ChessConquest - official discussion thread

Horlicks00 said:
While you play a game against an opponent you can chat with the person and the messages are timestamped, is there a way to get the chess moves also timestamped so that one can see when moves was made in comparison to the messages, at the moment there is a work around by you having to ask your opponent to mention the move number as well when sending a message.
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What do they say... great minds think alike ;)

This request has been submitted by a couple of players. We are reworking the whole chat system with ChessConquest version 2, to cater for a few requests:

1) Messages linked to move number.
2) Messages included in PGN export of your personal games (messages not included when downloading another player's PGN file).
3) Ability to chat with other players without playing a game.
4) Emoticons

As you can imagine, this is a big architecture change from the current version, and we want to implement all the changes in one major upgrade to save some development time.

Horlicks00 said:
Then i thought it would also be helpful to see on a persons profile an hour graph for the last 30 days showing at which time of the day that person normally make moves or is active on the site in your own timezone as people from all around the world is playing but everyone is playing at different times. In that way it make it easier to make moves around the same time possible.
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Great idea ;) Consider it on the development list.

Just some background on the current version of ChessConquest. When we architectured version 1, we made the novice mistake of recording times in Africa/Johannesburg time. This seriously impairs time conversion calculations for different time zones.

During the past couple of weeks we were capturing geographical data such as timezones and daylight saving periods. In version 2 all times is stamped as UTC times. This will allow us to very easily display time correctly for any given time zone.

Horlicks00 said:
Am i getting over analytical here or do you think this would be useful?
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Can one ever be to analytical? What I personally love about chess is that it is an excellent sport to exercises analytical thinking.

We would love to hear what others thinks about Horlick00's ideas. Now is a very good time to throw us with ideas of what you would like to see in ChessConquest version 2, since we are in the process of finalizing the next architecture of ChessConquest.
 
linkinZA said:
A suggestion:

Vacation Mode should not halt the time to move on speed tourney games.
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No it should.

I'm currently taking vacation from ChessConquest until this weekend. I'm not feeling too great so I'm taking some time off. I'll beat you when I come back. :p
 
I do understand what you mean though since the speed tournaments are supposed to go quickly. I'm sorry for holding it up but that's what makes the vacation time ideal since the tournament will go on for a long while still and one can't always be available for play.
 
Yotta, I do think congratulations are in order. I don't know how you marketed the site and I'm not sure how many active players you have on the site but at the moment I'm playing people from 6 different countries including Russia, Israel and Romania... and that is just the games I'm busy with right now.

It is great to see this site growing so rapidly and becoming successful.
 
Thank you so much ViperGTI.

I cannot take the credit for the success, since it is players like yourself that is willing to take a chance on a new small website, and all the great idea contributions from the ChessConquest community, that is stimulating the growth.

We've been holding back with the marketing, and plan to really bring our a-game in promoting ChessConquest as soon as version 2 is launched.

It is really us the need to thank you ;)
 
Oops! I am feeling so embarrassed. I lost a game on a timeout.

How it happened I have no idea. I went on vacation, but was so addicted to the site that I logged on once or twice when the slightest opportunity arose. After all, I just wanted the tournaments to make a bit of progress, no?

Somehow in the process something happened. Maybe I forgot to put myself back on leave. Maybe I overlooked that the timeout on this game was approaching. It really does not matter what caused it. Somehow my time ran out and my opponent claimed the game on a timeout.

It feels terrible, and it was all so unnecessary.

My advice is simple: when you go away on leave, do it properly. DO NOT GO BACK to the Chessconquest site. Not even for a quick peek. Do not even think about it. Enjoy your vacation leave/sick leave/truancy leave, then come back refreshed and ready to massacre all opposition.

This means that there will be no opportunity for misunderstanding and wondering what went wrong.

Oh yes: have a fantastic Christmas, a blessed holiday time and an embarrassment-free new year. See you all soon.
 
Hey TallFred,

ChessConquest is designed that you can go back to ChessConquest while being on vacation. Vacation is only deacitvated if you make a move or when you deactivate it manually. Did you perhaps make a move while visiting the site and being on vacation?

We realized that players might want to browse the site, without making moves, while on vacation ;)

As promised, I will still forward you a timelog of that particular game, together with the leave log, to verify the correctness thereof. Should there be anything wrong we will roll back the game.

We sincerely apologize if there was any misunderstanding on how the vacation feature works, but are comitted to improving the website should it be required.

