We're proud to present to you the visual update of AI Block Battle, it's a definite upgrade when compared to our old one. We hope you like it!
I'd display 1 more row at the top, such that pieces are completely visible when they spawn. However, with one more row shown, it may look weird if bots top out, when they try to drop a piece with a cell in the 21st row.
I'd double the softdrop speed. Without softdropping, 6 movements (plus harddrop) are enough to get a piece to the desired spot. Softdropping may add another 15 movements, which severely slows down the replay. In order to achieve the double speed, you may want to drop a piece by 2 rows within 1 frame, if a bot uses softdrop 2 times in a row.
edit: If you don't want to display an additional line at the top, then you may want to display a ghost/shadow piece (active piece projected to the bottom, translucent).
I don't really like the new design. In my opinion, it's too "playful" and it should be more simple, which is something I liked about the old design. It would give a better overview.
Additionally, I have to agree with OkeyDokey, the softdropping speed should be increased, it's a little bit annoying to play against bots that don't use harddropping at all (like yours ;) ). Showing the 21st row as a "ghost row" is also a good idea.
If I may suggest something, can we have better I/O output? Now whole text dump loads in browser and for games with lots of rounds its slow and clunky (in Chrome at least). Can we have a button to download the output as a zip file instead, would be much more convenient.
I'm aware of the slow IO dumps and I'll be thinking about a permanent fix. But if you click the little arrow next to Error Dump, you will go the the /rawdump page.
Hmm that arrow doesnt do anything for me in Chrome, it changes the URL to .../rawdump, but no changed to the format of the data.
So any news about updating the point-system?