SensAI Go Devlog 0.2
Hello together,
just a quick update about the state of SensAI Go development.
I've been trying to balance the different roles I find myself in, and last week I was mainly busy recording and editing videos, since it's kind of essential for growing the platform in today's attention economy. This week however I got back to programming and managed to implement and fix some stuff. The main focus was on bringing players together and removing some frustrations. Some of these issues were brought to my attention by you, my first users, so many thanks for that! Please keep the feedback coming.
Here the tldr:
- New: Scheduled game requests
- New: DMs
- New: Misclick protection
- Fix: Volume control for reward sound wasn't working
- Fix: SGF export had an issue with rendering passes
- Fix: Improved reconnect handling after connection loss (e.g. when computer goes to sleep)
If you have a moment, keep on reading for more details about the new features.
Scheduled game requests
I realize the main problem with SensAI Go right now is finding playing partners, since there are few users, you guys are the first ones. I set up some demo games over the past weeks with different people, and found myself asking the same questions again and again: "What timezone are you in?" and "When are you available to play?", which got me thinking...
The new feature addresses this problem and makes it easy for you to mark time blocks in advance for when you'll be able to play. These scheduled game requests can be accepted or matched by other players and will set up a pre-scheduled game that will start automatically at the agreed upon time. The weekly overview makes it easy to see when players will be available and how it matches your schedule.
Some hints:
- Set your timezone under Settings -> Preferences (default is UTC+1)
- Enable email notifications to get updates and reminders about scheduled games
- Scheduled games have to be cancelled at least 2 hours in advance
- If a scheduled game gets cancelled, the original scheduled game request becomes active again
- Players have 5 minutes grace period after game start to join the game, or lose automatically.
DMs
Related to scheduled game requests, I added basic private messaging to SensAI Go. When a game is scheduled, the platform automatically creates a conversation between you and the opponent, in case you want to discuss some details about your match in advance (or after).
Additionally you can contact any active player from the player list via DM.
I expect this to be refined in the future, let me know how it works.
Misclick protection
Multiple people have asked for misclick protection, so I added it. You can enable it via Settings -> Preferences. There are 2 modes: Hold and Confirm.
- Hold: You need to click + hold the mouse button for 1 second to play a move
- Confirm: The first click marks a point on the board, second click confirms. There must be at least a 1 second delay between the two clicks.
Let me know if you'd like to be able to adjust the delay time for this feature.
That's it for the new features, many thanks if you've been reading until here.
As an outlook: for the coming weeks I'm looking to implement time controls, to be able to setup short, medium and long games, and I want to make some improvements to the soundscape control.
Other topics on the list are advanced player metrics and visualizations, a 3D mode for feedback effects, teaching tools and many more, though I'm not sure on all my priorities yet.
Anyway thanks for your interest, I hope to see you soon on SensAI Go.
Have a great day!
PS: I created a separate newsletter category for these SensAI Go related updates. You can unsubscribe any time if you so wish.