Just a reminder that we are running ChessConquest as a free website and are not compensated in any way for the long hours we put in, to ensure a pleasant gaming experience. As you can imagine our resources are therefore limited to instantly follow up on possible issues, but we do eventually get around to verifying each individual query sent to us by players.

TallFred, do you think we should perhaps add an alert message when a player returns from vacation, on all their games that require urgent moves to prevent timeouts?

May you also have a blessed Christmas and festive season with your family and friends.

When you return refreshed, I'm looking forward to playing a friendly game with you.
 
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Yotta

Thank you so very much for your reply. I realize that you are making a huge effort, and I appreciate it very deeply. I am also certain that I shall get an answer in due course.

My point stands:it is very easy to overlook a move that needs to be made, or to forget to put yourself back on leave after making a move. It is far better to just enjoy the holiday.

It also makes sure that there are fewer queries for you to handle, and that you are spared from petty admin tasks. In my view, you have better things to do. Maybe your wife would agree.

Thanks once again for all your hard work.
 
tallfred said:
My point stands:it is very easy to overlook a move that needs to be made, or to forget to put yourself back on leave after making a move. It is far better to just enjoy the holiday.
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Good point. I will do some thinking on how we can improve things with version 2. A good holiday is definitely important ;) Looking forward to seeing you when you're back.
 
Timeout issue fixed:

With regards to the timeout issue TallFred discovered, after looking into the problem, we found that there was a small glitch on the system. The issue has been fixed and updated on the live ChessConquest server.

Very specific conditions were required for this problem to affect timeouts, so I doubt that any other games would have been affected by it. If you do however feel a game of yours was timed out unfairly, please notify us thereof so that we may look into the game.
 
Is there anyway to indicate on the 'My Games' tab which games relate to which tournament? I have so many tournament games on the go.
 
Hey Fivel,

We've added the tournament title to the "My Games" tab, for tournament games. I'm just waiting for the website activity to settle down a bit, so that we don't interrupt to many players during their games when we apply the upgrade. Should have it updated later this evening.
 
Yotta, don't know if this has been requested or not, but can you also build in a Private Message feature where you can send a message via the site directly to another player that will also send him an email notification?

I think I might have insulted one of the foreign members by accident. We were playing and then he made a move that messed up my plan so I said "ah, Bummer".... to which he replied "No I am not"... and he hasn't made a move since. Anyway, point being, if there is a private messaging feature, I can mail him and say something like "My bad, come back" (using more words obviously and with less slang)... I sometimes forget that English isn't that common in some of these countries.
 
ViperGTI said:
Yotta, don't know if this has been requested or not, but can you also build in a Private Message feature where you can send a message via the site directly to another player that will also send him an email notification?
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We planned to add this to version 2 of ChessConquest, but I'll see if I can make a plan to add this to the current version for you ;)

Have any of you guys tried http://translate.google.com yet? I'm busy chatting in Romenian with one of my opponents. Very freaky to chat in a language one has absolutely no understanding of.
 
yotta said:
We planned to add this to version 2 of ChessConquest, but I'll see if I can make a plan to add this to the current version for you ;)

Have any of you guys tried http://translate.google.com yet? I'm busy chatting in Romenian with one of my opponents. Very freaky to chat in a language one has absolutely no understanding of.
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Thanks... I know of it but haven't used it for this... mainly because I didn't know that my opponent doesn't speak English
 
Yotta, just found issue with timeout victory... not sure if it is the same one that you mentioned.

When I logged in this afternoon, it showed that my two games against Brandon was automatically won based on "Timeout Victory". However, it was a Medium Velocity tournament and he only used up his "move time" meaning that his 5 days Timebank should now have started. I could be speaking under correction (I have a short short-term memory and I cannot see the time when the game started)
Can you perhaps check up on that and rollback the win if needed?
 
ViperGTI said:
When I logged in this afternoon, it showed that my two games against Brandon was automatically won based on "Timeout Victory". However, it was a Medium Velocity tournament and he only used up his "move time" meaning that his 5 days Timebank should now have started. I could be speaking under correction (I have a short short-term memory and I cannot see the time when the game started)
Can you perhaps check up on that and rollback the win if needed?
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Hey ViperGTI, according to the records on the system, the automatic timeout occurred after no moves were made in games 4789 and 4790 for a period longer than 7 days, which is consistent with the time settings used in Medium Velocity tournaments. The timeouts on these games are valid.

(Last move was made by yourself on 2011-11-29 at 12:17:42 and timeout occurred on 2011-12-06 at 13:00:19).

Vacation logs also indicate that your opponent did not activate his vacation time during this period.

Trust this lays your concerns at rest?
 
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