The following features are planned for some future version:

• Goatdown.
• Lag correction for the conundrum.
• Appeal feature for disallowed words and misentered numbers game.
• Automatic recaps.
• Extra time to enter your word if you're typing something when the letters round ends.
• Inverse subtraction & division.
• Challenge retraction.

The following features are things I might do if I feel like it:

• Blind Countdown - each letter disappears as the next appears. (Thanks Jono)
• Fixed-time games - you have a certain amount of time, maybe 225 seconds, for all fifteen rounds, and you have to end rounds as and when you feel like it. (Thanks Jono)
• Preselected letters.

Old requests which have now been implemented:

• Persistent stats (track my wins and losses, ratings, etc.)
• Artificial opponents for people with no friends.
• Spectator mode.
• Customisable game format (rather than fixed 15-round 30-seconders.)
• Hypercountdown (12 letter selections. Not sure how we'd do the dictionary.)
• Consensual early round ending. (Thanks Jono)
• Maximum-only scoring.
• Pictures to accompany the dialogue.
• Challenges should give you some idea of what they are before you agree to them.

Feel free to make further feature requests below, which I might incorporate into the above.

Consensual early round ending!!
Blind Countdown (each letter disappears as the next appears)
Fixed-time games (you have a certain amount of time, maybe 225 seconds, for all fifteen rounds, and you have to end rounds as and when you feel like it)

Inverse subtraction and division for numbers rounds.

Automatic recaps.

On the same lines as fixed-time games, speed games, and hypercountdown? Though admittedly this will require the 10s-12s being culled from the ode.

Speed games is implicitly mentioned, not sure about hypercount/goatdown

Some way of indicating maxes in the console.

Pre-selected letters. Particularly for 10-second rounds. There's a definite advantage to be had with selecting 8 then pausing.

Sound effects to indicate certain things like a game being initiated, a tile being selected etc. so you can do other shit between rounds and still know where you are in the game.

A confirmation popup for if you press to end the round early, but haven't yet entered a word/numbers declaration.

Pictures of the hosts and DC guests might be quite a nice touch, not sure on the legalities of this though, we could always draw pictures of them in various expressional poses.

If the java is unable to select a random DC guest how about giving players the option to select their DC guest at the start of the game?

Once the ranking system is up a records/stats section would be a nice addition.

Instead of ratings, have titles, like, 15-round format title, Conundrum attack title, etc., that are defended whenever you play in that format. If the title isn't defended for a while, it gets vacated and is somehow put up for grabs.

A restricted-access central library of all recaps would be awesome for monitoring cheats.

On the subject of ratings, I reckon there's room for both formal ratings as per isc and the titles Jono suggested- only with the option to toggle both off- again, as per isc.

Not really feature requests, but a few thoughts which I saw no harm in sharing. Others can agree or disagree and Charlie you can take it however.

Firstly, don't play against a cunt on your first game. Jono decided to break me in with a 7-second round game, which gave me no opportunity to get to grips with the game and see how it all worked. This left me rather frustrated and gave a negative first impression. Entirely Jono's fault. Fortunately I managed to cry enough on msn that he stopped :p

The 'end of round' panes which come up are great, but I'd like the stages to appear one by one - all the information is thrown at you at once and I found myself instantly scanning just for the words which my opponent had played. I felt some of the tension was a bit lost - you've declared a seven - but they've got an eight! ... you give your seven... they give their eight... it looks a little dodgy, but is it in...? It is! Oh noes! etc. Just felt that some of that excitement went a little bit.

Also I felt it was unnecessary for Carol/Myleene to give her numbers solution when she hadn't bettered the contestants - doesn't happen on the show. The numbers bit is fantastic though, was super-impressed with the way it interprets your notes, and also liked the aggressive timer if you have to explain your formula after the time limit - no spending another minute trying to fudge your way to a solution. The show itself could learn from this!

I think opinions are divided on this. Personally I like the ability to basically ignore all the dialogue and just skip straight to DC's words, and I suspect most people will reach that stage after playing the game a few times. But I could have the option to read the dialogue in separate windows, for people who like that kinda thing.



Yeah, another matter of opinion I suppose. Carol always finds the most concise method and it's sometimes interesting to see an efficient solution if your own is messy. But it would be nice if she didn't bother to give a method when it's exactly the same as the contestants'. Determining if two methods are basically equivalent is non-trivial, but meanwhile I'll change it so she doesn't bother to give her solution unless it's strictly shorter than the method from both contestants.

Stop whining you mingebag. I don't work for Apterous Productions Inc., I'll fuck you up at 7 seconds as and when I feel like it.

Well it hurt my feelings. I've endured graphic videos of executions and various war atrocities, but I genuinely had no idea people could be so cruel.

Also, I didn't like some of the comments that the Dictionary Corner guests came out with. Some of the words they suggested were in no way anything that somebody could come up with in 30 seconds without a shuffler, and I found it very disrespectful towards the contestants. I think in future it would be nice if there was some kind of disclaimer that dictionary corner's words are only suggestions and in no way meant to disrespect the people that are playing the game at that time.

