Sorry Karstenw, but your description is not at all my experience.
Try to think that other can thought and act in a different way than you.
I begin to fold before recipes.
I don't find a pose in hour and try after that to bind the protein in the shape I think the protein could have.
I find a pose by working slowly on the protein, choosing every step by watching the protein.
I almost never a move by random or for all the protein…: I never hand script on hand fording puzzle.
My goal is not global score, my goal is the fun of the game.
I am sorry than players who begin after the recipes cannot take fun like me in hand folding and don't saw how they could learn dealing with the protein.
I can't begin to describe how negatively I feel about hand-folding however every once in a while it comes in handy for short periods of time to reduce issues on a protein. Many use it to create solutions that the human eye finds appealing. Luckily, most of the time, nature, by trial and error ( variation ), creates a solution that isn't beautiful to the human eye. I find those much more appealing then any hand-folded protein I have yet seen. Nature is much more wonderful then what we can conceive and for all intents and purposes has few limits to what it can do biologically speaking. To limit ourselves to what WE find appealing by the hand-folding method is the height of human self-ego. Computers and nature both provide a means to test a nearly unlimited # of variations, given enough time. I am not an artist, nor will I ever be. I am simply an old man technician who knows how to keep his computer running well enough and long enough to test many ( but not nearly enough ) variations. AND none of that would be possible without powerful recipes and we need more, much more, of them. The one thing I wish for constantly is the ability to write recipes. Those of you who can are blessed with insight that rivals any artist. There is nothing wrong with repetition, else there wouldn't be 6 billion of us and the diversity of life on this planet would be much less then we consider appropriate or normal. Nature is doing something right. I want my computer to be doing something right also, even if I am over across town or half a world away. Otherwise this computer need not be wasting electricity and heat dissipation on a project that without the use of recipes is nothing but a canvas for some particular artist to draw their dreams and imaginations on. To much written, I know. Sorry about that. Recipes keeps Foldit current, Hand-folding, except in short bursts, is a regression back to earliest stages of Foldit. A place I have been, and never want to be again.
To Marie. If you enjoy trying to predict your position while ignoring the score of a better rebuild position in order keep the fold position that you personally chose then I applaud you. And by your own admission you are not playing for score,so you will continue to handfold while ignoring the score and do not need handfold only puzzles to do so.
To Hanto.At this time we do not have an understanding of what beauty is, but we do know when proteins are piling up that look nothing like the native.
Personally I love hand folding, it holds my interest much longer. When I can just throw a script at something and walk away, I usually do.
I think that the focus should not be to change hand folding, but to increase the effectiveness of GUI scripts. There is still a great deal of unexplored ground that can be covered in that regard to make these script types far more effective than they currently are.
If handfolding is there to stay, here my top 3 wishlist for GUI functions:
1) Make it possible to run GUI scripts in the background WITHOUT having to tweak the options file but with the speed increase we get when we run LUA scripts in the background.
2) Add a function to make zero length bands
3) Add a function to make distance preserving bands
I definitely agree with more control on bands, the ability to add opposing bands would spawn a whole new subtype of GUI recipes. I have two scripts I tried making which I simply cannot make work without band length control. (as I need things to pull apart not together) I could make them in LUA, but that's a lot more work as I am not proficient in it and don't really want to take the time to make them currently.
What do you mean by distance preserving ?
Wow! Lots of negativity here.
If you you don't like hand folding, don't do it. Leave it to those of us who do like doing it. That is one of the reasons that categories were were introduced, so that you didn't have to play every puzzle. Concentrate your effort instead on where you think it will do most good.
I personally don't like puzzles where scripts are needed to get anywhere, so I don't play them. My cpu's and graphics card are put to work on other projects using BOINC. Rosetta@home is always happy to use your spare computing power ;)
Distance preserving is when the band target length is equal to the distance between segments. My bandmaker script (which I use all the time for stabelizing) uses those. It prevents the protein flying apart while giving more freedom as zero length bands.
Yes, if gui is improved, then we don't need to run the proteins twice. That could work well I think. However, if we continue to release the same protein twice then I think I have a solution.
Of the 2 releases:
The game should only accept your single best rank for scoring toward the global ranking. This would allow the handfolders to get a decent rank without touching the regular protein, and it also allows those who do scripts to get a decent rank without touching the handfolding. Also this allows those of us who often like to run both proteins to compete against themselves without being twice rewarded/punished for the same protein. And it might provide good data to the devs. And as a bonus, the statement "if you don't like it, don't do it." actually becomes a reasonable sentence that doesn't make my skin crawl every time I hear it.
I really like this suggestion, if the best rank is used for all categories of the puzzle except the handfolding of course. I probably will play the handfolding part just to get the feel of the puzzle but will not waste so much time refining it as I do now.
And I fully agree with your last sentence.
