problem variation

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geijin

Post by geijin »

I know it may involve a lot of change to the global system, but many problems may have variation rendering them more interesting to redo...
For example, you can change color randomly, once black, once white.
You can rotate the board or reverse it...

This way, each time you load a problem, you have to make a little effort to recognize an already solved problem, making it more usefull to recognize patterns in your own game... Moreover, it may enable to take in account problem already solved once for ranking purpose (your skill can evolve in time but it is not integrated in the rating scheme)

Considering the fact that the problems contains comments or instruction, one solution to integrate it is to use special word like %black%, %top%, %east% etc. ... or use an automatic translation system (but it will have difficulties with mispellings 'balck', 'whte', etc)

Example :
"kill the %black% group on %top%
if you rotate 90 and change color
"kill the white group on right"

{Posted by geijin}
Tirian

Post by Tirian »

It's an interesting idea, but there are a couple of obstacles which I think make the feature ultimately unworkable. First off, the comment system would have to be redesigned so that somehow the comments you make that included coordinates would be translated into the proper color and orientation which seems nearly impossible. Also, the system would not know between "above" meaning closer to the top of the monitor (which would need to be oriented) and "above" in the go-sense of further away from the edge (which would not).

If you like, you can almost have everything you want by downloading the problem database from here and then going through the problems with GoGrinder or a similar third-party tool that makes the adaptations that you describe here.

{Posted by Tirian}
Cruncher

Post by Cruncher »

I agree that it would not be feasible trying to make the comment section automatically adapt to these variations - so don't!
Instead, I would suggest that the comments always refer to the "original" situation, which then needs to be displayable on demand (e.g. extending the "show solutions" menu, or adding a toggle button).
In addition, the 'above'-word problem would be limited to words in the problem statement, which probably happens *very* rarely.

The idea of mirror- and color variations would be extremely helpful in recognizing such situations in real life!

{Posted by Cruncher}
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