[Brandal]

sceptic, on Mar 20 2005, 09:40 AM, said:

I think there is a sort of split happening anyway by region, take BBO Italia in the forums, look at some of the tourneys, they are segregated by flag anyway, how many tables are segregated by expert or SEF is quite frequently seen, segregation is already here, will a bit further really hurt if it alieviates fred and udays problem.

I don't know if it "hurts",I just don't like it

Having segregated tourneys,clubs,tables within
one BBO doesn't say dividing BBO that way is a
good thing.

Segregation is a bad thing when you don't have
a say in the matter,isn't it?

If this has to happen,why not:

BBO Main Bridge Club
BBO Vugraph
BBO Tournaments-Team Games-Private Clubs etc.

with some links and overlaps like broadcasts and
tournament schedules available to all.........

[mink]

If the problem is mainly or partly the overall bandwith that is consumed by providing each client with the current state of all other clients, maybe it is a solution not to include idle players and kibitzers in the players list. Friends and Yellows are an exception, of course. A client does not need to know anything about an idle player or a kibitzer. The only drawback would be that the number of Kibitzers at a table could not be displayed anymore.

Keeping the full player list or all players of a user's own country could still be a option, that can switched on by the user when looking for a specific player.

When entering a table, of course, the kibitzers at this table need to be added to the list of players monitored.

Karl

[spwdo]

Hi,

Maybe already said (or silly idea) but would it not be possible to let tournaments after the start move to a different location, given the fact that a large % on bbo is in a tourney all day long .So sign up/registartion avaible in the main BBO , then send to a tournament BBO , same for TM.

Would hate the idea like in msn gaming zone to jump around to locate a friend , would hate to see the bbo disappear as we know it


Marc

[ochinko]

The end user is lazy, we all know that. So what could help in decreasing the traffic, at least in the short term, are just little tweaks in the default settings of the client program. I'm talking about two things that were mentioned already - full tables and logged-in users.

The defaults for the users should be just friends and yellows. Even stars should be added only when the user wants to see them. I, for example, have already checked as friends those stars that I'm most interested in watching them play. If one wants to see all stars, or all countries - fine, but make him have to explicitly click the option. Current settings force you to have to exclude views instead of having to include them on demand.

The same goes for the tables. If there are players that would like to see all tables, let them, just don't make it by default.

It should have become obvious by now that I too would like to delay splitting of BBO as far as possible into the future.

Petko

[ack_hh]

Will the following help?

- table time-out: if no card is played and no bid is made at a table for, let's say,
30 minutes, close the table and log out the players and the kibitzers.

- client time-out: display a "Are you still there?" dialog box after
30 minutes of inactivity. If the user does not reply within xx seconds,
log out from BBO. Any mouse click, chat, changing rooms, etc. will
restart the time-out counter.

The time-out value might be variable, depending on the number
of visitors logged in to BBO (higher load - shorter time-out).

Separating the vugraph seems to be a good idea.

[uday]

What I don't understand is why no one seems to like the idea of many independent BBOs.


Wouldnt you like to have your choice of branded bridge servers? Maybe the "Rated" server could offer ratings. The "NiceGuy" server could offer immediate bans for a single rude remark. The "No-secrets" server could insist on people using real names/identities.
The "Dollars" server could be restricted to people who have at some point purchased bbo$. The "Network" server could be restricted to people who are invited in by existing members. etc.

Maybe the private/public clubs could be replaced by private/public servers.

Maybe one or two of them could be run by NBOs for their members.

Maybe one or two of them could be pay servers, run by people who think they can do a better job of it than we can (no jokes needed, thanks).



Why don't any of you actively want more customized servers and more choices (laying aside the issues of how to achieve any of this) ?

[bestguru]

My main objection to independent servers is finding friends and new people to play with. For example, I have a partner that I play with on occasion only because she is pleasant to play with. She has no interest in improving her game and is not a BIL member. If I were kibbing a game in the BIL and private clubs were completely seperate from the main bridge room then we wouldn't know we were both on.

Another objection is that it is difficult enough to find a weak nt player in a pool of 5000+ players. It would be much harder with, say, 10 indepent servers averaging 500+.

