Hello everybody,

In this topic, you will find information about updates and work in progress since 27 October 2012. The equivalent topic in french goes back to 7 january 2012. Many people in the french version read it and find it useful, so I think it was the time to translate it. You will find below the 3 latest posts, first of these were posted on 27 October. Next upcoming posts starting from now will be online allmost in the same time (or at least within the same day) in french and in english.

Updates listed here may not be sufficient important to be subject of complete news on the home page, but they still give sufficiently good information for you to know, so that you can see what's going on day after day on the playroom.

Work in progress are volontarily vague information about what we are preparing for you in the next few days, weeks or months on the playroom. This can be viewed as a sort of spoil.

If you want to discuss one of the topics mentionned in these reports, please create a separate discussion in the suggestions category. Thank you very much.

Update of 27th october 2012 :

• Feature: prevention against invitation flood: it is no longer possible to invite the same person twice on the same table, or more than 4 people on the same table at a time (Sliding invitations). 4 invitations in a row means the following: when you create a table, you can directly invite 4 people. As soon as one of these 4 people has responded to your invitation and is thus now at your table, you can invite a fifth person, and so on.
• Uno: new sound for inversions
• Poker: H key now announce the names of the people who folded and those who are still on, and not only their number.
• Bouillabaisse: the round is automatically finished as soon as all points have been played.
• Bouillabaisse: new game rule: « all or nothing », cf. rules page for more details.
• Battleship: choice for grid size and the possibility to play again after having touched.
• Bug Connect4: it was possible to artificially fill the grid after having won, confusing the beginning of the next game
• Bug reversi: idem
• Bug battleship: partial resolution error 5002

Important announce: playroom and forum rules have been updated, especially concerning the rules on using foreign languages on the platform. You can read the updated rules on the topic playroom and forum rules.

Update of 10th november 2012 :

• Bug bouillabaisse: incorrect scoring in rounds where tricks give points when the rule « all or nothing » is activated.
• Bug rami: jokers didn't disappear and were cloned when taken from some particular combinations on the table.

Update of saturday 15th december 2012

• Dominos: each player starts with 7 dominos unstead of 5 when playing with the double-six at 4 players. This is a more common rule and it increase the strategy of the game.
• The italian translation is now completely up to date, all games are available. A great thanks to Ambre and her translation team !
• New game translated in english: the little exam. Thank you to our translator Maya. Rules of this game are also available: Game rules for the little exam
• The spanish translation is progressing very fast, with 3 new games available: scopa, yahtzee, dominó. Thank you to all the contributors !
• Bug negative uptime in the home room.

This is the last update belonging to v1. The next update will be for v2.

Update planed on 15st of february for the v2 beta 1 :

Server news :

• Improved security
• Switching to UTF-8 character encoding
• User list with context menu (in Ctrl+U), table management menu (F2), game management menu (Ctrl+F9)
• Local or semi local menus: options and features (resp. F10 and F9)
• Main menu improved: options, features and more
• Rearrangement of join table menu
• Ban player per table basis. Ctrl+B: ban a player, Ctrl+Shift+B: banned list, this list is accessible to everybody at the table)
• New shortcuts: people at the table menu list: Shift+W. W key continue to show the people at the table without opening a menu, as before.
• Replace a player shortcut changed: Ctrl+R (was Ctrl+Shift+B)
• A blocked person is explicitely warned when she tries to send a private message

Games news :

• New game: Farkle
• Poker improvement: new game options: bet limit, raise limit, timer, show cards
• Monopoly improvement: properties that aren't sold when landed on can now be put for auction
• Monopoly improvement: Bots now also trade properties against other properties (and not only properties against money), trade with stations and utilities, and accept bad trades less frequently
• Little exam improvement: in a game with alternating judges, winner is only declared when each player has been judge the same number of times. The game is thus more fair.
• 1000 miles improvement: When playing with two players or two teams, you no longer need to select the target of an attack
• 1000 miles improvement: if the draw pile contains the same number of cards between two consecutive reshuffles, the round is terminated and is declared draw.
• 1000 miles, uno, rami and scopa improvement: sort your cards manually as you wish by using Shift+Up/Down.
• Chess improvement: integral support of complete and abbreviated standard algebric notation to manually enter a move
• Chesn improvement: E.P. support
• Chess improvement: quick navigation between pieces with K, D, R, N, B and P keys
• Chess improvement: consult the full move history in complete standard algebric notation with the shortcut Shift+H
• Bug monopoly: negative number of remaining houses after selling an hotel during building shortage
• Bug 1000 miles: when a bot were replaced by a player, the name of the bot still stayed in menus and scores
• Bug 1000 miles: it was sometimes possible to make a dirty trick with priority vehicle against an accident, an out of gas or a flatten when also being in consens.
• Bug 1000 miles: error correction 3001 and 3002
• Bug rami: when completing three aces, only 5 points were sometimes given unstead of 15
• Bug dominos: double 0 is normally worth 10 points unstead of 0
• Bug bouillabaisse: saved games weren't restored correctly

