I want to take a minute to talk about the "WebTV" games here at Pocket-Monkey (more properly, the "non-Java" games; you don't need WebTV to use them).
As I expect most of you know, there are a few ongoing problems with the non-Java games. The big ones are:
1. Sometimes you simply can't make any move. 2. Sometimes when moving a piece the site takes you somewhere else entirely. 3. Sometimes when you place a piece on the board, it doesn't show up where you put it. 4. You cannot do draws in the non-Java games.
It's mostly because of these problems that we continue to call the non-Java games "experimental." It's important to keep that in mind: While the Java games here work quite well, the non-Java games are not completed and are still "in beta." Not that that distinction makes the slightest bit of difference to you if you use WebTV or some such and can't play your games that day! :-)
Jock and I have both been hammered by other commitments (our "real" jobs, moving house, and other things) lately and haven't been able to spend as much time working on the site as we would prefer. That said, we are actively working on these problems, just not as quickly as we would like. I won't go into the details of what we're doing until/unless you start seeing some results from them :-), but we are actually doing something.
Some notes on the problems themselves:
1. Sometimes you simply can't make any move. We still don't know what causes this. We suspect it's a problem with the WebTV browser, specifically, where something we're doing is upsetting it on occasion. Alternately, it could be related to #2 below. Even if this turns out to be a bug in WebTV rather than in Pocket-Monkey, we suspect it may be possible for us to work around that bug on our end, by changing how we do things a bit.
What to do: If you're a WebTV user and you run into this problem, give it a few hours or a couple of days and it always (so far) clears itself up (let us know -- before it happens -- if a game is going to time out because of this, and we can prevent it). Another thing you can do which helps some people is to completely log out of Pocket-Monkey, then log back in by typing the address http://www.pocket-monkey.com into the address bar (instead of using your bookmark/shortcut, and without letting the browser add anything to the end).
(BTW: If you are not a WebTV user -- e.g., you use the non-Java games on your computer for whatever reason -- and this happens to you, please let us know about it via the Contact Us page.)
2. Sometimes when moving a piece the site takes you somewhere else entirely. This is a problem with a third-party component we use on the site; it mostly affects users of the non-Java games but can affect Java users as well, just much less often. The bug is supposedly fixed in the latest version of the component, but we tried the latest version and the problem kept happening (and new, worse problems happened as well, so we went back to the older version). We're trying out various alternatives to this component to find one that doesn't have this problem, using a new server we're building as a test environment.
What to do: When this happens, don't press the Back button. Instead, follow the "Home" link and go back into the game that way -- it's much more likely to work correctly than the Back button.
3. Sometimes when you place a piece on the board, it doesn't show up where you put it. (Another symptom of this, in games like Backgammon where you move pieces, is getting an error telling you that you can't make a move you've tried to make because it's invalid.) This is probably the same problem as #2 even though it looks quite different.
What to do: When using the non-Java games it's very] important to double-check your move -- the position of the pieces you've moved, for instance -- before you send in the move, to make sure it ended up in the right place. (This is a good idea anyway.) So far, we're pretty sure this only happens (or 99% only happens) when placing the pieces, not when sending the move.
4. You cannot do draws in the non-Java games. This, obviously, isn't a bug, it's just that we haven't written that code yet for the non-Java games. This is something we're looking at, but although it's something we can fix now (which is very tempting), we think it's more important to prioritize work on the bigger issues above.
What to do: If you want to end a game in a draw and you or your opponent uses WebTV, please agree ahead of time to call it a draw and then both of you use the Contact Us link to request a draw. We'll do it when we have the request from both sides.
Thanks for your patience while we keep working on the non-Java games. They're one of our highest priorities, as we have a large number of WebTV users who can't use the Java games.
Enjoy your games! -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket Monkey
One of our WebTV users tells us that when his games "freeze up", turning off the WebTV unit and turning it back on solves the problem -- every time so far. So that's better than just waiting for it to go away.
Just thought I'd pass the info along... -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket Monkey.com
Another thing that frequently happens with the non-Java games is that the message (chat) area in the game doesn't work properly -- frequently it gets cleared when a non-Java player makes a move, and sometimes (less frequently) what the non-Java player puts there doesn't show up for the other player.
We think this may be related to the other issues but we're also looking at other causes. -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket Monkey.com
Another thing is that in RadarWar and RadarWar Salvo, if you're using the non-Java version of the game, you can't see the "radar" view of past turns, only the "tactical" view. This is a limitation of the game at the moment. The Java version allows you to see either view in the history. -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com
Another WebTV user reports that she has much better success if she uses [Home] and then chooses her next game rather than [Next Game >>]... -- T.J. Crowder First Primate Pocket-Monkey.com
Hi. I am new to this site. I normally go to IYT but they are having a major malfunction. This was recommended to me by a pal who I play games with. I am on msntv 2 and so far things seem to be working okay.
Glad to hear it! It's an intermittent thing, it'll probably hit you at some point. When it does, just remember this thread and some of the suggestions in it. :-)
-- T.J. :-)
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