I would have much less objection if we had the ability to see across servers. This would pretty much be the same as today's clubs. I'm not sure how much this would help load balancing. Almost everybody just plays in the main bridge club. Maybe some advertising or incentives would help, but as ochinko said, "The end user is lazy"

[cherdano]

uday, on Mar 21 2005, 03:47 PM, said:

What I don't understand is why no one seems to like the idea of many independent BBOs.


Wouldnt you like to have your choice of branded bridge servers? Maybe the "Rated" server could offer ratings. The "NiceGuy" server could offer immediate bans for a single rude remark. The "No-secrets" server could insist on people using real names/identities.
The "Dollars" server could be restricted to people who have at some point purchased bbo$. The "Network" server could be restricted to people who are invited in by existing members. etc.

Maybe the private/public clubs could be replaced by private/public servers.

Maybe one or two of them could be run by NBOs for their members.

Maybe one or two of them could be pay servers, run by people who think they can do a better job of it than we can (no jokes needed, thanks).



Why don't any of you actively want more customized servers and more choices (laying aside the issues of how to achieve any of this) ?

Uday, I don't mind a split at all, as long as all the players I like to kibitz, plus all my friends that I like to play with, will be on the same server as me Which of course, cannot happen. (Any of your proposed splits would have my friends divided more or less equally among all servers.)

A go server that I visit more or less regularly tried the following: they have a room system. They tried to split the "English Room" (default room for many, depending on language setting) into an "English Game Room", where chat is only allowed if it's on-topic w.r.t go, and an "English Chat Room", where all chat is allowed. This led to endless flamewars, admin (=yellows) abusal etc. etc. for at least half a year. Further, the split hasn't worked at all, since everybody is staying in the bigger of the two rooms.

Of course, that was a somewhat different situation, but still I am convinced that if you try to impose a split on a built community, you should be prepared to take some flames. What you can try, instead, is to offer places where smaller communites can form themselves, i.e. rooms.

[luis]

uday, on Mar 21 2005, 03:47 PM, said:

What I don't understand is why no one seems to like the idea of many independent BBOs.


Wouldnt you like to have your choice of branded bridge servers? Maybe the "Rated" server could offer ratings. The "NiceGuy" server could offer immediate bans for a single rude remark. The "No-secrets" server could insist on people using real names/identities.
The "Dollars" server could be restricted to people who have at some point purchased bbo$. The "Network" server could be restricted to people who are invited in by existing members. etc.

Maybe the private/public clubs could be replaced by private/public servers.

Maybe one or two of them could be run by NBOs for their members.

Maybe one or two of them could be pay servers, run by people who think they can do a better job of it than we can (no jokes needed, thanks).



Why don't any of you actively want more customized servers and more choices (laying aside the issues of how to achieve any of this) ?

With all my respect I think that would be a really horrible horrible idea.
The software should allow you to distribute the load between multiple servers in a way transparent to the user. If that implies a cost that you can't afford then it can even be better to start a collect to raise the needed money than to split BBO, splitting BBO will ruin the fun of having a centralized place where you can play, chat, learn and watch bridge. You can distribute the communications between the client an different servers depending on what you are doing, you can have a "lobby" server, a "tables" you can even have multiple "table" servers if needed each server hosting some tables and you can have a "vugraph" server for vugraph. The only thing you need is to handle messages from a user in one server to a user in another server but you can easily share a table of user-server locations so you know where to send the messages.... Just some ideas I have no idea about the code.

[david_c]

cherdano, on Mar 21 2005, 11:19 AM, said:

Uday, I don't mind a split at all, as long as all the players I like to kibitz, plus all my friends that I like to play with, will be on the same server as me

Exactly.

I wouldn't mind if BBO was split by function, so that the main bridge club was separate from tournaments, etc., as long as it would still be possible to see who was in the other areas, and chat to them. It's not necessary to know what everyone else on BBO is doing, though it would be nice if you could find out about individual people (and individual requests like this would not be too hard on the system).

[TimG]

cherdano, on Mar 21 2005, 11:19 AM, said:

Uday, I don't mind a split at all, as long as all the players I like to kibitz, plus all my friends that I like to play with, will be on the same server as me

Exactly.

