Colors in the "Your Assistance" Screen are not distinguishable


I’m partially color blind and the buttons in this picture for inaccuracy, good, excellent and best look the same color for me. might be good to use some more contrasting colors between these buttons or add some type of different shading patterns to help diffirentiate them. The others Selected Piece, blunder and Mistake are significantly different for me and can see their differences fine.

Also, when I tried the other options on that screen, 2, 1, the other options turned into the green color as well - does that mean that the “inaccuracy, good, excellent, best” are not available yet ?

Those four buttons are all green.

I did find that 0.5.1 removed any assistance levels above 3.

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Your colorblindness has nothing to do with this. The green color is used for best to innacurate for assistance level 3.

Now, maybe I am imagining things, but I was sure we used to have up to assitance 6 before on the board (which is what is available on the app, therefor on chessup1) but they might be working on it a bit more.

But we cannot go over 3 for now, which is what you see there.

I can assure you tho, those are all the colors available as part of the assitance, so don’t worry about it for now :wink:

It used to go up to 6, mine currently also only goes to 3. Here is a video from 9 days ago showing level 6 assistance.

That video was helpful. I must have missed the 6 levels in between the updates but that makes sense now. Hopefully they will come back.

We are simplifying the assistance levels as we switch to ChessUp 2.

We found less are easier to use.

This flow is just leftover from filming video assets and will be overhauled.

Well, Guess I’ll have to see the new system.

Personally, I loved the 6 levels. Too. I feel like, as it is now (I know it’s getting reworked, but still) there’s too few differences between them to be useful.

I know most people won’t use all of levels, but some might. I was looking forward to a level 6 training will the opening trainer.

I played against my Girlfriend, who doesnt know any theory about chess, and while level 3 was enough to beat me, I feel the board was doing some dubious choices (I will probably replay that game on video, in case). And I feel the 6 levels was a good gradient to go as she learn.

But, we’ll see.

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The levels that survive to ChessUp 2 are:

1 - no hints
2 - blunder prevention (blunder is red)
4 - good guidance green
6 - best move green

They are also being renamed.

1 = no assisance
2 = beginner assistance (they need help not hanging pieces)
4 = intermediate (they need help following good lines, not making minor mistakes)
6 = advanced (shows the ideal line)

We encourage the use of 6 for study, but not really for competitive play - as it is just a person following the computer. 1,2,4 all require independent thought.

So we are recrafting how these are presented and simplifying it.

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I’d like to suggest adding a level 0 that doesn’t show legal moves. That is a form of assistance after all.

adding a level 0 that doesn’t show legal moves

We have that in ChessUp 1 - through a different mechanism.

Here is why we really try to push people away from no lights (the real truth) - everyone makes illegal moves. Even Magnus Carlsen.

And if we don’t let you know that piece is pinned, or in check, or etc - people think the board it broken. When in fact, the user is trying something incorrect.

Still, we do offer a menu item that is purposefully buried that allows no lights. Further, people forget they turned that mode on and report “board doesn’t work”… when they turned the lights off themselves. After 1 million+ games, we have seen a lot.

I don’t want to make the decisions for the user, I just want to make it hard for the user to mess up. So we really really bury that setting.

Thanks for explaining. I can see why that would pose a problem, even for experienced players using the board.

But for serious training, I’m of the mind that one of the main value propositions of Chessup is to recreate a real OTB experience–which doesn’t typically include highlighting legal moves.

With that goal in mind, couldn’t there be another way for the board to indicate that you’ve made an illegal move only after the fact? I don’t necessarily see why showing legal moves and indicating illegal moves have to be tied together.

Some possible options:

  • A notification on the screen that you’ve made an illegal move (possibly with further details)
  • Highlight the illegal move with a red square
  • Highlight the legal moves only in the event that you’ve made an illegal move
  • Have some kind of whole-board light-up signal that you’ve made an illegal move, such as having all outer squares turn red

Anyway, just some suggestions. Thanks a lot.

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All fair points - and yes we will implement this some way - I like your suggestions. It may not be at launch time, but it is on the list.

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I’m in agreement that showing the valid moves is a form of assistance. Also agree that the board should let you know that you have made an illegal move - this I have experienced in other chess boards.

I was thinking about this last night and thought that making it so that the blue and purple squares aren’t visible at level 0, but the illegal moves still show a red square when you touch or pickup a piece. This could potentially open a market as a DGT replacement. This could help in tournaments with illegal moves, it can record the games. You could also market this to clubs as well. They can use the boards for teaching (Using all the features), fun blitz matches since there is a built in clock (Maybe add an additional option where you have to touch the clock after your move), and to be used in club tournament’s with no assistance except for the red square of illegal moves.

I wanted a no lights option before too, but I changed my mind after researching what DGT tournaments boards do. After an illegal move has been played, you have to manually go change the move in order for the board to keep the game state correctly (and be able to analyze it after) and that’s something that a consumer board don’t really do.

This is a simplified explanation, but the point is, a tournament board has more to it than a consumer eboard.

While there are options to reduce lights, I am more toward making it as little as possible with settings (maybe with prompts to make sure the user understands the board isnt breaking up, like Jeff said) but can’t ever cross the no light ever, which would break game analysis and never work online.

My 2 cents.

In the instance I was talking about, when trying to make an illegal move, the square the piece was on lights up red. It would not count as a move until the piece was set back on the red square and a legal move would he made. So there would be no need to change any move order. In the DGT system, with no lights, I can understand how many moves could have been made after the illegal move unknowingly.

I do agree that DGT boards do have a lot of features. But this could potentially become an alternative to those expensive boards.

The problem is, tournament boards have to have some form of third party access, to allow tournament directors to change stuff.

They aren’t meant to be used like the chessup is.

Seems like something they could program in.

Just had the idea and thought it could be a decent multi purpose board especially for clubs that can’t afford DGT boards. Might be something ChessUp isn’t even interested in anyway, but figured I’d put it out there.

Cheers

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Glad to hear ‘no lights’ is at least an option. Too many lights might cause me to go into an epileptic fit! Besides, we are not all 6 yr olds trying to learn the game. I’ve been north of 2000 USCF for over 20 yrs.