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Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 11, 2006 03:26 PM UTC:
I have added a new sorting method, made it the default, and have programmed
open invitations older than two weeks to expire. This has deleted Steve
Stockman's two open invitations. The new sorting method is called
Priority. It prioritizes logs according to which most need your
attention.

When a userid is not specified, it places ongoing games above finished
games, existing logs above deleted logs, and sorts each category in
increasing order of age, which means going from newest to oldest.

When a userid is specified, it places games in which it is the specified
player's turn on top. It places timed games above untimed games. It sorts
timed games by time left, placing games with less time left first. It sorts
untimed games by age, placing older games first. These are followed by
private invitations sent to the specified user, which are sorted in
decreasing order of age. These are followed by open invitations, which are
sorted in decreasing order of age, since older open invitations will expire
before newer ones. These are followed by the rest of a player's active
games, sorted in decreasing order of age. These are followed by the
player's finished games, sorted in increasing order of age. Finally,
these are followed by any expired open invitations that have been deleted
by this instance of running the script. These have lowest priority, since
you can no longer accept them.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Feb 12, 2006 01:59 AM UTC:
This page wasn't accurately reporting on time left. It was reporting the opponent's total reserve time, but it should have been reporting the player's reserve time plus grace time minus the age of the log. Fixing this has decreased the amounts of time left reported for some logs. Fortunately, this bug happened before anyone had been relying on this new feature for long.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Feb 13, 2006 06:07 AM UTC:
hmm, it has been around 6 days since joe joyce has done anything, we are
playing a game, and he is playing other people too.
normally if we are playing, and he is going somewhere and won't be moving
for awhile, he will say something, so i am a bit concerned for him.
anyone have any info about him?

David Paulowich wrote on Mon, Feb 13, 2006 11:25 PM UTC:
Many thanks to Fergus for posting the Mir Chess presets for Game Courier.

I noticed a display problem in Jeremy Good's current game of Chess on a Longer Board with a few Pieces Added. Black's two square Wall does not show up. Also the square contains the notation 'y%3B d9', instead of 'z d9', which is what I would expect.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 12:01 AM UTC:
I'm not sure what is going on there. Antoine wrote that preset. My best guess is that it has something to so with the convert command used to switch the wall pieces, so that they display properly. Let me point out that this should be unnecessary. The piece set used for this game can be given a flipped set of pieces, as is commonly done for sets of Shogi pieces, so that the wall always displays properly without changing the pieces used to represent it.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Tue, Feb 14, 2006 01:10 AM UTC:
I'm also unsure what is going on, because the same move-verifying preset was used for my recent game against George Duke, and Black's Wall was (and is) displaying correctly, at least from White's perspective.

Antoine Fourrière wrote on Wed, Feb 15, 2006 05:41 AM UTC:
In fact, there are currently two presets for Chess on a Longer Board.
Neither prevents check (because it would take more than 30 seconds at the
end of a game), and both use pre-moves and post-moves by the second player
to display the Wall half-correctly. One of these presets also verifies the
legality of the moves, performs baroque (Withdrawer or en passant)
capture, moves automatically the other part of a Wall and changes
automatically the Halfling-Bishop in a Halfling-Rook and vice-versa.
So both presets, although different, display the same following message:
'This preset does not notify you here of check, checkmate, or
stalemate.'
Which is why I thought the same presets were used in my game against
George Duke and in this game.
I've replaced lines such as
$preauto2 = 'convert all Y Z Z Y y z z y%3B'; 
by lines such as 
$preauto2 = 'convert all Y Z Z Y y z z y';
in both the relevant preset and the log file.
I guess I'll try Fergus' solution when I have some time.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 15, 2006 09:28 PM UTC:
I don't think there is anything inherent in this game that would cause it to take too long to prevent check. There are alternate ways of preventing check. The original method was to check the locations where pieces can check from for the right sort of pieces. The new method, used in many presets now, is to check whether each enemy piece can make a legal move to the King's position. That won't work for the Withdrawer, but the method can be modified a bit. To capture the King, the Withdrawer would have to be able to move away one space. So that's all that would need to be checked for that piece. Anyway, look at the Eurasian Chess or Chinese Chess include files for examples of this second method. Also, in my own experience, the most common cause of a script timing out has been an infinite loop in the code.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Mon, Feb 20, 2006 12:28 AM UTC:
It seems that, when viewing a game of chess, one can't change the piece set by adding a query to the URL for the log. For example, this link should display the game with Alfaerie pieces, but the Abstract pieces show up instead.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 20, 2006 02:40 AM UTC:
Values given in a log have precedence over values entered in an URL. When values are entered in an URL, those values are known first. When these values specify a log, the log is then included, and its values may override any values entered in an URL. I see no reason for changing this except to make Game Courier more vulnerable to hacking. If you want to view a game with a different piece set, it already provides that option to you through forms.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Mon, Feb 20, 2006 03:49 AM UTC:
But the strange thing is that it's only a few games (Chess, Balanced Marseillais Chess, possibly others) that behave this way. With most games, the piece set (and other display settings) can be changed in the URL. For example, the Xiangqi preset defaults to pieces with simplified characters, but it's possible to change to traditional characters.

