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The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

bgammon.org

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Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#11

Post by tslocum »

porphyra wrote: post #7
tslocum wrote: post #3

Hey there, author here. Glad to answer any questions. If you don't know how to play backgammon, check out this guide[0] and/or this video[1]. There is a lot of history[2] behind backgammon. bgammon.org is AGPL-licensed, the client[3] and server[4] source code is publicly available. The graphical client is powered by the excellent Ebitengine[5] game engine. 0. https://bgammon.org/blog/20240201-how-to-play-backgammon/…

Is there a way to resign a game? I don't want to play against a bot until I get totally demolished. Also, if I click in the text input, a huge keyboard shows up even on desktop, obscuring much of the game. Why?

Yes, you can type /resign when it is your turn to end the game.

Thanks. The keyboard input should only show up if your browser is indicating there is a soft keyboard available for the device. On Android, the device keyboard doesn't work for some reason. It definitely shouldn't show up on desktop, though. I will look into this.

The desktop version[0] shouldn't have this issue, if you want to give that a try.

0. https://bgammon.org/download/

Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#12

Post by dumbo-octopus »

closedl00p wrote: post #4

Hi, nice snappy interface (even after making the HN front page...) and I like the gentle highlighting of possible moves for a piece. In two games against the bot I _think_ I had the luck to run into a corner case bug with the rules engine: in the position shown in this screenshot https://ibb.co/dQ3HsM4 I'd rolled a 4-6, but the UI would not let me move my piece on 9 four spaces to hit the opponent on 5 -- the UI only…

While we're on the topic of ancient link-based sharing websites, here's a pastebin of the Typescript code I wrote years ago that I just dug up to see if it'd handle this case. It does! It uses an actually-pretty-fast backtracking implementation to check for valid moves - validating Backgammon moves is a harder problem than you'd think, especially doing so quickly enough to effectively run monte tree search with. Even with all the thought I've put into it, I still don't have a quick explanation I can give a human trying to learn that game what the valid moves are, especially in the endgame and with blocked moves.

https://pastebin.com/QeSdnQpM

And the test cases I have for it: https://pastebin.com/vmMEjSMz

Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#15

Post by bonzini »

Backgammon had a pretty large community at Yahoo! Games. With the demise of Yahoo! Games the only place to play online was FIBS, for which you had to download a Java client... Glad that finally someone scratched their own itch and built this, I will check it out and suggest it to my father.

Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#16

Post by bonzini »

tslocum wrote: post #3

Hey there, author here. Glad to answer any questions. If you don't know how to play backgammon, check out this guide[0] and/or this video[1]. There is a lot of history[2] behind backgammon. bgammon.org is AGPL-licensed, the client[3] and server[4] source code is publicly available. The graphical client is powered by the excellent Ebitengine[5] game engine. 0. https://bgammon.org/blog/20240201-how-to-play-backgammon/…

Why does "Play now using your browser" link to the play store?

Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#17

Post by tslocum »

bonzini wrote: post #16
tslocum wrote: post #3

Hey there, author here. Glad to answer any questions. If you don't know how to play backgammon, check out this guide[0] and/or this video[1]. There is a lot of history[2] behind backgammon. bgammon.org is AGPL-licensed, the client[3] and server[4] source code is publicly available. The graphical client is powered by the excellent Ebitengine[5] game engine. 0. https://bgammon.org/blog/20240201-how-to-play-backgammon/…

Why does "Play now using your browser" link to the play store?

If the user-agent claims to be Android, the play link is changed to the Play Store. This is because the web client runs single-threaded[0] and has reduced performance when running in a browser on desktop, let alone when running on a mobile platform. When running as a native Android app, all of the device's CPU cores are utilized.

0. https://github.com/golang/go/issues/28631

Re: The first 10k games at bgammon.org, an open source online backgammon service

#19

Post by lstolcman »

bonzini wrote: post #15

Backgammon had a pretty large community at Yahoo! Games. With the demise of Yahoo! Games the only place to play online was FIBS, for which you had to download a Java client... Glad that finally someone scratched their own itch and built this, I will check it out and suggest it to my father.

Check https://www.playok.com/ - it has backgammon as well as other games. The site is using html 5 and following "keep it simple" principle; it just works
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