I was honestly not aware there is such an option on the website. Having the option to turn of minor thing such as the ratings display shouldn’t be much of a problem. However, having this for more complicated things could be a problem.
Yes, one reason I wanted it there is that it would be easier to chat and also perhaps even display variations. How would variations work with the modal chat screen? Do you click on a link in the chat, then you are taken back to the game screen with the variation played out and then you can go back to the chat and then to the proper game? That sounds clunky…
But I guess you are right that it would be 95% just a “hi, gg”, “u2” kind of deal permanently on your screen… not sure how a compromise would look…
Anyway, here’s a mockup of the initial version with the previous results removed (also no chat). It’s definitely clean, but I wonder if we could do something better with the toolbar at the top, it does seem redundant… What do you guys think?
Looks great. I was wondering about the top bar you could presumably squeeze it to a single line by having moved numbers after the match name. But aside from the game switching thing it is a bit redundant.
Just had a thought about chat. Could you have it under the board? I mean “scroll” so the board is at the top and the chat is under when chatting? Not sure I’ve explained that properly.
I like it. If you’re putting the stones together, the one on top should be the one playing. In this case it’s white’s move so White should be on top (it’s duplicate information with the “your turn” but that’s alright).
It would look very weird otherwise, as it’s a quite common indicator for “player’s turn” (e.g. Pandanet and Sabaki use it)
tbh in my humble opinion, the update is not really necessary, i like the current look as it is.
Chat constantly shown surely isnt necessary for me
All info is shown in current layout while keeping it clean and simple, i like that a lot. I also like that with the current layout the board is displayed in between the players. So, while I think it is really cool of you to keep working on the app, the layout you suggested to me doesnt feel like a big improvement, of course i also do not mean to be rude.
However, what i do like about the new layouts is that time info is bigger!
Interesting idea. I will think about variations of this. Perhaps have it above the board so that we can train the user to drag down from the top to enter chat (hence removing the need for yet another button). This would make it impossible to have it below, as I don’t want to have gestures on the board itself. I need to think of this some more…
Thank you for the feedback. I understand that there might be more pressing issues to be dealt with, but sometimes I need to improve on the things that I feel like doing so that the project is attractive to me as well. Most of the development time is sadly spent digging into endless (and sometimes contradicting) server responses and trying to make sense of them to display something meaningful. This time I wanted to do something more visual…
Of course if people feel like this is objectively worse, then I won’t do it… but if it’s even marginally better then I’d rather go ahead with it. And don’t worry, I don’t ever feel offended by constructive feedback, please keep it coming!
Yep, nobody liked that idea, I won’t do it
Out of curiosity, why do you think that’s a superior layout?
Cool, i totally understand the fact that you follow your guts and your motivations when you work on it, after all its supposed to be fun for you! So any changes you feel that make it better for you are much appreciated
Concerning the position of the board:
i like symmetry
it mimics the irl situation that players sit on opposing sides of the board.
While we are at it, things I really like to see is a bigger clock, like the one in the newer designs. And if it is possible sometime i would love to have acces to user stats (own primarily, but also from other users). Maybe you can scrape statistics from the gotstats?-website… I also would like to be able to access other players games as i have a ‘pupil’ whose games i check regularly to talk about mistakes he made and so on (of course without giving him tips in ongoing games )
Right. Useful. My thoughts were something of a fortune telling app who tells you your fate by taking a pic of your good-morning-bacon and analyzing the crisps you just burned into it
bugfixes for people that were using the same phone on more than one account
a lot of performance optimisations for displaying the game list. Hopefully you won’t notice anything behaving differently (except faster) but I did radically change how some things are calculated and displayed:
For example you might see there is no more shadow drawn under the stones in the thumbnails, which would make the white stones less visible. This greatly improves performance and nobody was using the thumbnails for more than game recognition anyway.
Games are no longer displayed until the (time consuming) position is calculated.
Improved on the algorithm that decides if there is a need to redraw one of the game items
a LRU cache to remember the results of the position calculations.
Please let me know if you encounter any issues. In particular, that cache might make the phones with less memory crash…
@MrAlex Now notifications don’t work at all. I had the permissions sorted out (auto-start on, no battery saver, all notifications on) and they worked before.
I don’t understand all the changes but now the list of games is very short, only 8 - the 7 I’m playing and just one finished game. If this is the price of performance etc that’s all good but it would be nice to understand the criteria for the cut off.
Previously (a long time ago) I think the list contained all old games (there was a lot of scrolling anyway!) Then lately (the last year or two) it was shorter (the period when some games would disappear rather than displaying at the bottom of the list instead of the top). Now it’s only a single game!
Anyway, it’s all good, I’m not complaining, just interested. Keep up the good work!
)
