Suggestion for Practice Mode

[deraltefritz]

Hi,

I have a suggestion for improving the learning effects of practice mode. I will make a few pictures later, but I don't have VP4 here at the moment.

Assume you'e missing a certain kind of shot more often than others during match play. Or you constantly screw up position play on some cue ball/object ball combination on the table.

When you setup a particular shot in practice mode, after a few attempts, it's almost impossible not to just memorize where exactly you need to hit the object ball and place cue tip position. You will instantly notice when you're not aiming correctly, but not because you're establishing a feeling for this kind of shot, but because your brain has memorized the ghost ball position for just this particular shot. This means that after a few attempts, the practice drill is useless, as this exact situation is unlikely to occur in a match.

My suggestion is this:
You can setup the balls in practice mode, just like now. But then, you could setup a shape (ellipse, square, quadrangle, line, ...) around each ball on the table. When you hit CTRL-Backspace (or re-load the drill), each ball will be placed at a random position inside its shape. This could increase the productivity of a practice drill in many ways, for instance
- if the ellipses are made quite small (radius of a ball's width or two), you could practice a very specific type of shot, but your brain won't be able to memorize exact cue tip and ghost ball locations. You can get a feeling for a kind of shot, and the small variations won't allow your brain to trick you.
- if you have a zero ellipse for cue ball and object ball, but a second object ball has an rectangular shape that spans the entire table, you could practice to play position from a certain situation to anywhere on the table.
- practice safety shots with small/medium/large positional variations in cue ball, object ball, and ball to hide behind .
- practice long distance thin shots, by placing the object ball on a line shape along the head rail, and the cueball on a line on the foot rail.
- just to practice potting, place both cue ball and object ball at random positions on the table
- in 3C, practice some shot with small variations to get a feeling for how thick/thin you must hit the first object ball, depending on where exactly its positioned.
- practice combinations, caroms, kicks
- ...

Can something like this be implemented easily?