As far as I know, we do plan to implement replays. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to do, but it's on our list. ;)
It would be great for the development team, too, in order to see exactly where new players get stuck and what they try.
I was told that a full replay woukd be too big because of the many informations?
I really would like a something like an .sgf file for replays.
If the tools all work deterministically you would just need to log all user input into a file and then the computer of the person watching the replay could reconstuct everything.
It could optionally cut out all pathes that lead to a Restore very best to compress the time it takes to watch everything.
Of course having a fast forward button would also be nice and maybe the game could safe every 15 minutes or so, the state of the portein to allow fast forward to those points.
Yes, that's probably how we'd do it. I remember we were talking about doing that, recording everything that players do and having an automatic playback system so that we could watch new players struggling and new players could watch experts playing. I don't know the current plan though, so I can't make any promises.
I've only recently gotten stuck into Foldit, and love it to bits.
I think I've now done the intro puzzles (all the way through to the Design puzzles) at least three times, maybe four. Not sure.
One reason I keep going back to the intro puzzles is because the technical gap between those intro puzzles and the full experience is seriously daunting. Suddenly, you go from a set of well-understood tools to having a whole bunch of new tools, and the only place to find information on how to use them is in the Wiki, rather than in the game itself. If I had my druthers, I would introduce all those new tools (Structure Mode, Note Mode, the Cookbook, and all the rest of it) one at a time in new intro puzzles, so that when you finish you are in fact comfortable with the full interface. (Of course, since you're planning to introduce a new interface–w00t! Looks exciting!–you may already have this kind of thing in mind.) I found the jump from the intro material to the full interface deeply daunting/confusing, which is a shame, because I love the whole idea of the game.
On a different note: I'm a Linux user. Getting Foldit running under Linux is tricky, and unsatisfying. First you have to get an archive uncompressed, then get the app folder into the Home Folder, and then to actually play the game, you have to resort to the command line, change directory, and then enter the "./Foldit" command. Hmm. A worthwhile goal for the developers would be to find a way to make available .deb and .rpm (etc) packages, which are easy to install, and lower the the initial barrier to trying the game for users who are reluctant to use the command line (yes, we exist, and we're people, too :). Getting the game into various distribution's repositories, too, would be a big help, and greatly simplify installation and running the game. It would be nice not to have to go near the command line, and have Foldit available as a game in the Games Menu, like any other.
Thanks for your time. Hope this helps.
Adrian :)
Very new here, just finished the tutorials yesterday and was dumped into a seemingly unfamiliar world of extra tools and functions that were never touched upon in the tutorials, I have no idea where to start or what I am supposed to be doing or where to even find out what these tools do or how to use them! Couldn't find any video tutorials or even a written list of tools and their functions anywhere, maybe I should look harder, but really if you are looking to improve this for beginners you shouldn't make them have to suffer this unnecessarily steep learning curve, sounds like you are interested in trying to attract gamers not scientists so it should feel more like a game, most games I've played have levels, start you off on level 1 and earn your way up to level two pretty straight forward stuff, the tuturial is seriously lacking. Not to be too negative here I love the concept and what you guys are trying to do here, it is just not keeping my attention, there is only so much I can do with what the tutorials taught me, perhaps a "tips and tricks" section written by pros who have been playing for a while, or perhaps it should be taught like chess, tips for beginning game play, middle game play and end game tips, I have no idea since I just started yesterday, I am only writing in this forum now because I was hoping to find some sticky thread for newbies but….nothing. Every single tool needs to be addressed in the tutorial even if that makes it take four hours to get through it, what is the use of a tool if I can't use it? Also a side note once you scroll way out and lose the view of your protein on the screen there is no key to automatically center it back in view (at least not that I could find) and unfortunately it saves that view for all puzzles which looks like I will need to reinstall the whole darn thing if I want to ever see anything again.
most of what you are searching is in the wiki, including how the pros fold.
The key for centering back to the protein is home I think. Should stnad in the help in the game.
Thanks for telling me about the wiki, however I probably am not going to read through that whole thing and I suspect neither is any ADHD teenage gamer, call me lazy, but I don't feel your average gamers who are used to built-in tutorials that cover all the basics (every game I've ever played) are going to spend much time outside the game learning, let's be realistic if we are trying to reach gamers as the target audience for crowd sourcing. Lets not forget gamers are the people who most likely have have the proven "intuition" skills for Spacial Relations games/puzzles rather than an interest in professionally designing pharmacueticlas which is what it currently feels like. I just found out about this "game" in Wired Mag and was just trying to contibute some gaming skills to the project and have fun, not make this a full time post-graduate course on building proteins. The Wired article was a bit misleading as to how far along the beta was and how user friendly it is. I still feel any puzzle game (foldit seems to bill itself as a puzzle game) should be self-contained as to not have to spend hours searching for terms (outside of the game itself) that I don't even know I should be searching for. It's got a lot of potential, but I'm sure it's like this in the beginning for any new software. I guess the question is what is the goal here? From the only thing I've read (wired article) it's to tap into the vast resource of millions of gamers and get them interested in playing this game that also hopefully contributes to science eventually. Sorry to sound like souch a newbie but if you are looking for millions of new gamers there are going to be millions of newbies at least for a little while, rather than just saying "read the 1000 page wiki" the focus needs to be primarily on actively educating newbies in an industry-standard way that gamers are used to, that is with fully comprehensive tutorials and progressive levels of difficulty, the only level puzzle that currently shows up in the science puzzle section is "intermediate" absolutely nothing for beginners (that I could find), I really want this to work that is why I am spending my time writing here. Like with any job your employees are only as good as they were trained, if you want to up the performance and productivity from people you need to up their skill set by education, people can usually work around the clunky tools in the beginning if they are taught how to use them.
You can make your life easier, if you just open the wiki main page and click e.g. on "Tutorial" or one of the "sugested methods". There is what you want. You can easily see it from the first page.
And btw there are only 101 pages.
And as a beginner you only need tutorial, since you have to get a feeling first.
Okay. I just created an account. How do access the puzzles!
Please help,
Espeon