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Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:08 am
by JimBentley
Charlie Reams wrote:
Mark Deeks wrote:Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different.
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:58 am
by Adam Gillard
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:
Mark Deeks wrote:Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different.
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".
Good idea Jim. Maybe the letters could be upside down / inverted or flash on and off like in blind conundrums, although both of those suggestions are ludicrously unnecessary and the latter would probably need a health warning.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2011 4:41 pm
by Charlie Reams
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:
Mark Deeks wrote:Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different.
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".
Yeah, I guess. If I'm gonna do that I'd want to put a bit more effort into getting the new revision right, maybe making more substantial changes to the letter distribution. Will think about it.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 2:37 am
by Charlie Reams
It would be interesting for someone to go through this topic and pick out everything which was suggested but didn't happen (except for things I explictly said no to). I might do it myself if no one else feels like it.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:41 am
by Matt Morrison
Charlie Reams wrote:It would be interesting for someone to go through this topic and pick out everything which was suggested but didn't happen (except for things I explictly said no to). I might do it myself if no one else feels like it.
I've thought about doing that a couple of times, half to be useful and half to deliberately not bring up certain shit ideas, but then always decided against it because you might think I was being pushy rather than helpful. If no one else does it, I'll get round to it.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 5:02 pm
by Charlie Reams
Matt Morrison wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:It would be interesting for someone to go through this topic and pick out everything which was suggested but didn't happen (except for things I explictly said no to). I might do it myself if no one else feels like it.
I've thought about doing that a couple of times, half to be useful and half to deliberately not bring up certain shit ideas, but then always decided against it because you might think I was being pushy rather than helpful. If no one else does it, I'll get round to it.
That would be cool.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:41 pm
by Matt Bayfield
A Numbers Interface plea.

Please, for my sanity, can the Numbers Rounds be changed so that you automatically declare the exact target (and thus get a chance to enter your solution via the number-clicking) if you have otherwise made no declaration. (In other worse, you should automatically start in a position of declaring the exact target, and you have to type in the box to declare anything different.) This is because about 1 round in 100, I forget to click the target number when I've solved the round, thus scoring zero, invariably at some crucial moment. It's driving me absolutely crackers, and not in a positive way.

I can't see how there could be any opposition to autodeclaring the exact target, as it's not going to advantage people who are trying to fudge a solution - these people will simply click the exact target anyway. At the very worst, it will slow down the game by thelengthof the patience bar, as if you really don't have a solution at all, you can wait for the patience bar to run out.



And I'm already pre-empting the response "don't forget to click the exact target then, you dullard Bayfield".

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:47 pm
by Charlie Reams
Matt Bayfield wrote:A Numbers Interface plea.

Please, for my sanity, can the Numbers Rounds be changed so that you automatically declare the exact target (and thus get a chance to enter your solution via the number-clicking) if you have otherwise made no declaration. (In other worse, you should automatically start in a position of declaring the exact target, and you have to type in the box to declare anything different.) This is because about 1 round in 100, I forget to click the target number when I've solved the round, thus scoring zero, invariably at some crucial moment. It's driving me absolutely crackers, and not in a positive way.

I can't see how there could be any opposition to autodeclaring the exact target, as it's not going to advantage people who are trying to fudge a solution - these people will simply click the exact target anyway. At the very worst, it will slow down the game by thelengthof the patience bar, as if you really don't have a solution at all, you can wait for the patience bar to run out.



And I'm already pre-empting the response "don't forget to click the exact target then, you dullard Bayfield".
It's a tricky one. The problem with auto-declaring is that it makes fudging an opt-out rather than an opt-in, which I suspect is currently enough to dissuade most people from trying it. It has been suggested before that the interface give you some kind of heads-up if you haven't declared anything with 5 or 10 seconds to go, and I don't know why I've never gotten around to doing this. That would seem to solve your problem most of the time.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:56 pm
by Graeme Cole
The "most missed words" feature in Superstats is useful, but if you've played thousands of games over many months the list gets filled with words you used to miss but now have no trouble spotting. How about a "most missed words in your last N games" feature? Not sure what a sensible value for N would be - too high and it doesn't address the issue, too low and the statistics won't be significant enough to be any use. Perhaps 200?