Client news :

• Views and message groups
• menu navigation: home and end move the selection within menus; beginning and end of history are now reachable with Ctrl+page up/down.
• Options dialog box has been replaced by local and semi-local menus. New shortcut for options menu: F10
• New configuration shortcuts: Shift+F6: audio settings menu. Shift+F8: change sound card. Shift+F5: stop all playing streams. Shift+F7: stop all playing sounds. Ctrl+F5: enable/disable auto incoming message reading. Shift+F3: change language
• New SAPI shorcuts: Ctrl+F6: Activate SAPI and cycle through voices. Ctrl+F7/F8: decrease/increase voice rate
• New views shortcuts: Alt+Left/Right: Go to previous/next view. Shift+F12. save current view in a file. Ctrl+F12: copy current view to clipboard
• New history buffer shortcuts: Ctrl+Space: copy current message to clipboard. Ctrl+Enter: open link found in current message
• Color management in history and menus
• Bug: incoming sounds and messages that arrived when being in an input box were played/spoken only once finished with the dialog.

Update 2.0.5.268 of 18 april 2013

Server news :

• Friends list
• Option allowing to receive PM and invitations only from your friends
• Signaling with sound when a friend connects or disconnects
• Bug monopoly: the game froze if you tried to watch your properties or other's properties when asked "would you like to buy X ?"

Client news :

• New channel to have new friends-related messages
• Input control in login dialog
• Streams bug: the stream were played for 1-2 seconds when going out of a free table even if you didn't listen to it before

Update 2.0.6.280 of 3rd May 2013

Server :

• Friends list capacity has been enlarged by 50%
• Bug: Bob was able to send a friend demand to Alice even if Alice had blocked Bob
• Bug: Press on delete to junk a card in 1000 miles when it's not your turn

Client :

• New sounds ! In particular for managing the friends list (connect/disconnect/demands)
• Security improvements
• Fixed typo in spanish version of the client

Update 2.0.7.300 of 9 june 2013 :

• New game: 6 takes
• bug: jass: tricks coming from previous rounds in some cases
• Bug: connect 4: unable to play in column H in a game with 3 players

Update 2.1.0.326 of 8th july 2013:

• Protocol update to prepare an important upconing innovation coming soon.
• New game: black jack
• The number of saved tables is limited to 30 per user from now on
• Because the popularity of the playroom is growing fast, entrances and exits in and out of the server are only notified for your friend rather tan everybody as before
• Improvement uno, poker, monopoly, rami, farkle and battleship: a serie of default options is already defined if you want to avoid defining manually the rules of your table one by one; it's easier for new players and allows you to save your options. You can set game options of your table by pressing Alt+O, at creation time, or just before starting the game by answering no to the question "do you want to use default options".
• Improvement poker, rami and farkle: added or modified R key to remind game rules set before the beginning of the game
• Improvement jass: victory score is announced when pressing S
• Bugs rami and 6 takes: some of the stats were stored wrong; corresponding data have been reset
• Bug farkle: frozen game when the game was restored while you had already rolled dice but not yet chosen any combination

Minor update 2.1.0.335 of 11th july 2013 :

• To avoid cheating, black jack tables are always restored with the permanent chips currently really available rather than those available at save time
• 1000 miles: added R key to remind definied rules, like in many other games
• Many black jack bug reported by players have been fixed
• Bug 1000 miles and new Alt+O system: unable to start a game with 3 players
• Bug yahtzee: unable to reroll 6s

Update 2.1.0.338 of 14th july 2013:

• Teamplay in dominos: 2 teams of 2, 3 teams of 2, 4 teams of 2, 5 teams of 2, 6 teams of 2, 2 teams of 3, 3 teams of 3, 4 teams of 3, 2 teams of 4, 3 teams of 4, 2 teams of 5, 2 teams of 6; the finishing team get 0 points eventhough if parthners had dominos in their hand.
• Jass variant called apple to play with 3 or 5 players; rules have been updated.
• Some black jack bugs fixed
• Bug monopoly: in some cases, if you exchanged property X while paying cash, the opposite was said, leading to confusion: i.e. "You give X to Y and Y gives you Z$" instead of "Y gives X to you and you give Y Z$".

