Score thermometer weirdness

[roymccoy]

@thatguythere202 said in Score thermometer weirdness:

It was someone else who was complaining about the arrow's color I guess.

No, that was me. Just elsewhere. What would of course be nice would be if Lexulous had a programmer who cared about the game in the same way as Peter Lewis cares about Keyboard Maestro on the Mac. Such a person would be here on the forum directly responding to concerns, trying things out, etc. But that doesn't seem to be the way it is. (If I'm wrong, let the programmer speak up now, finally.) My impression is that Lexulous paid a relatively uninterested party to do a post-Flash version, the current version is what they got and they don't want to keep paying him. This is why we get things purportedly being continuously forwarded to the promised attention of the development "team" (?), but almost nothing ever happens despite the existence of obvious shortcomings and possible improvements. The appearance of the arrow may be a minor issue, but to me it displays the frequently lackadaisical approach to the programming of the newer version. The current arrow, again, wasn't designed for the board but was simply yanked out of a standard character set – I don't know exactly which one, but I recognize the arrow. I suppose I can find it easily enough...

[left: current game arrow; right: icon-icons.com]

Wouldn't it be possible to use the old arrow, which was bright and attractive?

No response.

I have noticed myself that the blanks behave oddly (letter is not centered on the tile after one types it in); but haven't bothered to mention it because I am too busy playing (and usually losing) games. To each his own.

What I was talking about was centering the blank letters vertically, which I'm sure would be easy for a programmer as all you'd have to do would be insert a blank spaceholder, either a space or a dummy transparent digit.

But we've gotten off-topic, sorry. Bringing it back to score thermometer weirdness, I'm looking at another game-starting rack here, ACDEINRT. If I try CRETIN, I get 20/.16 = 125, which isn't far from the 128 I can actually get scoring a triple bingo with these letters. But I tried two other words with the same rack previously and they both gave me 158, which is impossible. So the score thermometer can indeed be weird sometimes.

[ThatGuyThere202]

@roymccoy I'd never heard of Keyboard Maestro so I looked it up. Amazing! You can automate computer functions using macros?? (a bit of sarcasm there ... I remember DOS and the format wars... )
[EDIT: I mean the OS wars, of course. Around the same time as the VHS-Beta Format War!]
In any case, I do have complaints--well, one complaint--about the functioning of the arrow. The types of game that you and I play are so different as to be almost beyond comparing, but here's my complaint: When you click on a square to place the arrow so that you can rapidly type your word, the arrow is sometimes pointing to the right and sometimes down. It used to be (in the old version) that you could count on Right for the first click, and Down after clicking a second time. This is still how it behaves in the new game ... but not all the time. If you are at the very end of a game of seconds, it is possible to lose when your clock runs out while you are placing your last word, because you clicked once and the arrow is pointing down instead of right (yes, it happens. Twice yesterday).
I will try to remember to post something about this in the Features Complaints section or whatever it's called. Although I think have done so in the past!

[roymccoy]

@thatguythere202 said in Score thermometer weirdness:

I'd never heard of Keyboard Maestro so I looked it up. Amazing! You can automate computer functions using macros?? (a bit of sarcasm there ...

Anyone with a Mac should be aware of Keyboard Maestro, as nothing else even remotely approaches it in the macro department. Actually it was difficult to automate procedures with macros when Apple came out with OS X and for a number of years afterwards, when QuicKeys and the other old macro accessories didn't work anymore and there weren't any good new ones to replace them. Thank God for Peter Lewis, the KM developer, who miraculously out-QuicKeysed QuicKeys.

Here's a cute little maneuver, set to be triggered by opt-ctrl-t:

Type the A Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Type the B Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Type the C Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
[...]
Type the Z Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Play Sound "Basso"
Type the ⌘A Keystroke

See what that does? I'm glad you made this comment, as I now realize I don't need the returns anymore with the new game version. I don't know if I'll bother modifying the macro, though, since the returns don't seem to do any harm. [...] Ha! I would have to take them out if Lexulous did as I have several times suggested and made the return key trigger Define when a word is entered in the Dictionary field. I'd be very happy to remove the returns then, of course.

I do have complaints--well, one complaint--about the functioning of the arrow. The types of game that you and I play are so different as to be almost beyond comparing, but here's my complaint: When you click on a square to place the arrow so that you can rapidly type your word, the arrow is sometimes pointing to the right and sometimes down. It used to be (in the old version) that you could count on Right for the first click, and Down after clicking a second time. This is still how it behaves in the new game ... but not all the time. If you are at the very end of a game of seconds, it is possible to lose when your clock runs out while you are placing your last word, because you clicked once and the arrow is pointing down instead of right (yes, it happens. Twice yesterday).

Thank you for sharing this. We will pass your suggestion to the development team for consideration.

[ThatGuyThere202]

@roymccoy said in Score thermometer weirdness:

Here's a cute little maneuver, set to be triggered by opt-ctrl-t:
Type the A Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Type the B Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Type the C Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
[...]
Type the Z Keystroke
Type the Return Keystroke
Pause for 1 Second
Type the Delete Keystroke
Play Sound "Basso"
Type the ⌘A Keystroke

Nope sorry, I don't see what that does since I am not a Mac person. I used to use quite a few macros back in MS-DOS days; these days I simply use keyboard shortcuts whenever I need to save time (and when I know what the shortcuts are). My favorite program back in the day was Nota Bene, the word-processing program for scholars, which was/is very macro heavy.

[roymccoy]

@thatguythere202 said in Score thermometer weirdness:

Nope sorry, I don't see what that does since I am not a Mac person. I used to use quite a few macros back in MS-DOS days; these days I simply use keyboard shortcuts whenever I need to save time (and when I know what the shortcuts are). My favorite program back in the day was Nota Bene, the word-processing program for scholars, which was/is very macro heavy.

I'll let somebody else be the genius and figure it out, then. It's not complicated. The ellipsis represents the same sequence with D-Y, the return (again) being superfluous in the new version. Hint: The last four or five steps at the end are unnecessary for the function of the macro.

[A Former User]

@thatguythere202 AutoHotkey for windows is pretty good.

[A Former User]

@anexparrot am confused where does it say best?

[ThatGuyThere202]

@dan sounds good!

[A Former User]

@anexparrot I think you played a very good bingo and wanted to share it with us all.

[roymccoy]

@betterlate1-0

He said "one of the best", presumably meaning that a high percentage was displayed when he hovered the cursor over the right side of the score thermometer.