Appreciate your comments in response Charlie. I take your point that people will probably ignore the dialogue after a few games, but I found that I was ignoring it pretty much from the start, because I instantly wanted to get to the "important information" of what my opponent had got, and what words DC had got. I didn't notice the $name thing until very late, for example, because I simply wasn't paying attention to it. I still feel though that the "fluff" of the dialogue is a different matter to the tension of knowing your opponent's declarations before the words are revealed, and subsequently whether they are valid, which I do feel is lost in your implementation.

I also think it would be nice if you could pick certain patterns on the numbers. Some people like to have a "Whitehall", whereas others enjoy "an inverted T". I think it's important that these people feel they have been able to make their favourite selection.

I don't want to seem like I'm being overly negative - I could fill pages with all the stuff that is totally awesome about apterous even after just playing for an hour or so last night (I haven't initiated my own custom game yet, for example) but you know all that already! I'm already champing at the bit to be able to use it for our lunchtime games here at work - one of the guys I play against constantly cheats by stealing my words, numbers solutions, stalling over numbers games etc - and this will fuck him up royally



See if you can pick out the genuine comments from the pisstakes in that lot

Yeah I'm struggling to figure out where the sarcasm switches over. I'll assume that your only genuine points are that you like the game and you want more tension in the after-round stuff, both of which I'm happy with.

I think it's natural that people playing for the first time will have loads of suggestions, some of which are good. That's one of the main reasons for expanding the testing circle. Bug fixes have to be prioritised, but feature requests are always gratefully received.

I'd quite like a feature that would make it that I don't get raped by everyone. Thx.

Perhaps a cyber version of "Please now reveal..." for the conundrum? If the other player hits next round later than me it can take me by surprise a bit and I need a second to get focused. Not a major thing, but could be important for hairtrigger conundrums.

It would be cool if the conundrum challenge went to a crucial in the event of a draw. The Kirk and I just drew 90-90 I haven't actually challenged anyone yet so obviously ignore this if this is an option when you set the challenge.

This is one of the oldest things on my TODO list. I will get round to it eventually.



Likewise.

I feel privileged.

An option to have normal length numbers games and speedy letters games.

Keyboard shortcuts for letters selections. Alt+c and v would be cool.

Lots more sound effects. For things like:
- A letter being selected, or the 9th letter being selected
- Your opponent clicking 'Next Round' if you clicked it first
- Half the round gone, perhaps

Probably been said already, but maybe some means to declare just after time has run out?

I'm still steaming becuase I just solved a hypercountdown numbers right at the death but couldnt get the declaration in on time. As a result, I lost to Kirk, which isn't something that should really happen Had a couple of other times when I timed out in the middle of typing a word as well. I'm not sure how best to handle this but the current system is a little frustrating.

In other news, and to balance the criticism, apterous.org is really awesome!

Yeah, you're right - I'm rubbish and a semi finalist like yourself shouldn't be losing to someone like me. Hope you're embarrassed.



I completely agree, well done Charlie. I love it and it gives me the impetus to practise more.

I think you'll find that's DOUBLE semi finalist. Errm. Anyway I'm not embarrassed, I'm trembling with righteous fury

Thought you were too FRAZZLED mate!

Sorry Dinos, just couldn't face the thought of twenty hyperconundrums in a row. And Kirk bullied me. It's not my favourite discipline (I think I prefer the 9 letter 10/15 second letters attacks as I really can't be bothered doing numbers anymore) but I'll give you a game tonight if you challenge me

Bugger, I am trapped behind a firewall so cannot load the java thingy. Won't be able to get a game against anyone till I get my own computer sorted.

I don't think the hyperconundrums are set up for 12-letters yet- at least they weren't when I played on them last night. The 10-12s need culling from the ODE, and it's a wee bit unfair to expect Charlie to do that all by himself.

Yeah, me and Kirk got a nine letter conundrum at the end of our game. I didn't know that when Dinos challenged me though. There seem to some longer words in there as GUARANTEED, ROISTERING, HOUSEMATES all got accepted.

It seems you're systematically suggesting my TODO list, which is reassuring because at least it means I'm working on the features that people want. I have now implemented tie-breaker conundrums and a little conundrum preamble. I will work on declaring after the time runs out tomorrow. I think the sensible way to do it is that, if you have a word fragment in the box when the round ends, you get a few extra seconds to finish typing it (with the backspace key disabled.) If anyone has a much smarter idea then I'd like to hear it.

A feature which some people may not be aware of is that, in the numbers round, you can click on the target to declare it exactly. This should relieve some of the last-second frustration. If you want to declare something inexact then you still need to type it out. Again I'm open for suggestions to fix that.



The dictionary includes common 10 - 12s, but certainly has a lot of omissions so offer them at your own risk. However the conundrum is always 9 letters. I'm not sure whether I can be bothered to fix this given that Hypercountdown is fairly niche, but I might do eventually.

With regards to the 'high scores' page, maybe a highest percentage stat too? (although I appreciate we may be heading for death by statistics here...)

