Subject: issues with the new version

OK I think I see it. Replay goes to non-scored mode but the drop down doesn't change to show it's in that mode. So when you finish the replay you can't go back to Streak mode because the game thinks you're already there.  Don't know how I missed that. I'll fix it tonight.

MrFixit

As I said before, your concept of non scored mode is wrong.  No one wants to be switched to non scored mode because they hit replay, or indeed, for any other reason except going to the drop-down themselves and switching to not scored mode. You should process certain games as non-scored, like replay from streak mode, without switching to non-scored mode.

Thanks for the fix. Now after doing a "Replay" I am able to get back into "Streak" mode from the drop-down, as long as I remember to do that. Often I just hit "Play" reflexively and end up playing a non-scored game or two.

In an unrelated matter. Will the won-loss statistics for a replayed game come to be listed  on the "you-win" or "you-lose" message box after  a replay, as they were formerly? It would also be nice if that message box listed the Elo score of the game every time. I know that was never the case, but it would be a nice touch. Thanks for all your work with the site!

“… as long as I remember to do that…”

Exactly.

i guess I’ll get used to it.  Wish I didn’t have to.

Removing Quartets tournaments has now made the Quartets row in the Open tournies default to easy 8x4 games which makes those long tournaments not has hard now, as well as more boring... 

I had the same feeling when I was playing Australian Open on last Thurday.

Why remove quartets? They were an interesting part.

And why put easy 8x4s instead?

ElGuapo said Quartets were not as interesting as hoped and asked to ax them. He wanted them removed as a standalone theme for games and also if I'm not mistaken removed from the mix for the biggies. He probably suggested 8x4 because I'm been on a kick to make tournaments more accessible/familiar to the normal player but without pissing off the heavyweights.

Suggestions? I'm hoping to promote tournaments as something for the average player as well (see Message of the Fortnight), and the average player here plays 8x4 and has a streak of about 24.

We currently serve about 50,000 games per day and here's the breakdown:

 8x4                  71.5%

13x0                 4.4%

9x5                   3.8%

10x6                 2.7%

12x1                 2.2%

7x4                  1.4%

MrFixit 

I would appreciate it if you could put back the quartets. If not put some 11-sum variants instead (11x0, 10x1, 9x2, 8x3, 7x4 so on well maybe not 6x5). 8x4s make it too easy.

I guess it will be the case with the Masters tonight as well.

Quartets was the least popular of the harder themes, probably for good reason. It seemed like a good idea, we came up with it and Twelve of a Kind at the same time. It had its upside and we gave it a good run, but it suffered from redundancy (solving the same deal four times) and just too many difficult themes to attract ordinary players. 

The replacement games in the Masters mix should be coming from Streaker, which was previously unrepresented. 

I think Hop plays the Australian and it's a bigger mix with two streakers in the meta-mix:

'streaker', 'twelve', 'spelunker', 'traditional', 'potluck', 'streaker', 'freakout', 'zany', 'skeet', 'threat', 'newWide', 'narrow'

Here's the regular Masters:

'spelunker', 'traditional', 'potluck', 'streaker', 'freakout', 'zany', 'threat', 'newWide',  'narrow'

Let me know what to do.

MrFixit

Ah, I haven't seen that list in years, didn't realize Skeet was left out of the Masters mix. It's more fitting than Streaker to fill that spot. As for the Australian where Streaker is already included, the next on the list to add would be All-in-One so I'd do that rather than two sets of Streaker games.

Yes, the change from a set of Quartets to Streaker/All-in-One in the majors skews the overall difficulty lower for those four game. But that's the point of the meta-mix format for the majors: it is supposed to represent players' overall tournament prowess, and the reality is tournaments overall skew a little easier with the refresh. It's four games, I think we'll survive.

OK does this look right?

        # deadly Majors are a meta-mix of twelve mixes

        (@OverallMix) = ('streaker', 'twelve', 'spelunker', 'traditional', 'potluck', 'allOne', 'freakout', 'zany',

        'skeet', 'threat', 'newWide', 'narrow');

        # Masters and USOpen are meta-mixes of nine mixes

        (@OverallMix) = ('spelunker', 'traditional', 'potluck', 'skeet', 'freakout', 'zany', 'threat', 'newWide',

         'narrow');

Yes, exactly.