Also, if we're digging up old feature requests, two things I'd really like to see are the tnetennba for offering a max that's spelt out in the selection, and updated Watchwords.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:11 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Graeme Cole wrote:Also, if we're digging up old feature requests, two things I'd really like to see are the tnetennba for offering a max that's spelt out in the selection, and updated Watchwords.
Maybe I'm being a miserable cunt, but do Watchwords really add anything to the game anyway?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 7:16 pm
by Graeme Cole
Gavin Chipper wrote:
Graeme Cole wrote:Also, if we're digging up old feature requests, two things I'd really like to see are the tnetennba for offering a max that's spelt out in the selection, and updated Watchwords.
Maybe I'm being a miserable cunt, but do Watchwords really add anything to the game anyway?
Perhaps not. Maybe I'm just living in the self-aggrandising hope that a something of Cole might appear one day. :-)

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 8:41 pm
by Matt Bayfield
Charlie Reams wrote:It's a tricky one. The problem with auto-declaring is that it makes fudging an opt-out rather than an opt-in, which I suspect is currently enough to dissuade most people from trying it. It has been suggested before that the interface give you some kind of heads-up if you haven't declared anything with 5 or 10 seconds to go, and I don't know why I've never gotten around to doing this. That would seem to solve your problem most of the time.
Ta for the reply Charlie. I'd certainly welcome this, although for anything other than 1 large, I'm often not looking at the screen for most of the time. (I find it easier to do anything other than 1 large, with pencil and paper.) How it would work for Speed, I don't know. It might get a bit annoying if something flashed up after 5 seconds of a Speed round... or instantly in Bullet.

Of course, I'd still favour auto-declaration, but sounds like I'm not going to win that one. ;-) Many people - including me when I remember - routinely click the target as soon as it appears anyway, so personally I don't think it would lead to an increase in fudging.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 10:49 am
by Hugh Binnie
Would it be possible to have more detailed results for the daily duel? (e.g. number of maxes / average score per round.)

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 8:03 pm
by Adam Gillard
Could there be an extra line of information for Goat variant Duels that says who's picking (Duellist or us)?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:04 am
by Thomas Carey
Charlie Reams wrote:
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:quote="Mark Deeks"]Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different./quote]
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".
Yeah, I guess. If I'm gonna do that I'd want to put a bit more effort into getting the new revision right, maybe making more substantial changes to the letter distribution. Will think about it.
Don't think it's a good idea, what about other languages? I suppose it could just remove the most common letter...

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:04 am
by Thomas Carey
Charlie Reams wrote:
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:quote="Mark Deeks"]Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different./quote]
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".
Yeah, I guess. If I'm gonna do that I'd want to put a bit more effort into getting the new revision right, maybe making more substantial changes to the letter distribution. Will think about it.
Don't think it's a good idea, what about other languages? I suppose it could just remove the most common letter...

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2011 8:04 am
by Thomas Carey
Charlie Reams wrote:
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:quote="Mark Deeks"]Innis's idea for Nasty Letters was to work in the No E's idea that I mentioned a few posts back. I think it's a good idea, as, as of right now, nasty letters are no different./quote]
The problem with that is that it would make the current high scores for any Nasty format with letters basically invincible.
You could just reclassify existing Nasty Numbers 15s and 9s as Old Nasty Numbers 15 Rounders and Old Nasty Numbers 9 Rounders, then start afresh with a new, nastier letters distribution. The old records would still be there in the stats, like when Hyper Numbers Attack went from 30 second rounds to 45 second rounds, all the old 30 second games are still in the database as "Old Hypernumbers Attacks".
Yeah, I guess. If I'm gonna do that I'd want to put a bit more effort into getting the new revision right, maybe making more substantial changes to the letter distribution. Will think about it.
Don't think it's a good idea, what about other languages? I suppose it could just remove the most common letter...

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 5:22 pm
by Matt Bayfield
There seems to be an oddity when I play bots in a Conundrum Attack, in as much as I never get high difficulty conundrums. In fact, often most of the conundrums generated are exactly the same difficulty, never higher than 6/10.

For instance, these games are typical:

Against Waldorf, conundrums are mostly difficulty 6, with none harder.
Against Nude, all 20 conundrums are difficulty 6.
Against Prune, conundrums range from difficulty 1 through 6, but with none harder.

Maybe these low difficulty conundrums appear as a result of the low rating of these 3 bots, but I thought that bot rating was supposed to be excluded in calculation of maximum permissible conundrum difficulty for Bot v Human games?


