Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

1. The Logs page shows all four. This page includes several filters, and you have to make sure none are excluding any games.

2. A log can be deleted by either of the players. When you view a list of your games on the Logs page, there will be an extra column for deleting them. If you're asking about deleting a settings file for a game, there is no provision for that short of an editor manually doing it.

Does anyone know if actual multi-opponent (i.e. 3 or more player) games are permitted by Game Courier (and if so, please confirm my guess that they are not permitted to be rated games by Game Courier's rating system).

I've spotted the odd 4 handed partnership variant as having been played on Game Courier, but it was always the case that just two players were playing, with each player controlling two of the four armies at the start of the game.

They are permitted but not supported. For example, you are permitted to fly like a bird, but you are not able to. I would like to add multi-player support, but it's not a simple feature to add. It would involve rewriting much of how Game Courier works.

Logs of finished games of a particular variant seem inaccessible via "All Games on Game Courier" at this point. When one clicks on the highlighted 'Number' to see the logs of finished games of a particular variant, one is referred by a link back to uncompleted games currently still being played of various variants. Although, finished games of a variant can be accessed another way, by looking at them via the Game Logs filter. However, if one wishes, say, to provide a link, to get to a page of just all finished games of a particular variant, on a CVP webpage (or e.g. external blog), then at least in the past I found linking to the search result page of the Game Logs filter would later in fact not show the desired finished game logs page, if someone clicked on such a link.

That has been fixed. I corrected the link to point to the new logs page with the correct parameters.

Thank you, Fergus.

Kevin

I've just tried to view some logs of e.g. Pocket Mutation Chess, via 'All Games on Game Courier", and all I get when I click on a log is a page that only reads "Your move has been logged" (i.e. in a finished game where I was neither of the players).

Fwiw, I didn't see the log for Pocket Mutation Chess that I referred to in my 2nd last comment on Pocket Mutation Chess, which I'm pretty sure had Carlos as the winner (on time), so perhaps that log was deleted somehow? Either that or my recollection is strangely foggy.

This page doesn't list logs. I did check out some logs on the logs page, and I checked out the settings file listed on this page for Pocket Mutation Chess, and I didn't see what you described.

Hi Fergus. What I meant was, on the All Games on Game Courier page, I clicked on 'Number' (beside Pocket Mutation Chess) to see a listing of all the logs for finished games of that variant. I clicked on one of these logs, and just saw what I described earlier (i.e. 'Your move has been logged').

Give me some specific logs to look at, because I'm still not seeing it.

That's strange. I'm not seeing the problem now, either. Fwiw, there was an odd log between Carlos & Vitya, but that had a different message on a page given.

Other than that, last night I looked at an old Seirawan Chess log via 'Number' on All Games Played' and got 'Your move has been logged' message then too. Not only that, but the game was put as a freshly finished game in the 'What's New' main page section. The player was Jeff something or other, playing against himself. Here's the log for that game, if it's any help (at least it's showing the preset here):

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=Seirawan+Chess&log=jeff514-cvgameroom-2016-360-852

When someone loses on time, and a win hasn't yet been recorded, Game Courier will update the $winner and $status variables in the log and also update the database the next time someone views the log. This is a one-time thing, which explains why you would see it only once for any log. Is it preventing the normal display of the log when it happens?

In the case of my viewing the Jeff log (and others) last night via All Games Played (via Number), I thought I saw "Your move has been logged" displayed more than once, though the problem has seemed to disappeared for me today.

In Pocket Mutation Chess, I noticed a recent game Greg lost on time was displaying correctly for me now, for example. An older game between Carlos & Vitya isn't diplaying correctly, but it shows a different message (rather than a preset) and may be caused by an independent issue:

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=Pocket+Mutation+Chess&log=makov333-sissa-2008-363-805

I must say at this point, a bit to my embarrassment, that it's possible my schizophrenia is acting up, and I've been seeing things incorrectly at times lately, which unfortunately may complicate my reporting a possible bug - I did so because it's gone unreported thus far, if it's indeed real.

I changed the permissions on the log to allow writing by group members, and it then saved the log and updated the database. Let me know if you find any others.

@ Fergus:

Here's another log of a finished game that doesn't show properly (a short message is shown instead), after clicking on 'Number' on the 'All Games Played on Game Courier' page (it would seem this may be true for every old log of a finished game of Moderate Progressive Chess):

http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=Moderate+Progressive+Chess&log=jejujeju-carlos-2007-316-500

One thing I don't yet understand is why 'Number' shows zero games finished of TessChess so far. Entering "benr" for userid along with 'any games' & 'anytime', in the logs filter, shows Ben's played some old games of TessChess, though none seem to be finished (presumably abandoned, and untimed?). However, I did once play a game of it with Ben that I won on time, but it's not given in the log filter results, nor given when I substitute my userid ('panther') but do the same logs filter search values otherwise. It might be good for TessChess (and 4D variants in general) to have at least one game of it that's sort of been played to a finish that's on the record (if it can be found in the database), to help promote it out of obscurity a little more.