My reason for using the URL to tweak settings is that I make copious use of bookmarks, so that I can get to any game with just a few keystrokes. And if I want to use the positions from my games as desktop backgrounds, this is most easily done if I can construct a URL that produces an image using my preferred piece set and the appropriate orientation. I've done this happily for many of the games I've played via Game Courier, but I can't do it for a game of chess. I can look at the board from Black's side, or I can use the Alfaerie pieces, but for some reason I can't do both.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Feb 20, 2006 06:36 PM UTC:
Here's what is going on. Some presets use the default values, and some do
not. This is not about which game a preset is for; it is about which
preset you are using for a game. Default values are stored in a settings
file, and when a log uses the default values, it does not store them in
the log. All it stores are the variables whose values differ from their
default values. So, when you change the set in the URL for a log that uses
the default set, it does not overwrite this with anything in the log,
because the log does not contain any value for the set. But when the log
does not use the default set, it overwrites the value given in the URL
with the value stored in the log.

In the two Chess URLs you gave, you included your userid in the one that
showed Alfaerie pieces. It showed Alfaerie pieces, because you customized
your viewing preferences, and it was using the set you had chosen to use.
This value is stored in the log and will overwrite anything in the URL.
The other URL did not include your userid. So it used the set given in the
log. Since the Chess presets are based on one that uses Alfaerie pieces on
a B&W marble board, and you were using a preset with Abstract pieces on a
table board, the log for this game changes some of the defaults. These
overwrite the values set in the URL.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 01:38 AM UTC:
Okay, I think I understand now.  I had been thinking of the Abstract piece
set as the default, not realizing that it was in fact a setting which had
overridden a previous default.  So it makes sense that I can't override
it in the URL, especially now that I've gone and learned a bit about the
GET and POST methods of form submission.

Here's a related thought (related from a user's perspective, anyway). 
When I enter my userid and view a game in which it is my opponent's turn,
the board is displayed, along with a message saying 'It is not your turn
yet', etc.  But the board is shown from my opponent's perspective. 
(Actually, a quick check of my current games seems to indicate that it is
shown from the perspective of the player to move [i.e. my opponent] in
Chess and Xiangqi, but from the perspective of the first [Black] player in
Shogi.)  Perhaps it would be more user-friendly if specifying a userid
ensured that the board would be shown from that player's perspective.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 03:23 AM UTC:
Okay, I changed it so that including a userid makes it shown from that player's perspective. This may be overridden by setting orientation to flip for the second player's perspective or to anything but auto for the first player's perspective.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Tue, Feb 21, 2006 03:59 AM UTC:
Excellent; that seems to solve all my problems. Thanks.

David Paulowich wrote on Thu, Feb 23, 2006 09:27 PM UTC:
When I enter move 35 in fergus-david_64-2006-44-218, I get the message:

This preset will enforce rules and spot check, checkmate, and stalemate.you may not move a k from d6 to d5

But if I attempt d6-d7, there is no problem with the preset.


Stephen Stockman wrote on Sat, Feb 25, 2006 09:37 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
the game courier is working perfectly for me, flawless. Thanks fergie!!!

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 25, 2006 04:04 PM UTC:
My name is Fergus.

David Paulowich wrote on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 01:19 AM UTC:
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING in /home/chessva/public_html/play/pbm/gamecode.php on line 391

came up when I tried to open several of the games here. Just now my Lions and Unicorns game showed a board diagram, with this message below;

Parse error: parse error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' in /home/chessva/public_html/play/pbm/form_move.php on line 45


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 02:14 AM UTC:
These problems should be fixed now. I replaced some variable names with a multidocument search and replace without checking the 'Whole Word Only' box, which messed up variable names that should have been left alone. I then had to fix inaccurate variable names.

Thomas McElmurry wrote on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 05:07 AM UTC:
Strange things are happening with piece sets. I've been using the Alfaerie pieces in both of my Chess games, but now one of them has spontaneously switched to the Abstract pieces and the other to the Medium-sized pieces.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Feb 28, 2006 10:00 PM UTC:
Yesterday, I accidently commented out the section for saving user preferences for piece sets. I have now fixed that by moving the opening comment operator. But if that's all I did, logs should have simply defaulted to the default preset. In a couple of my own games, I saw piece sets I don't remember ever being used in these presets before. I am wondering if it copied my opponent's preferred set as the default set for the log. In my Chinese Chess game with Tommy Trouble, I saw the Alfaerie set, whereas in my other Chinese Chess game, I saw the National Standard set I have been using all along. In my Shogi game with Antoine Fourierre, I saw the Alfaerie set, not the Motif wood set I have been using. But in the other games I moved in today, I saw my usual set.

pallab basu wrote on Sat, Mar 18, 2006 10:45 PM UTC:
I have won in the match
http://play.chessvariants.org/pbm/play.php?game=Chess+with+Different+Armies&log=pallab-cvgameroom-2006-58-982.
But the log is showing my opponent as a winner. I have made a mistake by
sending a comment after the game is over. How to make it correct?.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 19, 2006 02:18 AM UTC:
I replaced your log with the backup of the previous log, and that fixed the problem. By entering an additional move, you switched the values of $player and $opponent, which led to the erroneous result.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Mar 29, 2006 03:50 AM UTC:
I have deleted the 'Good Chess' directory and its logs, because it was messing up this page. Quotation marks should not be placed around names of games.

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