Hi. First of all some transparency: i am one of 3 designers/developers working on the Tempest Game Clock some but this is not an ad for that, this is a call for some help from the backgammon community.

Originally Tempest was envisioned as a chess clock and it does that very well. But since going on kickstarter, our founders have been hearing from other game players repeatedly asking for features specific to their beloved game. Our founders being chess players, asked me (a so-so backgammon player but lover of the game) to solve for ‘including a beautifully simple version of BACKGAMMON SPECIFIC timing method, that prioritizes the most common time controls, in order to keep it simple.’ (aka, do not bother with 10% of corner case time controls, but get the 90% super sweet.

there is a huge value placed on simplicity on tempest, so i have a problem. the more i read about backgammon timing methods, the more overwhelmed im getting. and i don’t want to clutter the UI with 100 options. tempest is set so simply compared to dgt, game time, and other clocks we have benchmarked, that it’s almost like backgammon itself : simple rules, beautiful results.

TO SET other time controls on it, users just swipe for MAIN GAME minutes (from 1min up to 2 hours). That’s it! no press and hold and tap tap tap and ‘mode’ this and ‘select’ that. no rubbing your belly and tapping your head. It’s just swipe and play. bam. Now with chess, there are also increments (seconds added per move) but the game ends when main time end. increments are also set by swipe. so to set blitz chess 5min + 2sec increments, you just swipe min and swipe seconds. the end. (yes, there are super advanced tournament time controls that this doesn’t address, but for 99% of uses the simplification of the UI is so worth it).

So: how to do this with backgammon? currently we have a stupidly simple time-setting screen like so: 30 + 2 where the left number is min per match and the right number is seconds added per move (increments). Currently our idea is to make backgammon timing just as simple but to make that + icon itself a button/toggle between [+] for increments and [ ... ] for delays and that's it.

would that work (would love to hear from tournament directors). but if it could be that simple, that would definitely be in tempest's brand dna. the idea then is just to leave it the same as setting chess settings but to toggle (and remember!) to use delays not incrments for bg players.

30 + 2 becomes 30 ... 2 where both the 30 min is swipe-able to quick-change it to for example 39 minutes and similarly swipe that second number to 12 for example to mean 39 ... 12 >> 39 min for the game with a bonus 12 seconds delay added/renewed at the START of each move.

Could it be this simple? I hope so!


what i don’t know is does this capture 90% of casual (or tournament) time control needs without going into advanced corner cases…im working on a story board wireframe of this setting method right now. so i very much appreciate any help i get on this… who knows, i might even part with my tempest sample if someone really helps me stress test this thing!

i hope i have convinced you that this is not an ad, but a call for help! if this could meet backgammon tournament conditions, i can tell you that the look, feel, sound, performance of the thing is the only clock on our bench (i've been given about 8 clocks to benchmark against and all of them look like a cheap plastic toy next to the nice backgammon tournament sets we have here. except for tempest, which is the only one that 'looks right' to my eye next to a bg set. well... that's my opinion. my job is to bring a better backgammon clock to our community, and if you can help me with that, i'd very much appreciate it.

if this seems like spam (it isn't) rather than a call for help with BG tournament timings (it is) just let me know and i'll remove it. Otherwise i am cautiously and respectfully posting this link if anyone needs to learn more to know what heck i am even talking about LOL... it's this thing here... this is what im working on now for backgammon...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ock?ref=6x1sqp

thank you in advance, with respect,
Tom.