I've just now looked into the missing log that Kevin mentioned in the last post here.  The log still exists:
http://play.chessvariants.com/pbm/play.php?game=TessChess&log=panther-benr-2016-364-346
but there is no entry for it in the database in either of the relevant tables

Tonight I studied the list of well over 1300 games currently listed as possible to play on Game Courier, paying special attention to the ones most played. Of the top 107 games (currently those each with 14+ games finished), a little under half were ones I could have made a (non-rules enforcing) preset and/or CVP Diagram Designer diagram for by myself, with my presently limited abilities and study time, which I view as helping set my limitations (at the moment) for any CVs I might invent, to later in any way submit to CVP.

Other interesting things I found about the top 107 games listed included that only about 20 had what I'd call auxillary, or IMHO rather complex, rules out of the ordinary (that is, aside from how to simply move some fairly standard pieces), that one needed to know to play them. Also, my favourite 'meta-variant' as an inventor, because it seems it's not always very difficult to cook up a fairly acceptable example of one (basically 'leapers and sliders on a square or rectangular board'), made for about 20 CVs (within the top 107) that were IMHO 'truly popular' on GC. That is, the inventor was not almost always one of the players, who had issued an invitation, thus helping to promote his game; note these approx. 20 also were not CVP Recognized CVs, or in any way ground-breaking ones, but also the number of this meta-variant (in the top 107) would be considerably larger if I included games played heavily by the inventor in making this approximation.

Previously, I had noted that my favourite meta-variant comprised (at minimum) roughly 10% of the whole list of CVs currently available on Game Courier, as far as I could tell with a cursory inspection. Tonight I also surmised that I would have been able to make a non-rules enforcing preset and Diagram Designer diagram for (at minimum) 25% of the CVs played at least once on Game Courier to date (about 1100 CVs), with my present skill level - noting too that some games might e.g. require randomizing the game's setup, warranting a sort of rules-enforcing preset (I think).

We have had some very active non-programmers making presets. While this page won't tell you which are programmed, you can go to /play/pbm/settings.php to get some idea of that. If interested programmers want to program games that haven't been programmed yet, that would be very helpful.

@Kevin: I was mostly worrying about the existence of non-rule-enforcing presets, which I think we should not have at all. I would have thought that creating such presets would almost never present any problem, as it basically just requires specifying a board size and topology (square/hex), putting a number of piece images on a board in the desired (starting) location, or put them in a 'holdings' next to the board. This doesn't seem to require any special skills beyond those needed to use a computer in general (i.e. using mouse and keyboard). So I am shocked that you say over half of the popular CVs would be beyond your abilities. And I fear the answer to the question of how many rule-enforcing presets you would be able to make for those 107 variants.

I think this is pretty serious, because I consider you as a quite representative example of our target audience. Since you have already investigated the matter, can you give a few examples of CV traits that made you decide creating even a non-rule-enforcing preset was beyond you?

I don't see why it should ever be a problem to define a rule-enforcing preset for a CV with "just sliders/leapers on a rectangular board". Specifying a move on each of the pieces does seem a rather trivial task. And perhaps not even needed for most pieces, as the piece images could have a default move associated with them, so that you only would have to take care of this when you wanted to change that move into something unusual. I would be very surprised is CVs that use the Bishop image (say) would not have it move like an orthodox Bishop in >95% of the cases.

Actually I think HG's idea to associate images with common pieces to be very useful, even the siege elephant as it will appear in the new version of apothecary games that is in beta FAH,  i'd need to make small adjustments to existing pieces!

Game Courier originally started out without any support for rule-enforcement. It offered a way to play games by email by generating diagrams from FEN strings that could be included in URLs. When I started working on what became GAME Code, I started with commands for automating some tasks, such as moving captured Shogi pieces off the board. In time, it became a programming language with the ability to be used for rule-enforcement. Because of the way that the language was added into Game Courier, it always remained optional rather than required. Besides that, some games could be too complicated to program, and using Game Courier just as a dumb board server would allow them to be played despite that. It also turned out that some people were a lot more interested in creating and trying out new variants than they were in programming, and they went ahead and created lots of presets without any programming.

As a programmer, my own preference has been for programmed presets. H. G. is also a programmer and might feel similarly as I do about the advantages of having programmed presets. I do want to make it easier to create programmed presets, but I also consider it important to still allow unprogrammed presets. This precludes the option of putting default code in presets. However, it could be helpful to have a GAME Code include file that includes default functions for a wide variety of common pieces. Another thought is to write new include files to require some values to be set before they are included. By require, I mean they would exit with informative error messages if any of these values were not already set. This would give programmers who include them reminders about what values might need to be set differently than for Chess.

This would still require some willingness to do programming, but it would at least make it easier.