Originally posted by mosquitorespectin our two games i think i would have need that!
I think it would be nice if the analyze board screen showed which pieces had been taken, and allowed you the ability to put new pieces on the board, e.g. for queened pawns, or to rectify your mistakes. What do other people think?
Originally posted by dsb3I think the freeform aspect is a good idea personally and I hope it stays that way - it allows (obviously) to move pieces wherever you want so you can try out different positions. The thing that annoys me is that if you accidentally obliterate a piece you have to go back to a position that has actually occured in the game
They're not really e.p. and queening problems - it's just a freeform board without move validation.
If you add move validation, the rest falls into place automatically.
Originally posted by mosquitorespectHear, hear.
I think the freeform aspect is a good idea personally and I hope it stays that way - it allows (obviously) to move pieces wherever you want so you can try out different positions. The thing that annoys me is that if you accidentally obliterate a piece you have to go back to a position that has actually occured in the game
If we can just put pieces back on the board, even the obliteration feature ceases to be a problem. Of course, if one of the 'pieces' is a blank, then the board could just ignore any 'move' that copied an empty square to a piece.
On the other hand, I suspect people will sometimes put the piece back in the wrong place and start complaining again that the analyze board didn't keep track of the moves they had tried out. Well, that will just be tough. It's not a downloaded program, it's just a very clever bit of client-side scripting.
Originally posted by RolandYoungMaybe you could have an option whether you want it to be freeform or rule-bound.Like there will be 2 links freeform analyze and gamebound analyze on the game page.
Hear, hear.
If we can just put pieces back on the board, even the obliteration feature ceases to be a problem. Of course, if one of the 'pieces' is a blank, then the board could just ignore any 'move' that copied an empty square to a piece.
On the other hand, I suspect people will sometimes put the piece back in the wrong place and start compla ...[text shortened]... be tough. It's not a downloaded program, it's just a very clever bit of client-side scripting.
Originally posted by druidraviGood point. I prefer the board to be bound by the rules of the game, whereas I know a friend of mine moves pieces all over the place to see how various positions would look.
Maybe you could have an option whether you want it to be freeform or rule-bound.Like there will be 2 links freeform analyze and gamebound analyze on the game page.
The one thing that I really want in the analyse board screen is for it to remember the moves u made. Sometimes, I get myself into a great position, and then have to try to figure out the sequence of moves that got me there.
D
Both 'rule bound' and 'remember how we got here' require a lot more intelligence than can reasonably be expected from a javascript. Admittedly, Russ achieves way more with javascript than many people would dream of, but...
Someone could write a program that parses the Analyze Board screen (or any of the other boards, if you didn't need the history), a "RHP client" that would be a specialised web client. But this would have major disadvantages:
1) It would have to be written for each operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux...)
2) No use to www.chessatwork.com users, who generally can't install downloads
3) Would need fixing every time Russ changed the HTML format of the analysis board. Perhaps if Russ ever does an XML or RSS interface...
Alternatively, you can use Winboard, or whatever is available for your operating system.