Re: [XBoard-devel] Bughouse Support

[Arun Persaud]

Hi

> > So the first step would be to let XBoard automatically send an
> > observe command for the partner game as soon as you start
> > a bughouse game, and then have it suppress the display of
> > all boards of that game that come in (recognizable by the game
> > number), but save it in a separate location from your own game.
fics has a poberserve (or something similar) where you automatically
observer all you partner games...

> > I am not sure if it makes sense to try to store the entire game,
> > like you store your own game; initially I just want it to remember
> > the latest board it received of that game, without displaying it.
would be nice to save them together, because the save file of just your
game doesn't help much if you want to look at games later (which I never
do, but other people might ;))

> > This already raises some questions: How do you know which
> > game is your partner's game? Are you informed when your partner
> > starts his game, do the games start simultaneously? I never have
> > played bughouse on an ICS, and it is not that easy to arrange.
> > I suppose both games must be created simultaneously, because
> > if one starts later, what would the server have t do with pieces that
> > are captured in the other?
games start at the same time, since timing is a big component of the
game (e.g. you wait until a move on your partners game was done, e.g. if
he can capture an important piece for you, but you can't wait endlessly
because of the timer, so sometimes nobody wants to move and then it's up
to the time to force someone)

> > Step 2 would be to display the board somewhere. A quick initial
> > solution would be to display it 'on demand' in stead of your own
> > board.
That's the easiest to implement, but I don't think it would be usefull
in bughouse... you really want to see your partners game the whole time
and also his captures pieces...

another area where  looking at multiple boards might be useful would be
simuls (that is if you only play a few simul games and not 40 or so at
the same time)... if you play many it would be good to have a button
"goto next, previous game".

I can also imagine that people would find it very usefull to observe
multiple games at the same time (don't even know if that is possible at
the moment in FICS), on the go-server it is and I sometime use that
(e.g. a really slow game and a fast game inbetween)... might also be
interesting during a tournament to watch the game of other peoples...

The best would be, if we could separate the board area in the front end
and make on for each game we are watching and then either have multiple
windows or switch between games, but that would need a lot of work in
the backend, I suppose... e.g. making every game related variable an
array...

> > Of course a keyboard key could be used for this as well, e.g. right
> > Ctrl. That would not overload the mouse so much. On the other hand,
> > using Ctrl, Shift or Alt keys alone to do something might be a practice
> > we have to abandon, as they are needed as a first step of combination
> > keystrokes Ctrl-Something or capital typing, used as key bindings.
> > Currently all XBoard key bindings are normal letters, but we cannot
> > continue to do that after we implemented move type-in:
we probably should move completely to ctrl-keys. in my windows manager
alt-keys are used for lots of windows operation...and as long as we have
enough ctrl-<key> combination that we can use, I think we should use
those first... assigning keys to menus is very easy with gtk btw.
just typing normal keys should trigger the parse-move/command function
as you said...

cheers
     ARUN