New Features
1) Score System changed
Many users suggested that points deducted for a Give Up actions is more. We reduced this deduction to 1 point for orphan Give ups i.e when any game without opponent is Gave Up only 1 point will be deducted from users Online Baghchal score. We don’t want to promote users Create Games and Give Up but we want to make it feel easy to Give up. Please refer online Baghchal Help page for updated information about score system.
2) Public Chat – User profile url in chat messages, sticky mention in receiving end for private messages.
Communicating with Online Users was difficult. Also, following your suggestions we have brought up chat features. Which can be used to communicate with online users. Ask if any one is interested in game play. If someone replies their interest, visit their profile get idea about their score – ask them to create game and join in. We hope this chat feature will reduce Giving Up games without opponents too.
Private Chat tab is just filter for private messages. Users can send private messages to other users by attaching @username before their message.
For eg. @johndoe let’s play next game 
When you visit other user’s profile, there is Send Private Message option added. After clicking this link it will open up private chat box with default mention to the user whom you want to send private messages. We don’t expect private message feature to be used as a chat tool rather then a notification tool which will give users an opportunity to communicate with other online users in real-time and ask them to play next match together. Hope this gets useful over time.
Also, the Send Private Message to user link at user profile page will open us Private Chat box with a default mention format to that user.
Private chat box can be opened for any user by using URL in the format : http://www.obaghchal.com/chat?filter=username
3) Finished Game Replay/Playback
This is one of the most advanced and useful feature we have implemented in this update cycle. Game playback or replay means users can now visit details section of any finished game and watch the game play move by move from the beginning as if the game is running now. Just click on the replay button in any finished game and watch the moves, observe the strategies.
Our expected use of this feature is users would be able to visit other user’s profile, playback old games played by that user and get idea about his/her strategies of game play. It will be most useful when we attract more expert players to Online Baghchal. We want Online Baghchal to be a ideas sharing platform too. We are positive that you will enjoy this feature.
One more feature of Reply/Play back functionality is that you can closely inspect Previous or Next moves with the available buttons. These Previous / Next button will forward or reverse the moves of the game under playback.
Minor Improvements
4) Visual Clue – movement squares
Visual clues about opponents last movements is way to keep user focused in the game. There was minor bug in the Goats game play where visual clue was not working. We fixed it and made visual clue work uniformly throughout the game play. We are sure this will enrich game play user experience.
5) Bagh Icon in Game Play Page – Status –> Turn section increased
This was small in size. We have increased the size and made it more visible to user.
7) New game created notification – sticky
jGrowl Notifications about games created by other users used to quickly fade up in few seconds. Now, we have made it sticky and users could join the game from the same notification message. This will sure increase the chance that users will join in to the already created games more often.
Online Users & Registered Users view changed. Now users can browse more users at one sight.
We changed the view because browsing through registered user profile was tough with pagination limit of 10 users information per page. New view will display information about 60 users per page with their score aside. That is to say first page will display Top 60 Online Baghchal users ranked by their score.
9) Score of Online Users fixed
We found bug in score display of online users. We have fixed this now.
10) Automatic pop up removal after few seconds.
Our users found pop up notifications distracting.
We have improved the experience a little bit, pop up notifications in many pages will now fade out automatically within few seconds.
11) Game Chat Improvement – User profile URL added to chat message sender, sticky mention of private messages.
Chat box during game play got more polished. Opponents profile is now linked to the username displayed in chat box.
Also, its easy to send private sticky message to user in chat by just attaching @ at the beginning of line.
Eg. @ it’s your turn. are you there ? |
or @username it’s your turn. are you there ?
Both mention format will work.
12) Option to share game made more visible.
We have added share button for the recently created games where no opponent have joined yet. When you create game and do not find users to play with, sharing game URL with your Twitter, Google+ or Facebook friends is easiest way to call them to join your game. We would be happy to see more games created and shared than more games created and gave up.
13) Give up warning made more informative.
When user clicks Give Up button warning shown is made more informative. We have added information about score going to be deducted from users total score.
14) Updated help section for Creating/Sharing games
How to Create games
How to share games ?
Tips on using Chat
1) Users can send private message to others users while other users are playing games using public chat box. Just add @username and your message will be delivered to respective user as sticky notification.
- This feature can be used to ask playing users for next match.
2) Sending Private message to user is easy. Just attach @username to the URL like thishttp://www.obaghchal.com/chat?filter=bhu1st
or visit user’s profile and click on Send Private Message.
Online Baghchal Doesn’t Support/Works In Internet Explorer Browser.
Please update to latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome
We have one more message to convey – we stopped supporting Internet Explorer web browser since this update cycle. If you use Internet Explorer to browse Online Baghchal, please do not blame us that we didn’t make it work in Internet Explorer rather we request you to access Online Baghchal with more latest versions of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome because our use of HTML5/Canvas is not well supported in Inter Explorer and game play won’t work in this browser. Stop using Internet Explorer, developers from around world thank you knowingly or unknowingly for your initiative. It will save thousands development hours in the end.
Thanks all of you who registered and tested Online Baghchal
We received many feedbacks till this update cycle. We thank all of those who gave us valuable ideas for improvements.
Thanks Hacker News community for their feedback on Online Baghchal. Thanks Online Baghchal users p_r_a_j, mybagh, Samit, leo.shabr for their feedbacks, we have added all the features you suggested in this update.
We are working to enrich user experience of Online Baghchal. Your small feedback about this website will help us improve user experience of overall website users. Keep encouraging us with your feedback. We love to hear from you more often.
We would love to hear your comments about this update in our Facebook fan page.
Happy Baghchal Play. Enjoy!!
-Online Baghchal Team, Semicolon Developers
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