[Chamaco]

I posted my idea here:

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?sho...=15&#entry59903

Basically, I'd much prefer to keep the Main Lobby in a single BBO, and move everything else on separate servers.

[pdmunro]

I would be happy with these mini-BBO's:

• BBO-main: friends + list of mini-BBO's + ...
  
  
• BBO-social: kitchen/party bridge
  
  
• BBO-clubs: BIL + Total Points + WP Refugees + ...
  
  
• BBO-1: half the online players
  
  
• BBO-2: the other half of the online players
  
  
• BBO-T: teams + tournaments (including Vugraph)
  
  
• BBO-$: services for which you pay

The main function I want is the ability to switch between the different mini-BBO's to find a table to kibitz. I don't want to be blocked from entering a mini-BBO because it is "full".

Obviously the BBO-# idea is scaleable. With 20000 members you could have 7 mini-BBO's each with about 3000 players. Ah, to dream ... :-)

[Brandal]

uday, on Mar 21 2005, 10:47 AM, said:

What I don't understand is why no one seems to like the idea of many independent BBOs.


Why don't any of you actively want more customized servers and more choices (laying aside the issues of how to achieve any of this) ?

My best guess is "we" are very happy on BBO
and "afraid" a major change will be for the "worse"

[pbleighton]

I like Chamaco's idea the best - keep one Main Lobby, and put the rest on separate servers.

I agree with others that seeing all of the users is a waste of resources. You could display friends and stars, and have a Search mechanism for others.

Peter

[scoob]

i'm sorry if this was already brought up, i did scan this topic but didn't scrutinize every post.

why not have the server selection automated when you login to balance the load. regardless of which server you are on you can see all people and tables and if you are on bbo1 and join a table on bbo2 you are simply switched - this would slow down table loading slightly, but i don't imagine it should be enough to cause problems.

to the end user there would be little to no difference than there is right now. when i move to bbo2 to play the next person to login would be sent to bbo1 to balance the load, etc.

even with this scheme, i still think a special server for vugraph is a good idea.

$0.02

[inquiry]

scoob, on Mar 28 2005, 11:03 AM, said:

i'm sorry if this was already brought up, i did scan this topic but didn't scrutinize every post.

why not have the server selection automated when you login to balance the load. regardless of which server you are on you can see all people and tables and if you are on bbo1 and join a table on bbo2 you are simply switched - this would slow down table loading slightly, but i don't imagine it should be enough to cause problems.

to the end user there would be little to no difference than there is right now. when i move to bbo2 to play the next person to login would be sent to bbo1 to balance the load, etc.

even with this scheme, i still think a special server for vugraph is a good idea.

$0.02

I don't think this helps. If I understand the problem, it is the information (all the people logged on, all the tables, and the updating of that information) which is the problem. Everytime someone joins or leaves a table, that information has to be updated, etc. If you could do that across "two servers" in real time, there would not be an issue. Read or reread fred's post on how information needed quadruples with increasing load and see if this isn't exactly the problem.

Ben

[pdmunro]

I have thought a little more about my request that we not be excluded from a mini-BBO because it is full.

My request relates to the full-nightclub, empty-restaurant phenomenon.

Everyone wants to be in the full nightclub, " where the action is".

Whereas, no one wants to dine in an empty restaurant: "Is there something wrong with the food?"

When I played on Microsoft's "The Zone", there would be some "full" rooms of 100 tables which you couldn't enter. The other rooms would have only a few players in them, making it difficult to get a foursome together. (Of course, the "bots" would always play in the empty seats, making for some interesting bridge.)

So to come to my latest idea.

Could you have a concept like bacterial growth operating:
a mini-BBO fills and fills, then when it reaches a certain size it divides?

That way there would be no "full" mini-BBO's, and no empty ones either.

[Brandal]

pdmunro, on Apr 4 2005, 05:03 PM, said:

there would be some "full" rooms of 100 tables which you couldn't enter. The other rooms would have only a few players in them, making it difficult to get a foursome together.

This is my concern about having mini-BBO's that all
have everything,and limited access.

There would always be mini-BBO's with few people somewhere
down the line.

[Deanrover]

Hate it.

Dean