Automatch is ready for testing on the beta server

[anoek]

@Bart-Jan

After canceling an “auto-match”, like because nobody is there to respond, the “Blitz” and “Normal” buttons are gone.
If you move your mouse over the area where they used to be, they magically reappear

Interesting, what device / browser was this on?

[Bart-Jan]

Hi Anoek,

Weird, …, I was so sure I wrote in the initial post. Most have been lightheaded from Swift stuff I was doing on my server … sorry, about that.
Anyways: Safari, MacOS 10.12.5 on a iMac 5k (meaning lots of pixels

[Eugene]

I hope that with all this effort into improving “how we get games”, you’ll be able to address the much more basic necessity of good notification when we find ourself in a game.

The most unpleasant (in fact, only actually unpleasant) aspect of OGS is not being able to move away from the tab with the challenge in it without that nervous feeling of “whoa, wait, the game started already!?)”.

[mlopezviedma]

@GreenAsJade in fact, you can navigate on that same tab, e.g. go to the chat page. You see a “finding you a game” text on the upper right corner. I asume that when a game begins, the UI jumps you right to it. Right, @anoek ?

[Eugene]

Sorry if this is hijacking the topic - but I don’t think you can do what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is making a “live” (not correspondence) challenge, then going off and doing some work or looking at cats on facebook in another tab while you wait for someone to reply.

When you do this, what happens is that when someone joins, the OGS tab label changes to “Your Move” … silently, and without any other visual indication. Ouch!

This means that you can’t really just wait for a game in a relaxed way - you always have to have half an eye on that tab and be “on edge” ready to pounce back in as soon as the game starts.

[mlopezviedma]

Very true. Maybe enabling browser notifications will be a good solution to this.

[Jokes_Aside]

Bumping the topic after the feature was live for a while. I’m wondering how do people feel about it - did it make finding games easier? How can we improve the feature even further?

[Eugene]

It’s great.

I just wish they’d improve the layout as per:

Clearer layout of game finder pane

Tucked away in an answer to a question about creating challenges, I tried to show the person what the buttons actually mean by rearranging them. It strikes me that the arrangement that I came up with might actually be something that would improve the page: [image] Basically, the gist of it is that 4 of the buttons all do the same thing: they find a quick match - the result is “looking for a game”. The game that they are looking for is controlled by the Settings. Separate from that, you ca…

But this is icing: the functionality is good.

(I also wish that I could specify the exact timing rules that I want - this would match with someone who didn’t specify so tightly, and make us both happy)

[brose]

@anoek

Is there anyplace to see the tables used for the timing details in automatch more detailed than “~10 sec per move” anyways. This would be useful to at least know what the values are for the timing schemes for those interested.

[BHydden]

If you press the cog you can adjust your settings. Specific time controls are in here.

[Eugene]

I think that brose wants to know the actual numbers. The cog settings just let you chose the ruleset.

I’ve wondered that too.

[BHydden]

My understanding is that if you want a specific time control you need to create a custom game, otherwise auto match will just pair you up with any blitz game that meets your settings.

[Eugene]

What about the case of matching two people who are waiting for an automatch?

[BHydden]

It would make sense if they would be paired with the site’s default settings, but unless I’m mistaken, I believe currently they don’t get paired at all.

[Jokes_Aside]

Why do you think so? Just curious

[Eugene]

@BHydden

It would make sense if they would be paired with the site’s default settings, but unless I’m mistaken, I believe currently they don’t get paired at all.

That doesn’t seem to make sense. I can get automatches quite easily, wheras there are hardly ever challenges showing up on the board that I like. If what you said is correct, one of the two participants in an automatch must have created a custom challenge… my impression is that this isn’t the case.

[joellercoaster]

I’m not convinced that enabling browser notifications is ever the answer. To anything

(This is not any kind of objective remark; purely my own very strong dislike.)

[BHydden]

@GreenAsJade

That doesn’t seem to make sense. I can get automatches quite easily, wheras there are hardly ever challenges showing up on the board that I like. If what you said is correct, one of the two participants in an automatch must have created a custom challenge… my impression is that this isn’t the case.

Can’t say from personal experience as I haven’t used it yet (have enough games with ladder / tournament / private challenges) but I have seen other forum threads discussing this topic and apparently, as silly as it sounds to me, 2 automatching players don’t get paired (could well be wrong as I said I’ve only heard this second hand).

[Eugene]

Well, that certainly would explain how the timings are set then