Separate bots from humans
juxtaposed
REGISTERED
Is there anyway to split your bot players from human players? It's ridiculous to see 'something' get a win in 16s as opposed to 'somebody' who takes 3 min or longer.
Comments
There are a lot of "somebodies" who play a game in 8 - 10 minutes for fun and relaxation! "We" ignore the bots and enjoy the Green Felt site with no ads, great organization, and maintenance by its creators. We also access this forum and get a read of various players, their participation and comments. These are GAMES try to enjoy the playing of them!!!
I keep wondering.........if there ARE 'bots', and there may be, what would be the motivation? It's not like money is being won or anything is being awarded to the player with the shortest time. Most of us don't even know the other players, so bragging rights wouldn't be a motive. It just doesn't seem likely to me that there are non-human players on here. If there are people out there who are interested in creating bots for winning games in 6 seconds, why would they pick a rather obscure game site to showcase their skill?
Funny, I didn't realize I was posting to a forum. I clicked the Contact Us link, thinking this was going to the creators or admin (I'm new here). I wasn't meaning to criticize as I love this site! It is very well designed. I do like competitive play and it would be nice to flush out the bots, which is obvious to me that they exist.There purpose? Beyond me. Regardless, I do get great pleasure from doing these puzzles. Even so, I can pick out a few bots and some players that are just damned good, but there is an unknown middle ground, which was the reason behind my original question.
Spiderwebs I totally agree with your comments regarding bots the issue with having separate games for the normal folks like us and those "Bots" has been mentioned numerous times and don't know if Jim or David have said or done anything or even will look into it , no disrespect to juxtaposecodgeweasel , wow! what a name wheeeeeew ! now my fingers are tired on typing that one, lol I don't think it will be done may address with our founders, I am like you spiderwebs I am here just to have fun and that's all , and your right if I get frustrated on not making top 50 , I send a message or music video to friends, to change the monontiny , this is a free fun site that's what it was designed for to have FUN! and I enjoy the games am not speedy Gonzales don't care about times or low scores, and agree with Monzie as well , Take care everyone have fun that is the name of the game,
In conclusion, in regards to other sites say Free Cell most of them are dealing with points not time or moves I have played elsewhere , it can be a headache with pop ups , advertisements, and delay in games, if you don't have a paid account , here on green felt it is free and none of what I mentioned ads, delays etc, yes Jim or David may look at this for responses ,this is a forum if they choose to comment they will in this subject at hand, This is a great site enjoy have fun and welcome to green felt games, play on have fun , feel free to chat with anyone it is what this site is all about , it is for me an can say for others we enjoy and have fun on this site,
Problem is...most of the bots are cyborgs and the technology is integrated into their system...kinda like the Borg on Star Trek. If it's removed..they die.
16 seconds sounds really slow for a bot.
Ooof.
@juxtaposecodgeweasel, I often feel that some of the posts here come from people who are not expecting their post to be public. We've tried to make it clear that bug reports and feature requests get posted to the forum. Do you have a suggestion for how we could make it more clear?
Re: bots, I look into crazy low scores occasionally and I can never find definitive proof that they are cheating (we collect a lot of data per game to try to root out this kind of thing). This either means that they are not cheating, or they are cheating in a way that makes it look perfectly legit. Given the amount of different people that post low scores, I find it hard to believe that everyone can cheat in a perfectly legit way. There's also the (very real) possibility that there's a bug in our code that makes the short times easy to exploit (maybe some undos, replays in the right sequence). If we find something like that, we'll shut it down ASAP.
@david: I might have a suggestion or two based on how your site is designed, so will give this a mull-over. You seem to like the uncluttered look (appealing to me) which gives more to ponder. Anyone else?
My question about bots is not as serious as it might seem. I'm not a serious person at heart. The reason I'm here is to have fun and challenge myself, unobstructed by other nonsense. However, my nature is to periodically check in with scores (not necessarily times) to note room for improvement. At the end of the day it doesn't matter how 'well' I did.
NB My rather late discovery of your site is a mystery despite having done many searches. Perhaps the first step was in 'not' using a google search engine
@Arborist: Funny! And true.
What's a bot?Some form of alien virus that's infected our site?This is serious and needs to be looked into as soon as possible.Are there any recommended anti-alien/virus sprays available?I await the outcome with bated breath.On the other hand for a small donation I could teach Treacle to sniff out the bots.
David , thank you for your always calm and relevant responses in the forum.
Most of all for Jim's and your Green Felt site. It's design and your contant vigilance and care in keeping it free of glitches and bugs.
We enjoy the games and appreciate their free access and freedom from ads.
Also, this forum is a bonus features providing conversation, information, and comeraderie amongst players.
