<p><br>================================<br>Inge Wallin<br>================================<br>> <br>> You can improve your game immensely if you just switch your goals in the game.<br>> By completely forgetting all about territory and just try to keep your stones<br>
> connected, you will immediately be able to go down from 9 stones handicap to<br>> 4, and you will win! Promise! The territory will come by itself.</p>
<p>Thank you. ^^<br>Sorry to say, though, my Go career is pretty much over. Like a nomad, I can only afford to stick around as long as the artwork is needed, and then I have to move on to the next project. =.=</p>
<p>RPG's are probably the only game types that can genuinely keep me hooked on my own, but even their power has waned over the years as I've grown into more of a content creator. ^^'</p>
<p><br>><br>> Clocks are always used in competitions. For a casual game like this they are<br>> not that important. And besides, gnugo can't make good use of the clock. At<br>> least it couldn't when I left it.</p>
<p>Nice, so my graphic won't necessarily go to waste. Now I wish I gave it a little more love. :P</p>
<p><br>================================<br>Sascha Peilicke wrote:<br>================================<br>><br>> Still had the issue with the new version, but a simple ungroup/group and<br>> naming that group in Inkscape did the job.</p>
<p>Ah! Well there you go then. :)<br>btw, because of this I plucked the copy of YOUR svgz to use as my final DA submission. I tend to repost my artwork there as something of a portfolio.</p>
<p><br>> Off course, thanks a lot, the current default theme just looks great. I just<br>> committed it together with updated screenshots (in the docs and the theme<br>> selector).</p>
<p>> Indeed, lot'sa nice thingeys're contain'd in there. Maybe those can be used to<br>> create a more distinctive icon for Kigo :-) Once again, great artwork Arturo!</p>
<p>You're quite welcome, and thank YOU for building another awesome game for the KDEgames suite! The more the merrier! ^^</p>
<p>Hopefully you'll still be able to squeeze in Kigo before the first freeze, that way I can be happy to know that I helped be a small part of that. :)</p>
<p><br>I don't think I'll be able to partake in the difficulty discussion much further, but my final thoughts on the matter is that the best solution should be a compromise between what's best for the novice, what's best for the Go aficionados, and most importantly what's best for the coder [you].</p>
<p>What's best for you, for example, is a system that does not make you write any additional code to change the behavior of GnuGo. What's best for the aficianado is of course that GnuGo be allowed to retain its original Olympic-medal performance. And what's best for the novice is both a fighting chance and some explanations that are a little more in-your-face than their present state.</p>
<p>So let me propose what I call the "Graphics Level" solution:</p>
<p>If you've ever played a high-end graphics game, their Option/Preferences screen may more often than not include a slider with "Low, Medium and High" preset labels, and changing these will automatically change all the subparameters in the Options screen (such as Filtering, Shadows, Texture detail, etc) to the levels specified by the preset.</p>
<p>In this case, when starting a new game against the computer, a preset slider positioned over the other configuration options will be enabled. The slider will have preset values as discussed earlier, which will in turn will modify (in real-time) the parameters in the startup screen to suit the selected preset. </p>
<p>Here's an example of the slider values and what they might do:</p>
<p>Beginner: Gives the computer a value of 1, a 9x9 board and a 3 to 5 stone handicap<br>Easy: Gives the computer a value of 3, a 9x9 board and a 1 to 3 stone handicap<br>Average: Gives the computer a value of 5, a 15x15 board and no handicap<br>
Seasoned: Gives the computer a value of 7, a 19x19 board and no handicap<br>Expert: Gives the computer a value of 10, a 19x19 board and no handicap<br>Master: Gives the computer a value of 10, a 19x19 board and a stone handicap for the computer!<br>
Custom: See below</p>
<p>And naturally you could still customize the values after a preset is selected, although the slider would switch over to the Custom value on the slider. And of course, the game will remember your preset, so next time you play you won't have to rinse and recyle this process. :)</p>
<p>Naturally, you could explain the reasoning in the documentation itself, but in this way you make it "normal" for the beginners to accept the notion of the handicap. Just the way it sounded to me originally, I would almost swear it was a way to cheat or something. ;)</p>
<p>And it really doesn't seem like this would entail much more work than a little UI tweaking. </p>
<p>In any event, that's my two centimes. Hopefully it sounds reasonable.<br>Enjoy all!</p>
<p><br>--Arturo</p>