OK those are live. Let me know if you see issues.

MrFixit

In other non-important news, my ancient iPad went up.  So I gots a new one, and TextScript works on it.  Freecell, baby!

Anyway, in case it’s even possible to move fixing-up-the-client-to-work-on-old-tech any lower on the priority queue, asfaic lower it!

After giving up and quitting a game, I like to replay it. "If at first. . . ."

The replay says the results will not be scored. Fine. After winning and continuing to new game, the next game score also goes unrecorded. A workaround is to click on the URL and press Enter. This goes to the "Logged in" screen and resumes scored play.  Windows 11, Firefox.

Just select Streak mode again in the drop down.

Hi Denny,

I don’t know whether it’s related to the new version or not, or just a new problem with my iPad, but an annoying little window thing has appeared a few days ago, bottom left, next to a ticked shield. The “box” says “Privacy cookie settings managed by google with… (some gobbledegook)”. There’s an x at top right of the box but clicking it doesn’t get rid. The box is covering the card set we use to highlight cards of equal value, which is why it’s annoying. The “Privacy cookie settings” phrase is blue like a link, but it appears “dead”

???

You must be in Europe. I added basic config for Google AdSense, the current big dog in Internet advertising and that's their standard European compliance thing.  Pretty annoying.

When I set my VPN for a European country I get the same, a little hover-y thing lower left.  It didn't seem to obscure anything for me though.  What kind of device are you using? What's the screen size?  Bonus points if you can figure out how to take a screen shot. Should just cut-n-paste into this chat.

MrFixit

It’s an iPad  A16

Crud I'm not getting the Google floater today. I selected UK for my VPN. And then Norway, still no floater. Exactly what country are you in? Also are you using Safari or Chrome?

MrFixit

Oh wait, now I'm getting it with Chrome. I click the X and it dismissed just fine. If you're getting that floater with Safari try using Chrome instead. 

MrFixit

Well I’m in UK and using Chrome.

Ah, I see! I rarely use Safari but just had a go, and with Safari I can cross the floater off. Actually just managed it here in Chrome as well.

It seems that crossing it off in Safari has broken its resistance. It still comes up, but I can close it now, Chrome or Safari. That’s great, thanks for your help.

Anthropomorphizing tech! Ha! Glad you're working.

How did I get a yearly best of 440 on the 8x4 but an all time best of 88?  I assume that this is a known problem because I notice it with a few other players in the scores list?  For the record - 88 is the correct number.  I have never, ever been near 440.

Yearlies are hosed. Will resume in January. Sorry bout that chief.

Can we please look into why the tournament games take up to 10 secs to load and then to complete- it KILLS the speed tournaments - I just struggled to get to 9 games in the Lightning - what happened to the instant loads we had before the ad changes? 

Also Is it a factor in why tournaments take a while in loading sometimes?

Tournaments start promptly but it can take a bit for that message to reach your browser. You can usually start play as soon as your local clock rolls over.

The sluggishness is back fer sure. I'm trying to catch it with its pants down. I'm in Uruguay right now and the 'net is very dicey which ain't helping.

MrFixit

Maybe there are some resource leaks? Have you tried to restart the server to see if it makes it faster.

I've submitted a ticket to our hosting service (namecheap.com, actually a pretty big company in spite of the cheesy sounding name) asking for advice troubleshooting things.  I currently host at a "mid" level and maybe I just need to go to a higher tier.  One possible issue is we are just a VM and share hardware with unknown other users.  So one of those users could be behaving badly and sucking the IO bandwidth out of our VM. But I'm inexperienced with this VM hosting.

Several years ago we used to host on dedicated hardware and that box was always extremely lightly loaded. But it also cost 10x more per month. I await their response.

I'm keeping the tournament chat page open. Let me know if you see it start happening again and hopefully I'll be near the computer.

MrFixit

Thanks for looking into it, If we see it happening - what specific information do you need to know (share in English for us non techies!) 

