New Year, New Round, New Rules

Scott Hardie | January 2, 2006
In case you don't get the GOO announcements, here are the two new rules this round:

- When you guess incorrectly, it will wipe out the eight adjacent spaces in your grid: Diagonal as well as horizontal and verical. This was suggested by Scott Horowitz on 8/24. (link)

- You can only place a guess in your grid adjacent to an existing filled space, so that there's always a consequence for guessing wrong. This only applies to players with grid control. This was sort-of suggested by Steve Dunn on 6/15. (link)

I have programmed the rules into the site (I think Dave and Aaron and Elliot saw me working on them last night :-) ), so please alert me if they aren't working for you.

Also, two new categories:
- Fads & Trends (link)
- Hoaxes & Lies (link)

Any comments on the changes?

Michael Paul Cote | January 3, 2006
Goo on!

Jerry Mathis | January 3, 2006
Please allow a moment for my southern roots to show....

Yee-Hah!!!

David Mitzman | January 3, 2006
Hmm, goo on? Better grab a tissue Michael! Ok, bad jokes aside, this round is mine. I'm refreshed froma nice long break and I'm ready to rock the hizzy fo' shizzy. Um, yeah.

David Mitzman | January 3, 2006
And Hardie, when are we going to get the ability to upload our own pictures? If you want some help with that code portion I'll be more then happy to do some coding. I haven't gotten to do any php in a while.

Mike Eberhart | January 4, 2006
Whatever happened to the Award section? That was one of the reasons I played the game.

Jackie Mason | January 5, 2006
[hidden by request]

Mike Eberhart | January 5, 2006
I think it's because they have their grid control turned off. When they make a guess, it gets randomly placed on their grids instead of in order like most of the other players are doing. I might switch my grid control to off in order to take advantage of that.

Amy Austin | January 5, 2006
Yeah, I was thinking about that, too.

Scott Hardie | January 5, 2006
Oy. Mike's right, the new rule about adjacent goos only applies to players with grid control, since the others are at a disadvantage and I'm too busy/lazy to program it for them too. But now that I think about it, players without grid control can keep refreshing the page until they get a spot they like (the randomly-chosen space is viewable in the source code) and then submit a guess, so they'd have an even bigger advantage as long as they have patience. So I guess this weekend I'm going to have to reprogram it to apply the adjacent-goos rule to everyone. I might even reprogram the random space selection so that it happens after the form is submitted so players can't use the code to beat the system. :-)

Dave: The multiple-photos-per-user feature is still coming, still on my list. I don't know if I'll let users upload photos directly (invitation to hackers) but we'll work something out to get them up there.

Mike: Same explanation. I do greatly miss the Awards page myself; it was a personal favorite. After the switch to daily goos I knew I had to come up with a bunch of new awards and reprogram the page, but I just haven't had time, and it's not going to happen in the near term. (I just got home twenty minutes ago if that paints a picture of my schedule at the moment.) But I promise it's going to be worth the wait when I get it done.

More this weekend.

Lastly, everyone, please don't call me Hardie. I really dislike it.

Scott Hardie | January 5, 2006
Btw, I'm not trying to sound whiny about my schedule or anything. I just want to be clear that my availability to upgrade the site is very limited right now. :-|

Lori Lancaster | January 5, 2006
[hidden by request]

Scott Horowitz | January 5, 2006
I'm ScottieHo, can you be ScottieHa?

David Mitzman | January 5, 2006
Don't call him Hardie and don't call him sweetheart and I'm sure there won't be a problem.

Amy Austin | January 5, 2006
What about "Shirley"?

David Mitzman | January 6, 2006
Shirley you can't be serious.

Amy Austin | January 6, 2006
I am, and don't call me Hardie. ;-)