Update 2.1.0.341 of 17th july 2013 :

• New game: spades
• Some bugfixes in poker and black jack

Update 2.1.0.350 of 9th august 2013

• New: status messages in friend list
• The capacity of the friend list has been extended by 33%
• Improvement of IA bouillabaisse
• Monopoly. it was possible to get a free salary at the beginning of the game by pressing F11

Update 2.1.0.350 of 9th august 2013

• New: status messages visible by your friends; press F9 and change your own !
• The capacity of the friends list has been extended by 33%
• Bouillabaisse and rummy IA a little improved
• Bug monopoly: it was possible to get free money by pressing F11 at the very beginning of the game

Update 2.1.0.358 of 26th august 2013 :

• Spades: it's no longer disallowed to undercut; this was a misinterpretation of the rules
• Scopa: new game variant: escoba / sum15. In that variant, the card you are playing plus the cards you take from the table must sum up to 15. This is a little more strategic than the classic variant.
• Scopa: you must now have at least 2 more points than your opponents to win the game, a little like on tennis

Updates are now again posted each separately on their own, as before.

Update 2.1.0.361 of 2nd september 2013

Server updates

• Scopa: added R key to tell the currently selected variant (classic or escoba)
• General: context menus in card lists have been added or improved in several games: uno, rummy, 1000 miles and dominos especially.
• Update to prepare an upcoming new thing

Important web client update
If you are participating in web client beta-testing, you should come back and test it again, many things have been added or modified since your last visit. IF you have a smarphone, a tablet, a mac, a PC under linux, or any other device potentially able to go on the web, if you are interested in being able to play on the playroom using them, and if you are serious and precise when reporting bugs, you are invited to beta-test our web client. Send us an e-mail to apply for that, please don't post on the forum.

Updates on the web client :
General:

• Added a « clear history » button
• Trying to fix the bug of no or bad reading of the history on safari mac. If you are testing on mac, please insist on this one to help us solving the problem.

iPhone news :

• When you are asked to enter a number, for example a score limit or the number of chips you want to bet, the telephone numeric keyboard is now shown unstead of the standard keyboard, so that input is easier
• Slider to set volume works now as any other slider in iOS, sweep up or down to adjust
• Double click (triple click with voice over active) now open the context menu if there is one where you are. Context menus of several games have been improved so that access to main game actions is faster than before.
• You can now do the gesture with two fingers to go back a menu without the need to find the cancel or back button
• You can also now choose the teams by drag and drop, when you are in the menu to select teams. With voice over active, you must touch a first time the player to move, touch a second time and maintain the position for a few seconds until hearing a sound, move the finger to the desired place while keeping pressed, and finally release on the target player. The two involved players in the operation will then be swapped.
• New also, shake the phone allows to :
• IN uno: say uno
• In monopoly, farkle and yahtzee: roll dice

We didn't tested these gesture features on android phones, neither on tablets. Please give us feedback, whatever for a tactile device you have.

Update 2.1.0.365 of 8th september 2013

• New game: french tarot
• Bug dominos: it was possible to draw a piece even if round was finished

Update 2.1.0.367 of 9th september 2013

• Improvement tarot: R key now announce who are attackers and defenders when playing with 5 and 6 players, once called cards have been played
• Improvement tarot: when having no trump but the little one and not the fool, the hand is redealt transparently
• Bug tarot: it was impossible to play the fool when suit was trump and able to play greater trumps.
• Bug tarot: the little one brough to the end when failed subtracted points to the winner of the trick and not to who owned the little one.

Update 2.1.0.369 of 12th september 2013

• Improvement tarot: announcements of handles with Shift+P, shown trumps are automatically selected. IN the rules one is obliged to show the lowest and the highest trump owned. Trumps starting at the second highest aren't shown if more trumps than required are owned.
• Bug tarot: fixed scoring for little one brought to the ent: if the little one is brought to the end, it's always the winner of the trick who gets the bonus
• Bug tarot: there was no button to place a bet in the web client

Update 2.1.0.370 of 21th of september 2013 :

• Bug tarot: with 6 players, when the called lady was in the kitty, the partner of the taker who had the called king was revealed via R key before it was actually played
• Bug tarot: handles were counted wrong: 5, 7.5, 10 unstead of 20, 30, 40

Minor update 2.1.0.371 of 28th september 2013 :

• Scopa: added an option to set or not the two points ahead rule
• Tarot: added an option to disable little and/or push bets. In legacy mode, all bets are available; in standard mode, push is disabled; in tournament mode, the smallest bet is the guard.

