Combine Conditional Moves and Analysis Boards

I'd love to see this implemented.

Basically, the currnent conditional moves interface commits your move as soon as you make it.  This can be risky if you've not fully vetted a line.  By allowing lines to be submitted all at once via the analysis board you can work through a line and its variations (saving and pruning the variation tree as needed like you can currently do with the board diagram editor) and when you're happy with the outcome you can either save the line for further analysis at a later date or submit the entire line including its variations to be implemented as conditional moves all at the same time.

If you allowed annotations to be tagged to each move in the process of doing this (again, as can be done with the board diagram editor) you could also go a long ways towards making the notes field obsolete, allowing users to annotate their games while they're in progress, and for those lines that were submitted as conditional but didn't get played, the ability to include them in the games PGN along with their annotations as well.

This would be a major overhaul of the conditional moves, analysis board and PGN functionality but I think the benefits that you'd see in implementing a much more integrated and robust interface for these would be well worth the effort.

One slight fly in the ointment might be that some members find Conditional Moves acceptable - but not use of the Analysis Board.

Well since the conditional moves board is not really all that different from the analysis board (with the exception of committing to the moves you make on them as soon as you make them) I don't know why this would be an issue -- ultimately the control is theirs since it all really comes down to how they choose to use it.

I recall some chess purists objecting to the Analysis Board (remember the Tally thread, now defunct?) but you're probably right: they would object equally to Conditional Moves.

this looks like a great idea, it is annoying when like you say your working through the line and it goes wrong, and having the notes integrated into the game showing other lines, is a cool idea. Certainly saves us doing it as two separate tasks

I think it would be a very nice feature to be able to save analysis board analysis with multiple variations and annotations, for example similar to the board diagram editor, as proposed above. This would be a lot more practical than the current pure game notes feature which is limited to text notes.

However, I am not so sure about the idea of combining analysis board and conditional move window. For clarity, I think that these two features should be made as distinctly separate from each other as possible.

(I have experienced a case in which a user, even with the two different windows as they are now, mixed up the conditional move window with the analysis board window, and was surprised to see some moves played out automatically in the game, although he had only been looking at them on what he had believed to be his analysis board.)

Fair point -- when I'd initially proposed this, I'd also suggested making all of this functionality simply an extension of the main game board but Erik had a similar concern, and one show-stopper in players who are set up for "Touch Move" (i.e. no  "Submit" button).

I still think that the consolidation has a lot of value -- perhaps it could be made optional.

The interface on Conditional Moves is quite challenging in it's current state. I seldom dare to apply more than one move on several lines, in case I confuse myself which paths I have set!

On top of which, entering the conditional moves too quickly can have unintended consequences.

Here's one possible way to combine the suggestions: make it possible to save your analysis, in the analysis board, with the possibility to take notes for each move, and save it as an analysis tree with each variation getting its number.

Then, in the conditinal moves interface of the conditional moves, make it possible to enter the conditional manually as it is done right, but add the option of loading your analysis tree and chose which of the numbered lines you want to record as conditional moves (thus avoiding to load variations the plaers is still analysing as conditinal moves).

Anyway, even without the conditional moves upgrade, the possibility to save your whole analysis with notes would be great. In such a case, we should also be given the possibility to annotate each move of the actual game, and the whole thing (actual game, variations entered in the analysis board, and notes) should be included in the PGN. That would certainly be a GREAT improvement.

Another vote for the ability to annotate a game as I go to record my thoughts while they're fresh. It would be a big improvement to the tiny (and hidden) notes tab. 

I was going to start a thread saying what bguigz above has proposed, but there's no point now!

This would clearly be a major improvement on the analysis board. It would make analysing itself clearer and easier to spot mistakes, but would also mean I'd avoid my continual problem of wading through lines on the analysis board, only to have forgotten all the nuances by the time it gets to my next move (often days later).

Using the text notes box seems way too cumbersome and far less effective than simply using the feature already implemented in game diagrams - to save lines and be able to have subvariations. It would really improve the analysis board and would also improve the quality of my play as well.

That's a good point -- the perfect interface already exists in the "Insert Position or Game" control here in the forums.

Any input on this from a staff member?

Bump.

Yeah, I know it's a pretty big overhaul of the interface, but I think that the benefits of a much cleaner, robust and more intuitive user experience are worth it.  I'd like to hear from staff on this idea as well.

Do staff actually read this forum, or are we just shouting into an abyss?

The latter I think.

It was more poorly organized, but staff was much more engaged when it was just one long thread (or series of threads) hosted by Erik.

Too bad, too.  There are some good ideas in here.

I wonder how many weeks it'd take of commenting in here before anyone noticed? We could have a sweepstake.

I was thinking a while back that it would be nice for the analysis board to have the buttons 'add variation', 'save png' and 'submit as conditional moves' implemented. I think that would solve all of the afore-mentioned problems, but I haven't got a clue as to how easy the implementation actually is.