Any chance this could be changed? Otherwise, now that I've finished Ascension, I don't seem to have a way of playing a Conundrum Attack against a bot, with some difficult ones in?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 6:30 pm
by Ben Wilson
Matt Bayfield wrote:There seems to be an oddity when I play bots in a Conundrum Attack, in as much as I never get high difficulty conundrums. In fact, often most of the conundrums generated are exactly the same difficulty, never higher than 6/10.

For instance, these games are typical:

Against Waldorf, conundrums are mostly difficulty 6, with none harder.
Against Nude, all 20 conundrums are difficulty 6.
Against Prune, conundrums range from difficulty 1 through 6, but with none harder.

Maybe these low difficulty conundrums appear as a result of the low rating of these 3 bots, but I thought that bot rating was supposed to be excluded in calculation of maximum permissible conundrum difficulty for Bot v Human games?


Any chance this could be changed? Otherwise, now that I've finished Ascension, I don't seem to have a way of playing a Conundrum Attack against a bot, with some difficult ones in?
This may be by design to prevent people spamming CAs to practise difficult conundrums, I think Charlie may have mentioned this previously.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 9:17 pm
by Gavin Chipper
Ben Wilson wrote:This may be by design to prevent people spamming CAs to practise difficult conundrums, I think Charlie may have mentioned this previously.
Maybe he's feeling the heat from Damian.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 8:21 pm
by Matt Bayfield
Request for an addition to the already jam-packed Statland: I'd be curious to see a leaderboard of the top 30 players who've declared the most valid 9s in Normal variant, ODE play, listing how many 9s they've declared. I have a feeling Innis will be top, but behind him, I'm not sure.

Possible extensions to this, depending on whether you want to massage the egos of specialist variant and foreign language players: leaderboards for most "12s in Hyper", "12s in Hypergoat", "12s in Hypertouch", "7s in Junior", "9s in CSW", "9s in <foreign language>".

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 2:23 am
by Charlie Reams
Matt Bayfield wrote:Request for an addition to the already jam-packed Statland: I'd be curious to see a leaderboard of the top 30 players who've declared the most valid 9s in Normal variant, ODE play, listing how many 9s they've declared. I have a feeling Innis will be top, but behind him, I'm not sure.

Possible extensions to this, depending on whether you want to massage the egos of specialist variant and foreign language players: leaderboards for most "12s in Hyper", "12s in Hypergoat", "12s in Hypertouch", "7s in Junior", "9s in CSW", "9s in <foreign language>".
Distinct or just plain total?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:09 am
by Matt Bayfield
I was thinking plain total, i.e. for a player who'd spotted RELATIONS, RELATIONS and RAINSWEPT, that would count as a total of 3, not 2.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 7:05 pm
by Nick Deller
The variants help page is a bit behind the times and quite a few of the newer variants aren't described. Is an update planned at some point?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:40 am
by Charlie Reams
Nick Deller wrote:The variants help page is a bit behind the times and quite a few of the newer variants aren't described. Is an update planned at some point?
MATTHEW! *shakes fist*

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:18 am
by Graeme Cole
Nick Deller wrote:The variants help page is a bit behind the times and quite a few of the newer variants aren't described. Is an update planned at some point?
Reading the "declare reversed" section on that page reminded me of something. Why is it that on apterous the person who picks the letters normally declares first, when it's the other way round on Countdown?

Could be that the picker used to declare first. ISTR one of the Deses saying "Fred, you picked them, so how many?" If so, I'm going to conjecture that it changed to rebalance the game - declaring second is a potential advantage, so the person who only gets to pick one numbers game should be the one to declare second in six rounds to the other player's five.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:20 pm
by Charlie Reams
Just posting some things that have been emailed to me so I can have them all in the same place. Not necessarily implying that I advocate these.
Giles Hutchings wrote: I was wondering whether you could do something about the bronze, silver and normal pencils, because on the Items page all three of these link to the same URL with the same table with the same Matt B on the top. Could you make them into their 3 separate categories so one can see the person with the most silver pencils, rather than them altogether? I've been pencil hunting lately with that very helpful list and I think I have quite a few silvers now. Also, for the home page, could there be the most recent English pencils in its own table, rather than being together with the other languages? It's just English pencils are now quite sought after (by me!) and there seems to be hundreds of other pencils from Welsh and French et al. getting rid of the English ones.
Giles Hutchings wrote: I've noticed that one receives silver pencils in both normal variants and the Touch Jnr. variants, but not for the normal Junior one, where one still gets a normal pencil.

