Re: Bot speed

Jason McIntosh wrote:
> A philosophical question:
[...]
> 1. Should the bots slow themselves down, for the sake of we
> slow-thinking carbon units who often prefer to actually see the
> sequence of moves play out?
> 
> 2. If they should, where should this happen: in the bots themselves
> (pausing for N msec before announcing their decision), in the referee
> (making sure, globally, that all bots take at least N msec to move) or
> in the UI (not displaying player-caused state change until N msec have
> passed)?

1. Yes, please. But it should be optional. The first dozen times I play 
a game, I might want this; later, I might not care as much, or at least 
I might want to reduce N. If I'm using a sluggish client, on a PDA or 
something, then I might turn off the bot-slowness, since it's already 
covered by the PDA-slowness.

So I think each user might want a different N. This suggests that it 
should be done in the client.

Oh, wait. The other reason to reduce N is to compensate for a slow 
server. (That follows from the fact that you wanted a nonzero N to 
compensate for a fast server in the first place.) So perhaps it should 
be in the referee.

You don't want it done in the bot: you want the delay to be a *minimum*. 
So if the bot *or* the referee *or* the network is naturally slow enough 
to achieve the minimum, you don't need to add any further delay. That'd 
be rude. So I think it has to be in the client.

Now Doug says, in part:
 > Seems like the problem isn't that it happens quickly, but that there's
 > no way to rewind and see what happened

...and compares this to stepping away from the computer. But I disagree. 
If a change happens too fast, it almost becomes invisible, even when 
you're watching. (And especially if you're still leaning back from 
making your own move when the next one happens.) If you step away, you 
*know* you probably missed something; this is a very different 
experience from staring at the screen for two minutes thinking "hurry up 
and move already" when it's actually your turn.

So I agree that there should be a "what just happened?" feature of some 
kind too, but I do *not* think this eliminates the need for bots to 
(optionally) slow down to a perceptible speed.

     -- Dan Efran
         Martian Ambassador
         efran <at> wunderland.com
         http://www.efran.org/embassy/

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