Update 2.1.0.382 of 26th October 2013

• New game: shut the boxes
• Bugfixing in uno, 1000 miles, bouillabaisse, tarot and dominos
• Some preparations for upcoming features

The web client is now compatible with some newtworks which were previously known to encounter some problems.

Technically, the web client now connects on port 80 via a secondary IP address.

Thank you to jeremyp3 who found the solution to this issue.

Update 2.1.0.391 of 23rd and 24th november 2013

• New game: scientific war
• French tarot, spades and bouillabaisse: left and right arrow keys allow to navigate quickly over card colors; a bug sometimes make cards to be read twice
• Free tables: stream URL is now pretyped when the table master press Ctrl+P for the second time

Update 2.1.0.395 of 25th december 2013 :

• New feature: Messageing inbox !
• New feature tarot,spades, rummy, jass and 1000 miles: a limit under 100 points define a number of rounds to play unstead of a score to reach. Example: specify a limit of 4 to play exactly 4 rounds.
• Scientific war rules modification: if multiple queens are played at the same turn, their effect is cancelled
• Bug tarot: the game was blocked if the taker was disconnected during king/lady call or kitty selection

Update 2.1.0.398 of 18th January 2014

• Scientific war: two new powers ! Press C to use them, after having played a 8 or a 3. A 3 allow you to see how many cards other players have in their hand (do not confuse with total number of cards), and an 8 allow you to exchange your card piles.
• Scientific war: bots AI have been largely improved

Updates 2.1.0.404 to 407 of 15th to 18th february 2014 :

• Statistics have been reset
• Added statistics about victories/defeats, or, for games where it is relevant, the number of contracts taken/succeeded/failed.
• Modified stats pages on the website to display them in their new form
• Bug permanent messaging: some messages couldn't be opened and resulted in a disconnection

Update 2.1.0.410 of 4th february 2014 :

• Bugs related to new statistics fixed
• Spades: you can now choose if you want or not to play in teams with 4 players; you can now also play in teams with 6 players (two teams of 3).

Update 2.1.0.415 of 8th March 2014 :

• New game: Ninety nine
• Tarot: artificial intelligence of bots has been greatly improved
• Scopa: there is now a sound when doing scopa
• Bug 1000 miles: statistics on victories and defeats were incorrectly computed. They have been consequently reseted. Thank you to Betsy for having found this bug.
• Misc: our policy concerning nickname change has been modified. From now on, you are allowed to change your nickname only once in 30 days.

Update 2.1.0.434 of 21st April 2014:

• Playroom is now also available in German. A great thank you to our translators !
• Rummy improvements: challenge mode, scoring alt mode, manipulation of combinations, identities. To learn more about news brought today in rummy, go read the rules, they have been updated.
• Rummy: bots now also play with the discard and take advantage of the new rules introduced
• Spades: artificial intelligence of bots has been improved, especially when there are nil bids. Bots also try to bid nil more often.
• Spades: added an alarm when someone bids nil
• Bug rummy: bots sometimes didn't meld at all, even if they had the hand to do so, especialyl when first meld was fixed quite high (i.e. 50 points)
• Bug rummy: some cards mysteriously of bots' hands allthough they didn't yet meld
• Bug rummy: bonus of 100 points given additionally to the 200 for a rummy without using melded combinations (no lay off) was never counted.

Update 2.1.0.443 of 8th of june 2014

• Jass AI has been greatly improved
• Bug rami with combinations starting with a joker

Update 2.1.0.446 of 22th of June 2014

• Improvement Rami, Spades, tarot, Jass, 1000 miles: the number of the round in progress is now indicated in the scors if the game is played in a limited number of rounds
• Bug 1000 miles: in accumulation mode, if one was already stopped while playing a problem, a dirty trick always removed anyway the stopped state when it shouldn't have.
• Removed a secondary feature on free tables

Update 2.1.0.448 of 2th of July 2014 :

• New feature: you can now block an user even if he isn't online; to do that, go to features and more > list of blocked users > block an user.
• Improvement rummy: if the draw pile is empty, if there is no discard, and if nothing happens in 2 complete turns around the table, then the round is considered to be blocked, and is terminated.

