Show checks in mistakes list?

[revenant]

In the "Mistakes" move list, shouldn't checks appear with the + symbol?  (As in the newly featured variations lists.)

[richard]

That is on the agenda, I need to make another small change before I can add the + symbol to the mistakes list (otherwise the new mistakes with check symbols will appear to be different mistakes to the ones without).

Richard.

[revenant]

Also in the subvariations lists, shouldn't promotion moves show what piece is being promoted to?  -- e.g. in the main line for Problem 45960, after "(  +5.20 (depth:16) 1. Rxe5 Rb1 2. Ree1", show "a1=Q" and not just "a1".

Thanks for changing the evals from "520" to "5.20" btw -- much easier for a human to decipher  :-)

[richard]

Revenant, yup I haven't gotten around to the promotion notation yet.  I also need some UI changes to actually allow promotions, as I have no way of the user choosing the promotion piece. I have promotions in the alternative lines or the opponents line but for now I have to discard all the problems where the user would have to do a promotion in the main line.

Regards,
Richard.

[drahacikfm]

I have promotions in the alternative lines or the opponents line but for now I have to discard all the problems where the user would have to do a promotion in the main line.

Richard, problem 42685 has a promotion in the main line, and I'm sure I've seen other problems where promotion is in the solution.  Or did you mean under-promotion to something other than a queen?

[richard]

Thanks drahacik,

It looks like there is a bug in my "don't include promotions" filter. Probably arrived at the same time as the new move list changes (i'm fairly sure there are no old problems with promotions the user has to play). I keep a stat of how many promotions I discard when loading problems into the database and I did notice that it was suspiciously low on the last load, but didn't investigate further at the time.  Without UI support, I expect under promotions will work but the user will get a 'free gift' in that the the under promotion will be automatically chosen correctly without the user having to know that the position required under promotion.  I could probably stop trying to filter promotions as under promotions are rare and the current behaviour is not too obnoxious in those cases.

Regards,
Richard.

[drahacikfm]

It's obnoxious to me in problem 44777    I didn't play the solution because it involved an underpromotion, and also didn't play a "good move" because it was an underpromotion, and got the problem wrong and lost 19 rating points!

[richard]

Yes I can see that would fit under the definition of obnoxious :-)  I guess what I should have said was that as long as you know how promotions are currently handled it is not too obnoxious :-).  Basically it looks like you shouldn't fear playing a promotion, and you should get the promotion type chosen for you "for free".

Richard.

[drahacikfm]

Ok, in problem 41616 I was a little nervous, because the line I decided to play required promoting to a knight on move 2.  If I promoted to a queen I would lose.  But now that I know I'll get the correct piece just by pushing the pawn, I did it and it worked.

How does your code know if f1 means knight or queen (or bishop or rook) if it's not in the stored move text?  I noticed that both problems I've seen with knight promotion were check, so the difference in the text is f1 and f1+.  But for some promotions they might both be checks, or neither one check.

[richard]

Drahacik, the moves that are presented are converted from long algebraic into short algebraic on the client (I keep long algebraic in most places internally as it is much easier to deal with from a coding point of view).  What you see in the move list is therefore presentation data converted from the underlying move list.  As you've noticed there are still a couple of things that are not being shown in the presentation that are in the underlying data.

Richard.

[revenant]

Problem 46052 works as advertised.  Not that I got it right the first time... or even the second.  But the third time I remembered the sequence and the UI cooperated, underpromoting to a knight.  Cute!

Now, what's a good design for a full promotion UI?  Maybe show images of a Q, R, B, and N in a little array off to the right of the upper-right corner of the board.  Have them always there but greyed over and unobtrusive, then when user pushes a pawn to the 8th rank, light up the array and require a single-click on one of the 4 pieces.  If no promotion is the correct move at that point in the problem you could of course immediately mark it wrong, but lessonwise it's probably better to make the user always pick a piece and only then mark it wrong.

[richard]

Hi revenant,

I prefer a popup dialog for promotion selection rather than using up precious screen realestate on something that isn't needed that often,i.e. the dialog appears when the user moves a pawn to the 8th rank and disappears after making the selection. Other than that I agree with the rest of the how the UI should work.

Regards,
Richard.