stephenbrooks.orgForumTalkSensibleNew game on website
Username: Password:
Page 1 2
Search site:
Subscribe to thread via RSS
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 08:04:12
This is a bit of fun. We'll have to find some non-IE people to play it though.  And BTW, I _can_ play it in Lynx, although maybe the columns need to be aligned a bit better.  Nobody has tested Mozilla, Konqueror or Oregano yet.

[This message was edited by Stephen Brooks on 2002-May-26 at 17:05.]
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 08:40:08
Joel Holdsworth said "that's really lame, Stephen". He may in fact be right, but the sad fact is I spent half of today and half of yesterday (the half I wasn't writing muon v4.04 in) writing that lame oddity.  Fortunately it means I now know how to set up simple web-database applications on this server.

One thing I was just thinking about is that IE is obviously going to be too dominant (IE players always having to wait for a turn etc.), so I was thinking of splitting IE into

MSIE 6.0
MSIE 5.5
MSIE 5.0
MSIE 4.0
MSIE (other)

...and splitting Netscape into

Netscape 6
Netscape 4
and Netscape (other).
Chris Johnson
2002-05-26 08:46:49
Yeah its a bit errr in some ways, because the counter placement will probably go:

Netscape, MSIE, Netscape, MSIE, Konqueror, MSIE, Opera, MSIE, Konqueror, MSIE, Netscape, MSIE, MSIE wins.

Splitting into versions is a good idea I think.

Is this PHP and MySQL or something else.  I noticed that you had a test JSP on the site, but I didn't _think_ that infopop supported that.
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 09:06:04
InfoPop support JSP I reckon, but not where tgkprog's put them.  He needs to put them in his WWW directory... I'll have to tell him about that, but he's not currently on Yahoo.
Mike Ellery
2002-05-26 09:11:17
I'll be happy to test it with Mozilla

Mike cool
Mike Ellery
2002-05-26 09:13:41
heh, thats pretty cool

Moz doesnt automatically take me back to the page, but i get that on a lot of sites. 

Mike cool
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 09:23:14
Seems to be working!

If I separate the versions out, this will have to go down for a while, but won't do that for a while.

[edit] If it goes down, I'll also remove the hitcounter from the bottom, as all the frantic refreshing sometimes seems to make it reset![/edit]
Mike Ellery
2002-05-26 09:31:15
looks good to me,

wait till Moz 1.0 comes out though wink
Thomas King
2002-05-26 09:37:35
Err I think it's really funny.

Joel Holdsworth says its mank because it doesnt have any 22MB VC++ toolbars.

Grank grank!
Chris Johnson
2002-05-26 09:43:05
Hmm for some reason, playing connect 4 just then gave me an massive adrenaline rush... probably because Tom King would have spent the next 6 months ripping it out of me if I had lost...

Theres potentially a slight problem with other people coming in during a game between two people and fodging it up without realising that a game was in progress.  Also, the refreshing does get a little tiresome.

Therefore I suggest two features - which may or may not be easily implementable:

1) A time-since-move-before-last counter, with a "GAME IN PROGRESS" sign if its less than 5 minutes.

2) A method of auto-refreshing when the next counter is moved.  This could be done by a javascript that examined a file on the server every 5 sec or so, or alternatively by a 'server-push' (rather than client-pull) refresh directly from the php.

Oh and a third - it would be nice to store the moves made and the people who made them for each game, but this isn't really necessary.
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 11:23:41
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Johnson:
Hmm for some reason, playing connect 4 just then gave me an massive adrenaline rush... probably because Tom King would have spent the next 6 months ripping it out of me if I had lost...


Err yes and you're the sort of nasty vindictive person who gets great pleasure out of beating other people.

quote:
Theres potentially a slight problem with other people coming in during a game between two people and fodging it up without realising that a game was in progress.


I was just thinking about this and I realised that this competition gives a better estimate of the relative "intelligence" of browser users than I first thought.  For one thing, it's not _too_ biased by the massive number of IE people because you need at least _two_ to be present to have a game.  Also people "fodging it up" is a sign of general stupidity... I actually quite like the possibility of more than one person from one side playing at a time - makes it a bit more odd.

quote:
1) A time-since-move-before-last counter, with a "GAME IN PROGRESS" sign if its less than 5 minutes.


Now I can do that - just add a time-since indicator to the person-last-moved thing.

quote:
2) A method of auto-refreshing when the next counter is moved.  This could be done by a javascript that examined a file on the server every 5 sec or so, or alternatively by a 'server-push' (rather than client-pull) refresh directly from the php.


Err well when I first read this I thought there's no way I'm going to do that, but PHP being what there is, there might be some really obvious command like "trigger_refresh()" available.  But I'm not sure if there will be: for instance, have you ever seen a page that refreshes itself in reaction to some change on the server like that?  I never have.  I also thought client-side JavaScript was meant to be a secure language so would have trouble manipulating files quite like that.  Server-side JSP would again require this mysterious "server push" thing you talk about - and I don't think it's even practicable because IE does not send a signal to the webserver when you close a window (or at least I don't think it does), so there's no way of telling who's _currently_ viewing a page (without some rather intensive realtime loop between the two going on).

quote:
Oh and a third - it would be nice to store the moves made and the people who made them for each game, but this isn't really necessary.


