Sounds

[Apoah]

And English voices really suck for people who don't speak English, if it's the default or the only option. Imagine if you fired up KGS, and all of a sudden it started saying things in Chinese to you. You don't know what they mean, and you don't know how important they are. And they keep happening for the rest of the game. So what if it's only one game--it's the kind of experience that would leave a permanent bad taste in your mouth.

"Hung-How!"

[freegame]

What about using a musical scale?

There are quite some people who are tone deaf.
While I'm not, I do have a total lack of music skills, and to me this would be almost the same at the standard bleeps.
I would still have no clue if there are 2 or 5 bleeps left.

I would not mind an English voice, a record option or the neutral bleeps which have worked fine for me since I started playing on KGS 5 years ago.

[hyperpape]

If you're tone deaf, a scale is no worse than bleeps, right? I doubt I could tell the difference between two steps left and five, except maybe with lots of experience, but no one knows how long they have left with bleeps.

@apoah, I have no idea if you're agreeing with me or making fun of me, and I'm very stressed now.

[Apoah]

@hyperpape: Sorry. It was a subtle joke. Referring to Go Child.

[hyperpape]

@apoah And what I said was a bad joke, so there.

[Li Kao]

I've set the beeping to 4 seconds. That way I need to play directly after the third beep.

One thing that's a bit annoying is that it beeps when my opponent is running low on time too. Occasionally useful to give him additional time, but usually just annoying.

Worms used some variant of the tone based countdown. And that worked pretty well in my experience, even for people like me who at hearing such stuff.

Another possibility is loading an audio file saved in a certain location. That way advanced users get what they want without much work.

[shakti]

Wbaduk has good countdown and I move self there whenever I play blitz, so just take what they do and implement it on kgs. Everyone will be happy.

[Apoah]

All of this debate is stimulating, to be sure. However, I would be happy to have an option where the alarm for game challenges and automatch games sounds, but the clicking of the stones does not.

Is this too complicated to include in a release soon?

[daal]

What about using a musical scale?

I think regardless of culture, people can regard Middle C very much like zero.

So on ten seconds, you play the E above an octave about Middle C, and then count down with major notes to middle C.

E, D, C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C.

Or some kind of similar tonal progression.

My suggestion: time is running out

[judicata]

If you start a fund/collection, I'm sure wms would do this for something less than $100,000 a year. (I'm teasing you guys, of course.)