Given all the negative reaction to nested time control, I have to say
I like it. The pool won't be diluted as long as there's an obvious
main venue.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 15, 2009, at 7:20 PM, Don Dailey <[email protected]> wrote:
I've been working on the new server and I'm almost at the point where
I can think about time controls - and since this is primarily for
developers, I would like to get your thoughts.
First, a brief explanation of how the time control works. When the
client starts up it will inform the server of which venues it is
willing to play in. It must choose an available boardsize and then
any of N different time controls. Initially, N will probably be
2 or 3. For each board size, a time control is called a "venue."
Let's assume there are 3 venues for boardsize 9x9. The time control
for each venue will be significantly different from the others.
One will be very fast, one will be very slow and there will be one in
between.
Each time control will be in sync with the others and the process will
be recursive. So the basic scheduling algorithm is to NOT start a new
round for a given venue until any players who have registered to play
in this venue and are currently playing in FASTER venues are available
for scheduling.
In addition to this, new rounds are not scheduled for any particular
venue as long as the next slower venue is stalled waiting for these
faster
venues to complete.
I hope this idea allows more choice and keeps players busy a greater
percentage of the time by allowing them to fill dead space with fast
games.
Each bot can choose which venues to play in. If you only want to play
fast games, then you can.
Now the questions I pose to you are these:
How many venues for each boardsize? (two, three, more?)
What time controls should they be?
It's almost certainly the case that certain combinations of time
control venues will work together better than others. There will
always be the issue of waiting for games to complete and in fact this
may make the problem a bit worse for those programs that only want to
play in the longest venue. I suggest that each venue is spaced at
least a factor of 2 apart in time. For instance 1 minute, 2 minutes,
4 minutes, etc.
My own suggestion for 9x9 is to have 3 venues of 1 minute, 5 minutes
and 15 minutes per game per player.
It's also not too late to change our minds and not have venues if we
think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.
- Don
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