Thank you, thank you!!!
Sick em' Treacle
Juxtaposecodgeweasel...welcome!
SO glad you clarified your first comments with the one at 11:57am.
Happy to know you better through your clarification.
Glad you found this site and the public forum.
Enjoy both and have fun...as well as test your skills!
Funny Graeme and Gerald 64!!!
Thank you David for your message regarding the bots, I am not the fastest player by no means , couple weeks ago I played a game of Free Cell , I guess it hadn't been played and by luck I got first and second place with low time of 2:14 had to go to therapy and came back on with that game number and my score was 106th everyone in top 10 was below a minute , when you play a game does it then go out to others for them to play it ? was just curious on this issue, I am in the minority only here to have fun and enjoy this site and an occassional games of Free Cell ,Thanks for all you and jim do for this great site,
From a long-time player (and name changer):
I'm now spending half the time playing Klondike and half reading the Forum.
Thanks for doubling the pleasure of Green Felt.
P.S. Now playing as everly.
Not one of the brothers are you?If so,canI have your autograph please
...bent...I agree...the forum doubles the pleasure of Green Felt!
think this is what graeme had in mind
Hello homedoggy,yes,back to my youth again.Good sounds from the brothers.How are you?Treacle sends his love and a half-eaten slipper.Take care.Gerald?will give you a shout shortly.
For just half a sec there I had this image of a chap sitting at his computer chewing a slipper in frustration ........ then daylight dawned ..... could it be a labrador? slippers are part of a balanced diet for labrators .....
Slap-up-side-of-head .. back to Freecell ....
Graeme. How about a picture of your beloved Treacle?
@MariF..."Slap-up-side-of-head?"
GRR-RRR
Good Afternoon Rev, it would be impossible Treacle ate all Graeme's electronics , Hope you are well haven't heard from you in awhile, Take Care, my friend
graeme has probably gone to bed already...
but this was one he sent me when Treacle taught him how to play.
That was cool homedoggy,
I think video clips of top players recording a super fast score would go a very long way toward resolving suspicions about bots. I'll go first. Here's a video of a 9 second solution of yesterday's Freecell game of the day. (My personal best on that game was 7 seconds, but I couldn't repeat that feat this evening with the camera "rolling.")
The good news is that I got to count the time it took me to create the video as work as I'm a quality engineer on a team that's developing a video editor that runs on both mobile and desktop platforms ;-)
Cheers,
Mark
Oooo very nifty, DeusExM! and you’re a two-handed tapper to boot
Love it! Jim and I have talked about getting one of the speed demons to record a video for a long time. Glad someone finally did it! And I can see how a touchscreen definitely has an advantage here…
That's tricky stuff, and interesting to watch. I have never used super moves etc and now know why my times are so much slower than that for those games.
@DeusExMachina ...Thank you so much. This is one we can re-post when folks ramble on about cheaters and bots.
I don't play a speed game but it's fascinating to see how it's possible to get those incredible scores.
Thx again.
I use the super moves in pyramid from time to time, but can't seem to manage them for more complicated games.
It's also interesting to see the break between the players who go with their score from the first time they solved the game and the ones who are practicing and then ripping off the fastest possible time. I personally don't think I could get any faster with a touch screen because of the way my hands shake, so I'll stick with usually my best solving time. Both are fun to see.
Very interesting. I'd like to see a video of someone playing 40 Thieves.
Thanks for posting this @DeusExMachina! I agree with @david; I didn't appreciate how efficient using a tablet could be!
Speaking of tablets, I've always wanted to support two handed play, in the sense that you can pick up cards with one hand and then pick of cards with the other hand. i.e. two drags at once, but I was never able to come up with reasonable semantics. Would it help? I suspect not because you mostly single click. Maybe that's just for your speed run? I assume you need to drag and hover while finding the best moves the first time? I certainly do.
PS The animations break up quite a bit in your video. I think you need to bump up the quality settings on your video editor's encoder.
Or YouTube does? When I was trying to follow your bug report, I really had to guess at a bunch of moves because so many moves seemed to be missing. It was a little easier to see when I download the video and slowed it way down, but then you can really see the macroblocks.
Literally the only time I drag cards is when I need them to go to the second card that they can play to—say both black 8s are on top and I want a 7/6/5 run to the second 8 from the left. I’ve never used this feature to preview a move, though I did see in the rules that you can do so.
As to two-handed play, I rarely play that way. So don’t add that feature on my account. ;-)
Thanks for the p.s. regarding playback quality. As it happens, I’m responsible for the encoder settings for the editing app I used for the video I posted in this thread (but not for the one with slo-mo segments that accompanied my first bug report.) So I’ll definitely investigate.