Would it be possible to enter numbers solutions whilst the clock is running somehow? I just fucked up entry of two numbers games in a row under time pressure, which somewhat peeved me.

There already is. Just type the solution in good algebra, with no equals signs or line breaks.

Allow a third party to set the conundrum, for tournament play.

Or just have a list of tournament level conundrums, but there could be lots of niggly issues with that.

One feature I'd kinda like is separate time limits for letters and numbers games- my 10-second round marathons kinda wind up falling way short of the maximum due to my inpetness as the numbers.

Possibility- a variant where you play through a series of rounds (pre-determined) until you hit a specific target, say 150 or 200 points?

How could you pre-determine infinite rounds? There would have to be some kind of upper limit - something like 15 rounds, or 9 rounds.

I really don't see the point of this.

An custom game option to mix hyper with normal Countdown so I can really fuck up people's heads!

I recognise that the mostly trivial conundrums are a problem. I think allowing a third party to set it would be logistically a pain and philosophically something of a cop-out. The second solution is better, the difficulty lies only in compiling the list, but I have some ideas on how that could be done. Will put this on the to-do.



I deliberately didn't add this functionality because I didn't think it would be useful. However I see where you're coming from and it wouldn't be that hard to do it, so maybe.



I don't see why the rounds would need to be pre-determined. Other than that the idea is kinda interesting; instead of having a fixed number of rounds to maximise your score, you have to minimise the number of rounds you use to reach a fixed score. I'll say "Maybe" to this too.



For all sorts of technical reasons, this is unlikely to happen. It's the kind of feature that would take me a week to implement and everyone would be bored of it within a day.

Everyone except me you mean Good point though. Cheers for all the continued hard work Charlie boy. It is very much appreciated

There's a chat room now

But I'm the only one there, and the bots won't chat to me

Why don't they like me?

On the game browser, I think it would be good if it also displayed the game parameters (so my 10-second games against the bots don't make me look quite so shit )

Do the bots adjust if you choose less time per round btw?

Agreed.



Nope. Balancing that sort of thing is hard, but I will do it eventually.

Not sure how to solve this but I was typing in the chatroom as I was quite pleased with my word (and it's just happened again!) and when the timer stops, the word thing appears and says "select your word" and when i press a button, it selects the top word. Turned out my top word was a bogey one and I wanted to choose the one under that but it all happened so quickly as I was typing. Not sure if you could disable this so that u have to CLICK the button to accept the word rather than press enter accidentally when typing messages. The other solution is for me to concentrate and not type during rounds!

Yeah, this happened to me in a game against Dinos where I had REALIZERS, and ended up entering REALIZE (cue 18 point deficit). I figured it was my point for doing other things whilst playing Countdown, but if it affects other people then I feel less retarded.

Also, how hard would a "Challenge to anyone" option be?

A possible (and quick) solution to this might be to sort the buttons in descending order of length, or if that's confusing, just make the default button the longest word rather than the first in the list? (I did this once too, I was actually typing another word in at the time though and hit enter as the new dialogue appeared, hence it took my first word in the list which I definitely didn't want to play.)

IAWTP.

It still might not necessarily be the word that you actually want to play, but then you're never going to be able to guess that. I think it will probably catch more than it drops though.

I am William Tunsted-Pedoe? Nice one!

You may not care, but I don't particularly like the change you made to the vowel and consonant buttons. I have to divert my eyes too far now from the letters themselves to click the correct button, plus I also enjoyed the ability to make notes while my opponent was still making their selection (this was another aspect of 'being on the show' which I thought your game captured excellently - another chief one being the "pressure" during the 30 seconds on the numbers games! Very authentic, I feel.)

And it looks shitter too. What was the reason for changing it?

So it accommodates the new Goatdown interface, is my guess.

I don't have a problem with averting my eyes but their bigness upsets me, personally.

Is Goatdown working atm? I just had a game against one of the bots, and it was just like a normal game. ie no selecting the last letter.

I just looked in the game browser and it wasn't Goatdown. Did you forget to change the options perhaps?

Yup that would be it!

Aha!

In French Scrabble this is known as toping (or topping) and it's generally reserved only for the best players in the world. Basically with Countdown you get a 15 round game (or more I suppose) and you have to get every maximum to finish the game, if you don't get the max the computer lets you just keep playing until you do. The aim is to get the maximum as quickly as possible so everyone needs to have the same rounds, like a daily duel. I think there have been 20-move Scrabble games topped in less than 2 minutes by experts (former world champions, for example) but my best ever in a normal game was 17 consecutive tops (out of 21 total).

Martin

IMHO priorities should be: sorting out the conundrums (making the scrambles into word-forms like on TV, and having some way of making tournament conundrums be of an appropriate difficulty level) and having a challenge feature for disallowed words.

Otherwise, as mentioned before Charlie, if there's some way of incorporating the clock music, that would be brilliant. Also is there any way Apterous could be connected to the (old-style text) recap writer, so that it writes those sorts of recaps automatically? Obviously the Wiki-style recaps are fine as a record of the game, but they're hard to 'play along' with, what with the contestants' offerings being shown right next to the selections

Anyway, it's a great site