Unfortunately, identifying the "people" who make the moves would require I write an entire login/logout security sort-of-a-system.  A task that I could happily put off until ANOTHER weekend.  Also if people had to use password authentication it would be way less spontaneous.
Nimrod
2002-05-26 12:27:54
Hello, only me.

Since I'm stuck on a mac (but it's OS X, so it could be worse) I have IE 5.1 (latest version for mac), Mozilla 0.9.9 and OmniWeb.  OmniWeb usually gets identified as IE (on other sites), since noone's heard of it, but it counted as Mozilla here.

Anyway, I'm off to play (with) myself... watch it King big grin
Thomas King
2002-05-26 12:49:17
quote:
Originally posted by that gnome-twidller of an administrator :
Err yes and you're the sort of nasty vindictive person who gets great pleasure out of beating other people.



Err I get a vindictive pleasure out of being nasty to other people?  Is this any help?

Er I tried to send my linux machine to that game but I think I need to put the hard-drive back before it'll start working properly again.

Grank grank!
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 13:56:15
I just scored the 2nd point for MSIE just now - whoever was just playing Mozilla didn't spot a diagonal going up the left-hand side of the board... big grin

"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you can create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Mike Ellery
2002-05-26 14:38:48
fyi, netscape has a 7.0 now

its based on Moz's rc2 i believe

Mike cool
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 14:53:31
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Ellery:
Moz doesnt automatically take me back to the page, but i get that on a lot of sites.


I think I can probably get rid of that annoying redirect screen and put it all in one file... I'll have a look at Netscape7


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you can create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Orbi-tel
2002-05-26 14:59:13
I think this is just an excuse to increase your hit counter razz
Orbi-tel
2002-05-26 15:13:07
BUGS BUGS BUGS

the last 3 moves have placed tokens in a different column to what I selected.  GRRRRRR How can I win if the program makes up the moves itself

mad mad mad

[edit] Ok maybe there is more than one IE player playing[/edit]

[This message was edited by Orbi-tel on 2002-May-26 at 22:29.]
Orbi-tel
2002-05-26 15:24:08
HEY!!!  who nicked my game with Oregano!!!
Orbi-tel
2002-05-26 15:28:24
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: loadboard() in /home/virtual/site100/fst/var/www/html/browserwars/index.php on line 71
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 15:38:58
ROFL!  big grin I thought _I_ was playing the Oregano guy - and then he started complaining to me on ICQ that MSIE was playing awfully fast!!

The script error you got was probably me fixing a bug in the script - you must have hit refresh in the 5 seconds it took to FTP all the files up.


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you can create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Matthew (Oregano)
2002-05-26 15:44:43
Yay, horizontal 4!  I win again!

Don't need to register, Stephen smile
Orbi-tel
2002-05-26 15:47:47
I can't see this working if 3 or more people are playing at the same time.  It's bad enough having 3 or more browsers showing but when 2 or more are playing the same browser it gets confusing.  I'm not playing any more frown frown frown wink
Matthew
2002-05-26 15:57:58
Or if one person, say, is playing Oregano and Opera at the same time... wink
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-26 16:44:46
The reason why Matthew's posts look strange is that he's a guest, so the bottom bar of information is not applicable and is hence not shown.  I personally find it a bit disconcerting.

BTW, the way to prevent same-browser frustration is to refresh the page just BEFORE you make your planned move, so you can see if anything has changed.


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you can create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
K0r/\/f1@k€$
2002-05-27 02:32:48
Pretty cool idea I think, although I agree that there should be a way of fixing it for multiple players of the same browser.

Also, please take away the crosshair over links 'feature'
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 04:40:08
quote:
Originally posted by K0r/\/f1@k€$:
Also, please take away the crosshair over links 'feature'


No.


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Thomas King
2002-05-27 05:32:01
No really.  If the cursor isn't going to change into a duck, it shouldn't chamge at all.

Grank grank!
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 05:45:51
If it doesn't turn into a crosshair it turns into a mank pointy-hand thing over links, which is something I object to.
When I first put it on thie site I thought "Hmm this feels like a bit of a gimmick - probably in a week's time I'll be bored of it and take it off", but actually I still like it.  So there.

[edit] Why aren't you on Yahoo, fool?  [/edit]


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Nimrod
2002-05-27 06:52:49
Stephen, his yahoo ID is 'rneatherway'.... but he's still a fool.

[edit] Is my avatar too big, btw?  [/edit]
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 07:01:11
I was referring to Tom King (being offline from Yahoo).

Hmm your avatar could do with being a _bit_ smaller (say 80% of its current size) if you can be bothered with resizing it in a paint package etc.

BTW, anyone who's just noticed an anomaly on the browserwars board - I changed the script so that it wouldn't use those annoying "redirect" pages, but forgot that you'd then automatically play a piece in a column if you pressed refresh (the input fields weren't cleared).  So then a couple of minutes later I added the row# as another input field so pressing refresh won't play again because that square is full.  There's still a slight problem with game-restarts, but I might work around that soon.


