[ggo-discussion] Re: trouble saving finished teaching games?

On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 12:23:29PM -0000, Michael Camacho wrote:

>     I decided to observe a couple of teaching games today, since I'd never
> done that using the teaching mode of gGo, and I found that once a game has
> ended, all the variations seem to disappear. Even if I do 'edit game' or
> try and save it - no variations!

Umm, unsure now. I am sure 0.4 did work regarding that. MyMaster, malf and
me had tested a complete review, I got the file from move 0 until MyMaster
quit the game by resign, and the resulting SGF had all variations.

So far so good. But it's getting worse now....

The 0.4 teaching game feature was somewhat too complex for the average IGS
user (aka: "Documentation? What documentation? Me read it?"), because it
enabled the variation-mode in *all* teaching games by default. You could
switch it back to the old mode (no vars, but navigation) in the Edit menu,
but noone knew and found that (although the manual documents it). The
problem simply was, tournament broadcasts are teaching games, and lots of
people observe them, while only few observe real teaching games.

So much about the background story.

Now, in 0.4.1 release I did some changes to the variation stuff, and a sort
of smart-detection (maybe not so smart) if a teaching game is a "real"
teaching game or only a tournament game (technically the same, that's where
the problems start). So when gGo observes a game, and sees a teaching game
(in the meaning of IGS "T"-game), it tries to figure if it's a tournament
game. If yes, it will automatically switch to the old mode (just what the
Edit menu item does). Next, this step will kill all previous variations. In
a tournament thats irrelevant, there are none.

Now I *suspect* this "smart-detection" hits when a game ends, or something
wired occurs, because IGS has the habit to send some repetitive stuff with
the game end which looks similar to the stuff when a game starts (dont ask
me, I didnt write it). I guess that smart-detection needs to be a little
smarter then. :)

From your description I take all was fine before the game ends, and the
game-end then killed all your variations. The only way variations can be
killed is either you switched manually back to old non-vars mode via Edit
menu (doubt that, else you had mentioned it), or gGo had done that for you
automagickally, and it would only do that with the above mechanism.

Theoretically it should work fine in 0.4, seems 0.4.1 broke that.

Overall that issue is non-trivial, and adding the variations was a major
pain. Variations _and_ navitation at the same time is not possible without a
major code rewrite (forget it. :*) ). Then add to that the fact that IGS
tournaments are teaching games, too, which doesnt make things easier.

Anyways, I will have a look, thanks for the hint! I had probably never
noticed as I hardly observe those teaching games.


-----

Off topic, but Im just working on that:

Does anyone here by chance have a collection of own games saved from gGo via
the autosave feature (or manually)? I have one myself, but its very small
and the delays between each game are too large. Im trying to implement some
statistics and a graph, and need some material for testing. So if you have a
somewhat extensive own-games collection which lasts over some months, it
would be cool if you could send me the files (best zipped).

Thanks!

 Peter

Other related posts: