Re: [pbmserv-dev] queueing moves?

[John Williams <williams@tni.com>]

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Richard Rognlie wrote:

> I've got an idea for speeding up game play, especially for those games
> where you can determine a "reasonable" move in advance.
>
> e.g. in some of the various card games, you might know your bid
> before your opponents bid.   No sense waiting.    Or once a card is
> led, you know what your play will be.
>
> So, the idea is, if you submit a move out of turn, that move is
> queued (no validation can be performed, obviously).
> Then whenever a move is made, we check for any queued moves.  And that
> move is attempted.

Sounds similar but simpler to the mythical ifmoves feature.

I think about doing ifmoves occasionally, but doing it "right" would
require figuring out how to canonicalize a move string without really
making the move.  For example, a move in chess could be be written a2-a4,
pa4, pa2-a5, a4, and probably other ways too.  So saying "if a2-a4 then
bxe3" is difficult to solve if I cannot tell whether a2-a4 and the
canonical a4 are the same move.

Maybe I should just be less ambitious and do it for the easy cases...

> Or would people prefer a special command for queuing moves?

I would definitely not want to risk confusing it with a real move.  My
company's email server (exchange, ugh) has been really flakey lately.  I
never know how long something will take to be delivered, and in-order
delivery is definitely too much to ask.

~ John Williams