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
K0r/\/f1@k€$
2002-05-27 07:15:55
Yes I noticed that.  Automatic refreshes would add a lot.
K0r/\/f1@k€$
2002-05-27 07:19:58
Update.  Mozilla currently has four in a row without winning big grin
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 07:25:03
quote:
Originally posted by K0r/\/f1@k€$:
Update.  Mozilla currently has four in a row without winning big grin


'nother update: I debugged the code and uploaded it to the server so fast the Opera guy didn't have a chance to steal the game!  big grin eek


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
K0r/\/f1@k€$
2002-05-27 07:38:24
That was me!  So close... wink
Nimrod
2002-05-27 07:41:20
This is a good game (I'm Mozilla), but it's updating a bit too fast for me to keep up, frown
Nimrod
2002-05-27 07:45:27
Err... Stephen is something funny going on because you seem to be winning games so frequently to be impossible (i.e. i don't think there have even been 4 moves made).
K0r/\/f1@k€$
2002-05-27 07:47:44
I'm Opera here.  It works well except I think it should stay on the end game screen for a bit so everyone can see who won.  Because if you play to block someone, another person can already have played and then the person you intended to block wins.  but it could have been someone else.

Hmm.  I thought it made sense roll eyes
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 07:49:29
quote:
Originally posted by Nimrod:
Err... Stephen is something funny going on because you seem to be winning games so frequently to be impossible (i.e. i don't think there have even been 4 moves made).


ROFL!  Tom King was also playing at one point, making MSIE a rather fast player.

Having the end screen stay up for a while longer might be an idea - say a 15 second delay when only the title screen is shown or something... I'll think about it.


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 07:53:28
I just won against you lot using a text-mode browser. razz


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Nimrod
2002-05-27 08:03:45
Hey it's not easy being Mozilla you know!  I have to paste "http://www.stephenbrooks.org/browserwars/index.php" into the address bar after every turn to refresh!

Any chance you could add the OmniWeb browser (don't know how you detect it)?  It's not particularly important tho'.
Nimrod
2002-05-27 08:26:43
Hmm... someone else is playing as Mozilla, two recent moves were ones I definitely didn't make.  confused
Chris Johnson
2002-05-27 08:41:02
Hmm Battleships would be cool also.  I want to learn PHP at some point so if you think this is a good idea Stephen I could write this sometime next week.

Alternatively, you might think its a mank idea.
Thomas King
2002-05-27 08:42:31
Yes, I was the MSIE person there, and I must say, frankly, you all suck.  My mum's better at it than you are.  Stephens the only good one, and he was playing in lynx.

Grank grank!
Nimrod
2002-05-27 14:34:19
Stephen, I notice you've allowed for different versions of IE.  However, I'm running IE 5.1 which gets identified as Mozilla.  I'm guessing any unidentifiable browser gets classed as Mozilla.

Anyway, I love the game, and I'm addicted.  Kornflakes got banned from IT today while playing it (although the banning was mainly for logging on as someone else).  cool
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-27 15:18:14
quote:
Originally posted by Nimrod:
Stephen, I notice you've allowed for different versions of IE.  However, I'm running IE 5.1 which gets identified as Mozilla.  I'm guessing any unidentifiable browser gets classed as Mozilla.


That, I think, is because Mozilla is the HTML rendering engine that underlies most modern browsers, so it gets in the browser string whatever happens.  If a _truly_ alien browser appears, it gets called "UnknownBrowser" and has an icon of a goose.

Has the IE5.1 problem been fixed yet?  I change the detection string from "MSIE 5.0" to "MSIE 5", so it'll catch 5.x, but I put "MSIE 5.5" higher up in the list, so 5.5 specifically will get caught first.

quote:
Kornflakes got banned from IT today while playing it


That somehow makes it all feel worthwhile cool


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Chris Johnson
2002-05-27 15:57:58
Who is Cornflakes (sorry, kØ®/\/ƒ£æþ€§)?
Nimrod
2002-05-28 07:47:12
Yep, IE 5.1 now gets classed correctly, thanks.

|<0r|\|ƒ1@|<€5 (which makes him sound like a 12 year old script-kiddy) is Robin Neatherway.
Stephen Brooks
2002-05-28 08:53:43
argh I played moronically as IE6 just then and let Opera win


"As every 11-year-old kid knows, if you concentrate enough Van-der-Graff generators and expensive special effects in one place, you create a spiral space-time whirly thing, AND an interesting plotline"
Nimrod
2002-05-28 09:34:41
I was just playing myself, and it was quite a stalemate, and looking like I could fill the board.  Stephen realising he hadn't coded for a stalemate, started playing and forced me to win frown

Nice one big grin
: contact : - - -
E-mail: sbstrudel characterstephenbrooks.orgTwitter: stephenjbrooksMastodon: strudel charactersjbstrudel charactermstdn.io RSS feed

Site has had 25163276 accesses.