Update 2.1.0.467 (server) and 2.1.0.175 (website) of 25th July 2014:

Server updates:

• Playroom is now available in portuguese ! A great thank to ControlAltDel and his team for this new translation.
• Bug tables: using command /kick and /ban, it was possible to kick or ban anyone from a table, even if you weren't table master
• Bug rummy: disconnection at the end of a blocked round

Website and web client Updates:

• As well as the playroom server, the website and the client are now also available in portuguese
• New web client feature: use browser speech synthesizer
• Bugfix in stats pages

More info about the new feature « use browser speech synthesizer » :

Some browsers, such as Safari on OS X/iOS and Google Chrome, have recently integrated API allowing websites to use a speech synthesizer provided by the system to make annnouncements vocally.

By enabling this feature, incoming messages on your table will be immediately read by this synthesizer if it is available, instead of relying on a automatic reading by the screen reader. There are pros and cons to do that:

• Most notably on iOS and OS X, VoiceOver don't always read all incoming messages (each other one is skipped), for obscures reasons we still don't know about. By activating the speech synthesizer of the browser, you can be sure to no more miss any incoming message, since they will be all read by the browser's synthesizer instead of relying on the automatic reading of VoiceOver. We also noticed that there was slightly less delay with the synthesizer between the time a message arrive and the time it is read.
• However, you have the same kind of drawbacks as by activating SAPI on windows: you can't make this synthesizer to shut up before it finishes reading, and it is likely that both browser's synthesizer and the screen reader speak at the same time without being able to really control that.

This feature hasn't been tested on Chrome but should also work. You will find this new option in features and more > web options.

Update 2.1.0.478 of 14th August 2014 :

• New feature: between two rounds, press Shift+P to pause the game; then press enter to start the next round when you wish
• Bug rummy: AI took jokers from existing combinations, were able to play them immediately, but didn't do it. Thanks chips1.
• Bug rummy: while joining two existing combinations together, cards sometimes disappeared. Thanks again chips1.

Update 2.1.0.491 of 25th of October 2014:

• Rummy: corrected a bug with manipulations and initial meld, thanks chips1; Details in french on this topic
• Uno: corrected a bug which made that, when interception weren't activated but straights were, 3 penality points were still given for a missed interception; thanks Angelo_della_notte
• Corrected a bug with bot names in the portuguese version

Update 2.2.0.502 of 15.11.2014

• Client version 2.2 is now mandatory in all cases
• Cribbage is now officially a new game of the playroom
• Cribbage: added timers and fixed a few bugs. When the time is out, you give 50% of your points to your opponents.
• Rummy: added timers, available only for the no discard mode; when the time expires, your turn immediately ends
• Uno: added timers; when the time expires, you draw a card as if you couldn't play and it's next player's turn.

Update 2.2.0.509 of 29th November 2014

• Cribbage: new option, mugging.When activating this option, the game behaves as it has always been before; when disactivating it, you don't give your points away to your opponent(s) anymore when you sumed them up wrong. This might make the game less scarry for beginners.
• Cribbage: with the same goal to help beginners, when you made it wrong, your points are now broken down and explained with a sentance like « 2 fifteens for 4 and 2 pairs for 4 makes 8 points »; as well as bot hands, systematically.
• Cribbage: added the E key to know how much cards your oponnent(s) have still in hand during the playing phase
• Rummy: When timer is activated, penalities for forgotten cards in your hand have been greatly reduced; they are now adapted depending on the time limit fixed, i.e. 20 points for 45 seconds, or 150 points for 5 minutes for example. When timer isn't activated, the penality is still 300 points for each forgotten card as it was before. Tipp: to avoid being caught by the time, use the V key to know how much time is left. An alarm rings 10 seconds before the end of your turn.
• Rummy: fixed a bug with saving and timers, thanks chips1
• Uno: fixed a bug with +4/jokers and timers
• Web client: trying to solve a few visual issues; please give us feedback
• As a beta-test, the playroom is now open in russian; albanian will follow very soon.

Update 2.2.0.526 of 24th of January 2015 :

• Cribbage: bug game stuck if a player left the table before discarding cards into the crib
• Cribbage: bug with timers

Update 2.2.0.218 of the website :

• Web client: chat bar is now again visible
• Web client: automatic scrolling of the history is now working ! You will now always find the latest messages at the bottom of the zone.

Thank you to Ling, who helped with her eyes to solve these two issue.