Perhaps Junior could now have silver pencils too?
Anglo-Italian wrote: In the record of the game where we can comment and consider for GOTW, it would be useful if a symbol or phrase came up automatically to signify:

THIS WAS FRED'S PERSONAL BEST
PRISCILLA SET A NEW APTEROUS RECORD/HIGH SCORE
and others that the programme can recognise.

In Foreign Languages, and probably elsewhere, it would be fun to flag:

THIS GAME BROKE THE RECORD FOR THE MOST MAXES/PENCILS IN THIS FORMAT.
This may also lead to more players focusing on that as a target, and fewer meaningless games when playing a bot and failing early on.

PBs especially important, though, as this can involve absolutely everyone.

There are so many formats that few of us can understand the importance of all games nominated, and looking back at the history it would also be interesting.

If this is already shown, sorry. But where is it????????

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 5:32 am
by Thomas Carey
Giles Hutchings wrote: I was wondering whether you could do something about the bronze, silver and normal pencils, because on the Items page all three of these link to the same URL with the same table with the same Matt B on the top. Could you make them into their 3 separate categories so one can see the person with the most silver pencils, rather than them altogether? I've been pencil hunting lately with that very helpful list and I think I have quite a few silvers now. Also, for the home page, could there be the most recent English pencils in its own table, rather than being together with the other languages? It's just English pencils are now quite sought after (by me!) and there seems to be hundreds of other pencils from Welsh and French et al. getting rid of the English ones.
Could we also have a link on the bottom of the Latest Pencils that says 'See all recent pencils' which links to a page which has all the pencils got in the last week, in the same format as the homepage one.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 6:27 pm
by Ian Volante
How about a companion to Pro Ranks which ranks people by percentage of peak rating (with appropriate activity criteria etc)?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 8:09 pm
by Hugh Binnie
Boy Scout requested for ASH.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2011 8:47 pm
by Gavin Chipper
On leaderboards with the top 30 players or whatever, I think it would be interesting for it to say how many players there are that meet the criteria for inclusion. If it's under 30, it's obvious, but if there are 30 on the list, someone in 30th won't be sure if that's any good or not.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 11:12 am
by Adam Gillard
How about some or all of these options in the custom game menu?

1) Number of letters in a letters round
2) Number of numbers in a numbers round and number of numbers in the target number
3) Number of letters in a conundrum round

There'd probably need to be a cap for each of these. If it were applicable across all languages and variants (as everything else is in the custom game menu), then the letters would probably have to be capped by variant. I'm sure there are huge problems implementing some or all of these, but the letters round customisation could open up the entire lexicon without having to make official superhyper and megahyper variants or whatever (18 and 21 letters etc.).

If you could make just the Normal variant have a customisable number of letters in a letters round (obviously 7, 8, 9 and 12 are already available), that would be really cool.

Is any of this doable or worth doing?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 5:38 pm
by Rhys Benjamin
You should have an option of who you can choose as host in full custom. 80's Carol is starting to annoy me with her anti-Thatcher-ism.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:53 pm
by Graeme Cole
Rhys Benjamin wrote:You should have an option of who you can choose as host in full custom. 80's Carol is starting to annoy me with her anti-Thatcher-ism.
You think 80's Carol's anti-Thatcher stance is more worthy of comment than Morbo's blanket anti-human policy?

Perhaps to balance it out, Thatcher should be added as a DC guest. "Has someone stolen your morning milk? You missed EXPIATORS for nine!"

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:04 pm
by Graeme Cole
I'd be interested to know how long I've spent playing on apterous, even though I'm not in the top 30. Or is there already a way of finding this out that I'm not seeing?

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 8:38 am
by Rhys Benjamin
Graeme Cole wrote:
Rhys Benjamin wrote:You should have an option of who you can choose as host in full custom. 80's Carol is starting to annoy me with her anti-Thatcher-ism.
You think 80's Carol's anti-Thatcher stance is more worthy of comment than Morbo's blanket anti-human policy?

Perhaps to balance it out, Thatcher should be added as a DC guest. "Has someone stolen your morning milk? You missed EXPIATORS for nine!"
Or
I've got EXPIATORS, and I am NOT for turning.

Re: Feature requests

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:40 am
by Charlie Reams
This thread has been superseded by the new ticket system. I'll migrate old feature requests to the ticket system in the next few days.