Indicator when a Sq1 scramble leaves the cubeshape on printed scrambles

[bugybunny]

Random state Square-1 scrambles seem to always stay in cubeshape for a few slices. At least csTimer scrambles that I normally use do and I just downloaded TNoodle to test it and it was also the case. Thus, some sort of indication when the scramble leaves the cubeshape would be helpful in my opinion to reduce the number of misscrambles at competitions. (btw I use cubeshape as synonym for Square/Square, the “solved” cubeshape)

The idea comes from Squanmate (https://cdn.rawgit.com/sp3ctum/squanmate/master/resources/public/index.html#/ and https://github.com/sp3ctum/squanmate/) that does this. Go to the website, select a case and then generate a new scramble. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like.

The blue part indicates that after (0,-2)/ you should be out of cubeshape. Sometimes there’s an asterisk indicating that you leave the cubeshape with misaligned squares but that’s not relevant here. I would like to see something similar as the blue font color in TNoodle that shows me when I have to leave the cubeshape. Preferably not a font color, even though delegates hopefully print always in color lol, but an asterisk or maybe you have an even better idea.

The pro is fewer scrambling errors as scramblers have a hint, especially if the planning for a round is bad and not that experienced people need to scramble Sq1; I experienced this a few times and the round took so long because of so many misscrambles and this feature would reduce the problem at least a bit. On the other hand, this additional asterisk (or whatever it will be then) will confuse people for a long time as it is not used yet. A note on Sq1 scrambling sheets is necessary to explain it at least.

Special cases: Scrambles that go back into Square/Square would need a second asterisk to denote going back into cubeshape.

[bugybunny]

I didn’t want to link from this issue in squanmate to this lol. Didn’t know that github does this, just wanted to let the dev know that I proposed this here, so the issue there has nothing to do with this.

[jfly]

That's a very cool idea! Depending on how you want to represent this, it would require a bit of infrastructure work to implement, as the scramble generation code is pretty abstracted away from the scramble viewing code in TNoodle. I'm definitely open to looking at any PRs that try to implement this, though.

[dancing-jules]

IME I mostly mis-scramble during the first half of the scramble. And the (0,-2) is usually indicator enough for me to realize I leave cubehape.

[J-Rohault-dF]

I proposed on the issue #365 to replace the transition slash with a pipe (|). Maybe an anti-slash (\) could also work?

[jfly]

(cross posting https://github.com/thewca/tnoodle/issues/365#issuecomment-432468179)

I think a newline character is all we need here, no need to invent some new notation.

[bugybunny]

IME I mostly mis-scramble during the first half of the scramble. And the (0,-2) is usually indicator enough for me to realize I leave cubehape.

That’s also the case for me. I just noticed at Swiss comps that Sq1 is not really popular and we don’t have a lot of experienced and/or fast scramblers for the finals, so people that only ever scramble Sq1 at comps (might be a bit exaggerated) have to scramble. And I think it would benefit these people.

I can remember when I started with Sq1 that I almost always misscrambled and I think something like that would have helped me.

[alexanderc360]

Since square-1 is becoming an increasingly popular event, I think its smart if this issue were given another look. while yes we usually have more experienced scramblers do square1, some regions may not have that luxury and this could help reduce mis-scrambles for people who don't know the trick @dancing-jules mentioned.