Go to scores (left hand menu) and to Who (right hand menu), scroll to the bottom of the page, and cut and paste system loading info, e.g.

System loading

10:00:01 1.11, 0.60, 0.69

Around 1 or less (like right now) and we're pretty good. It seems when it jumps to 3 or so we're in trouble. I think I have a solid correlation here but it can't hurt to gather a bit more data.

Before when loading shot up the webs log seemed to show we were being crawled by some search engine. But when it jumps now I seem to see pretty peaceful web logs.  I'm afraid you can't really help me there, that's all stuff only I can see.

MrFixit

Will do- appreciate you looking into it so quickly. Your unplug and replug seems to have helped :O) Haven't had any slow loading issues since

Right now.........some pages loading fast, others not:

12:40:02 1.73, 0.84, 0.61

Right now, with same symptomology:

13:11:01 2.57, 1.56, 1.18

New now:

13:55:01 2.66, 1.37, 0.97

Yikes:

13:59:01 4.33, 3.25, 1.84

14:02:01 4.88, 3.99, 2.38

waiting for the lightning game grid to load still - 1.45 and waiting

14:16:01 0.57, 0.95, 1.56

I just got back. Youch those look bad! I'm discussing an upgrade tomorrow night in the US wee hour but I need to know exactly what it will entail and how much interruption to plan for. Stay tuned.

Sounds good Denny, The lightning took 2 min 53 to load the game grid but then the games loaded and registered the win without issues

My experiences were just with individual games.  Loading of games, and display of results took 'many' seconds (like 10) ("communicating with server"), but in-game play seemed just fine.

Don't know if I should point out this as an issue.   However, my screen looks different than it did before all the changes that have been made.  The freecells and Ace stacks extend above the green area into the olive tone.  It went back to normal for a while about a month ago but soon went back to the current appearance.   Not sure how to send an image.

Magnification? What have you tried from Problems page? 

Some slowing on the site  - 10:07:01 average: 2.40, 1.94, 1.10

Don’t have any issues, just some questions for anyone who can give me a quick recap. 

I just logged on for the first time in several months. I’m assuming hot streak has been canned sadly, because I remember that was under discussion. What are the other major changes? Is the schedule still available?  I’m not seeing it annywhere obvious but I haven’t been logged on long so I’ll look around. 

Anything else I may need to know? It’s prob been at least 4 months, maybe 6 or longer since I’ve played. 

[ EDIT: found the schedule :)  ]

I'm not the best to answer your questions (but yes - MAJOR changes), Go, but welcome back - muchly.  Hope you've been ok.  You've been missed.......

Thanks TN! Been alright for the most part. Crazy stuff happening all over I guess. I mostly had to break because I was playing so much and needed to give my animals more attention. My 17yr old dog is still kicking, happily, as are the 2 other. And the young feral cat I took in with leukemia is doing well, curled by me as I type and no flare ups yet so fingers crossed! I think last I played I mentioned a stray BlueTick Coonhound with heartworms staying with me. We got him treatment and he hit the adoption jackpot with a family of houndlovers in a massive house on 10 acres, with another hound to play with, lots of love, vet knowledge and $ for vet care. Love when it works out beyond expectations or hopes :) 

I’ll keep looking around the new interface and will holler if I have any specific questions. 

Ps: I’m SO rusty! Before hiatus I was at the point I imagine many of you are, where you dream abt card set ups and find yourself playing games in your head, ha. But I just had to google to remember how to play a standard 8x4! Lol, It’s coming back though. Like riding a bike I guess. 

The changes are spread out over several threads, so I don't think there's any quick "reference" place.  Just have to dig and discover.  To me, the HUGE issue is the loss of all the historical database of the 'regular' flavors of variants.  Denny just changed a bunch of 'regulars' to all winnables, and lumped together the databases.  Thus all the old records of the regular variants are being swamped - or are in the process of being.  But not all players feel that loss, as you'll see in the discussion threads so concerning.  You're a quick study, so you'll be up to speed quickly, if you wish. 

Great news on your critter projects!