RE: GNU backgammon - random starting point?

[Ian Shaw]

I thought we used to be able to paste a position ID without it resetting the 
match score, so we could play it repeatedly. 

This came up quite independently for me today when I wanted to practice 
64S-55K-F-DT.
4HPhQUAzTvABMA:QQkAAAAAAAAE is the position and match ID.
It works splendidly when I paste this in. I then play out the game and start a 
Game 2. 

When I paste in only the position QQkAAAAAAAAE into game , boths games 1 get 
wiped and it starts again at game 1.

In my mind, this is new behaviour. I think I used to set up several interesting 
related positions by pasting them into one game and then rolling them out. 

Version GNU Backgammon 1.05.000-dev1-mingw 32-Bit 20150120

The interactive rollout is a nice idea. Would it be too hard to add the human 
player into the skill settings for both players.

The other option would be to add a position ID option, either on
Options Game Variations
Or probably more intuitive would to add it to the
New... menu, with options to select who is on roll and whether it's the 1st 
roll of the game. 

That would allow you to practice a position such as the blitz above, or play 
one of Simborg's weird variations. 

-- Ian 



Cheers,
Ian Shaw

-----Original Message-----
From: bug-gnubg-bounces+ian.shaw=riverauto.co.uk@gnu.org 
<bug-gnubg-bounces+ian.shaw=riverauto.co.uk@gnu.org> On Behalf Of Philippe 
Michel
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2023 9:07 PM
To: Flurn Zero One <flurn01@gmail.com>
Cc: bug-gnubg@gnu.org
Subject: Re: GNU backgammon - random starting point?

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 02:15:27PM -0500, Flurn Zero One wrote:

>     Is there a way to start a game in GNU backgammon at a random 
> starting point, instead of starting from the beginning?  I'm using 
> Windows, if that makes any difference.

Do you mean a randomly generated position, or an arbitrary one you set up 
(presumably to play it out multiple times) ?

In the first case this doesn't seem very easy.

In the second case editing the starting position you want, saving it in a sgf 
file and opening the file again and again might be adequate, although this will 
be slightly different from a real game, for instance the same player will be on 
roll every time.

What would be interesting and provide this feature in a much cleaner way would 
be to implement something similar to Jellyfish's interactive rollouts. It may 
not be that easy to modify the current rollout code to have the human player 
handling one side (or both), though.