Hi!

I have finally tested Backgammon Studio 3.0 enough to be reasonably confident it won't crash and burn too quickly...

Backgammon Studio 3.0

Improvements since 2.9:

• Bookmark image covers: bookmark folders can now get a position image attached. Nice if you have a folder of rolled out positions.
• Rollout rumble! A series of rolled out positions turned into challenges. You can browse down to a set of rollouts and try the accompanying challenge. After you have completed the challenge once you can view the individual positions. Take the challenge later (preferably after a few days) to see if you have improved in handling this position or not.
• New actiontags:
  • More spares or not: Having more spares is usually a great asset but should you do that at the expense of other opportunities?
  • Less spares or not: Sometimes the spares aren't as important as other possible improvements.
  • Reduce contact or not: Being behind in the race will usually require you to keep as much contact as possible. Not knowing the pipcount can lead you astray in these situations.
  • Build bridge or not: Bridges between isolated camps of checkers is key to get your rear checkers home safely. An opportunity to create such a bridge (if one was given up earler) can be very valuable.
  • Destroy bridge or not: Destroying your bridges is usually not a good idea but when the alternatives are worse you might have to.
• New training tracks:
  • Demolition man! Destroy your bridge and let your back checkers fend for themselves?
  • Bridge builder! Build a bridge to let your back checkers get home safely?
  • Gold rush! Go for gold and slot the 5p? How can you resist?
  • Thin red line! Sometimes it is difficult to determine if you are good enough to double or not.
  • Primer! Extending your prime is very tempting! But perhaps not always correct?
  • Too good! Sometimes you miss the target and become too good! Or is it just an illusion?
• New timed training tracks (think of it as speed gammon training):
  • Gold rush2!
  • Thin red line2!
  • Primer2!
  • Too good2!
  • Gone fishing 2!
  • Last man standing 2!
  • Safe opening 2!
  • First 2!
• Home screen with chat: If you want to watch what is going on at Backgammon Studio you can watch the chat log for updates. And you can even chat with other players there unless they are too busy solving problems! :-) You get messages about:
  • User login/logout
  • Duel start/results
  • New highscores/champions (but not individual results as it would drown the chat rather quickly)
  • Friend requests
  • New forum postings
• Home screen chat will have a chat log so all is not gone when you return to it. A page reload will clear it.
• Email notification: You can now get notified when something interesting happens on Backgammon Studio (happens all the time!)
  • A new match has been transcribed and uploaded
  • You lost a champion title! Time to get it back! :-)
  • A new improvement was added.
  • A new explanation was sought for a difficult position.
  • A new classic challenge was added.
  • A new forum posting.
• Revamp of most dialogs to look similar.
• You can now quickly rate a position by using ctrl-1 to ctrl-6 (1-easy to 6-hard).
• Introduction dialog now has more pages with useful tips.
• Some search love:
  • More search query options has gotten help buttons.
  • You can now search for positions based on your own rating of the position and on average rating.
  • You can now search for individual dices (not just dice combination) so you can for instance search for positions where you have to play a 6 from the bar.
  • You an now search for the correct answer a position must have.
  • You can now search for winning, gammon and backgammon chances both for the player and the opponent.
  • It is possible to get gnu to show best move at different scores for the same position. Not sure how well it works yet.
• Bugs:
• It wasn't possible to play a duel on Internet Explorer (Edge). Now it works.
• Dialogs should come out on top of each other.
• I think there were some more minor improvements in this release...

Some images



Rollouts is all the rage at the moment so I have added something I have called 'Rollout rumble'. It is a series of challenges that are based on rolled out opening positions. Currently I have added 1st roll. I have 2roll but not much data for 3rd roll.



This was inspired by a comment from Michy when he was looking up positions where a certain move was correct.



Dialogs has evolved a bit from the start and I have tried to clean up most of them to look the same.



Getting email notifications is sweet! :-) I'll add a few more when I can think of anything interesting to be notified about.



This I think is useful to use as the default home screen on desktop as you can follow interesting events as they happen on the server. Ah. I should probably add a /tell <user> <message> so you can send a message to another player (currently you can only send your friends messages). But then I guess I need to add all the other bells and whistles that are needed like muting/blocking other users.



I needed to set a cover image for the rollout folders as all entries in these folders will be the same position. How useful this is to use in your private database I don't know.



The intro dialog has evolved and now contain several sections with tips and some button links to interesting sections.



Action training tracks are fun! I have added a few that were missing.



It is possible to exclude positions that you have rated as easy by entering 2 or higher here and then tagging positons as easy when you come across them.



Speed gammon training! A must! :-)



The bride concept is an interesting one and I have added two tracks that deals with them.



Earlier the online status was rather shaky but I think it should work better now.



Tore likes winning/gammon estimation and wanted to be able to select a few positions and then play them in this play mode. Sure thing!



You can now specify more values for cube search by also specifying winnning, gammon and backgammon both for you and your opponent.

In other news

There are now more than 4000 matches (most of them live transcribed matches)!

There are now 42 different training tracks!

There are now 54 action training tracks!

http://www.backgammonstudio.com Worth checking out!

Best regards,
TP