoning the game, wasting your time and making you start over.

Off center stones. This was intentional. It was extra work to make this happen. I added a small random offset to stone placements to make it more realistic. I also photographed actual clamshell and slate stones and a ruby for realism. And then microadjusted the images of the white stones, which are all slightly different sizes, to precisely fit in the stone array. I put a lot of work into the Redstone UI.

Game progression is part of the system framework and is always on. I don't have any control over that. I just have to write a function that provides a crude estimate when requested of it.

For non-legal placements, I think the players need to be informed right away. I don't see any point in making them do it 5 times, wondering what the **** is going on, before cluing them in.

Overall, good suggestions though. Thanks.

[MarkSteere]

The option to turn on coordinates doesn't seem to work at all in my game.

Are you using Firefox by any chance? The only similar issues ever happened way back with Gopher on Firefox.

Suggestion: Do a screen refresh and, if that doesn't work, clear your browser cache

Let me know. Thank you for your feedback.

[T72on1]

Microsoft Edge when on PC. But I have the same issue when using BGA on mobile too.

[RicardoRix]

They are mostly not non-essential things. They are covered in the BGA guidelines, and if you notice with other BGA games, they ALL provide these things. My guess is that you haven't read the docs. If no-one has suggested these, then ....

The non-legal placement messages you get as the opponent is without any other indication of what is happening. It's just plain wrong, you sit there with a bunch of messages knowing your opponent is struggling. The idea of notifications is that they can be directed at specific players accordingly. Use notifyPlayer() / NotifyAllPlayers() correctly.

ALL other BGA games use the players names in colour in notifications. It's easy and built in as part of the BGA framework. Just use 'player_name' as the argument.
Why are the peoples names not Black & White like the stones?? No idea...Chess and GO do it.
If for the minority of players want the co-ordinates off, then the options should be there to turn them off. So the default should be on.

You need to provide a better progression calculation. 100% when 25% of the board is full is obviously wrong. That's your control over it. You have full control over it. Yes, people use it. You are over exaggerating the problem to make it perfect. Just less crude will suffice. You already calculated the number of legal placements left for each player, why not use that?

You want users to have a positive reaction to playing your games, don't you?
Rightly or wrongly, as a player, if I see these obvious mistakes, then it makes me wonder about just what else hasn't been tested. Like if some of the games rules haven't been tested. Some of this can be expected in an Alpha or possibly a Beta game, but not a fully released game.

[MarkSteere]

Microsoft Edge when on PC. But I have the same issue when using BGA on mobile too.

Hmmm. I'll look into it a few days later when I return from the countryside.

[MarkSteere]

They are mostly not non-essential things. They are covered in the BGA guidelines, and if you notice with other BGA games, they ALL provide these things. My guess is that you haven't read the docs. If no-one has suggested these, then ....

The non-legal placement messages you get as the opponent is without any other indication of what is happening. It's just plain wrong, you sit there with a bunch of messages knowing your opponent is struggling. The idea of notifications is that they can be directed at specific players accordingly. Use notifyPlayer() / NotifyAllPlayers() correctly.

ALL other BGA games use the players names in colour in notifications. It's easy and built in as part of the BGA framework. Just use 'player_name' as the argument.
Why are the peoples names not Black & White like the stones?? No idea...Chess and GO do it.
If for the minority of players want the co-ordinates off, then the options should be there to turn them off. So the default should be on.

You need to provide a better progression calculation. 100% when 25% of the board is full is obviously wrong. That's your control over it. You have full control over it. Yes, people use it. You are over exaggerating the problem to make it perfect. Just less crude will suffice. You already calculated the number of legal placements left for each player, why not use that?

You want users to have a positive reaction to playing your games, don't you?
Rightly or wrongly, as a player, if I see these obvious mistakes, then it makes me wonder about just what else hasn't been tested. Like if some of the games rules haven't been tested. Some of this can be expected in an Alpha or possibly a Beta game, but not a fully released game.

"Any other indication?" The program is not placing a stone where they're clicking, and there's a message saying you can't move there. What other indication would they need? You being made aware of this gives you an opportunity not to just "sit there with a bunch of messages knowing your opponent is struggling." You could actually message your opponent and help them out.

I'll take a look at the game progression when I return from the countryside a few days later. It's simply a multiple of the ratio of stones on the board to the total number of points on the board, so I can tweak it if need be.

Coordinates option. To me, aesthetics is critical. If a player has to make two mouse clicks to turn on the coordinates, I'm ok with that. I announced that option in the Redstone players group, so everyone who ever plays should get a message about it.

I don't see how colored names are essential. If you want to see the move your opponent made, you have to focus in on it and read it, at which time the name immediately adjacent to the move will probably register.

I think the rules should be ok. I designed Redstone myself. Granted, it was ten years ago and I forgot some of the particulars over time, but all the rules are on a single page, which I studied very carefully. There's only so much there. Not like Go where you about need a PhD to understand it.

[MarkSteere]

Coordinates. In the initial release I had sizes 9x9, 13x13, and 19x19. Later there were requests for more sizes, so I added 11x11 and 15x15. It seems I neglected to properly install the coordinates images for the two new sizes. I'll get it straightened out when I get back to Ulaanbaatar in a couple days. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.