Welcome!
15/09/08 12:59 Filed in: Products
Welcome! I’ve added this section to our website as a way of keeping our customers informed as to future product plans, product update plans, and other issues affecting our software and your potential enjoyment of our software.
In this first entry, I want to let you know some things about Hearts, and about another product coming soon.
First, we are aware that a small number of customers are having problems with Hearts; these seem to boil down to reaching a game state where the human player has fewer cards than the other players. I think I’ve found the source of the problem, and I will be submitting the fix in version 1.4. Version 1.3 has already been submitted to Apple, which usually takes about a week to approve an update. However, Apple seems to have recently changed the rules, so there may be additional delays.
Version 1.4 also adds persistent pass direction indicators, cleans up the messages that get displayed, adds a “take remaining cards” button to the options screen, and adds other new features (see “Version Information” for more details).
Several people have requested a “jack of diamonds” option. This option is easy to implement from the player’s perspective, but raises wrinkles in the AI. Each computer opponent now has every decision affected by the possibility of grabbing the jack of diamonds, either during the current trick, or later in the hand. Therefore, we will hold off on implementing this feature until we feel the AI is in better shape. While the AI plays pretty well most of the time, it still makes mistakes. We don’t find that acceptable, and we are adding new decision-making modules and improving the AI all the time.
We’ve also added a new feature that enables you to send us useful information about the program’s datastructures - this should help us determine the source of any future problems.
Also, I wanted to let you know that Spades is coming! I submitted it to the Apple store about a week ago, so it should be approved shortly.
In this first entry, I want to let you know some things about Hearts, and about another product coming soon.
First, we are aware that a small number of customers are having problems with Hearts; these seem to boil down to reaching a game state where the human player has fewer cards than the other players. I think I’ve found the source of the problem, and I will be submitting the fix in version 1.4. Version 1.3 has already been submitted to Apple, which usually takes about a week to approve an update. However, Apple seems to have recently changed the rules, so there may be additional delays.
Version 1.4 also adds persistent pass direction indicators, cleans up the messages that get displayed, adds a “take remaining cards” button to the options screen, and adds other new features (see “Version Information” for more details).
Several people have requested a “jack of diamonds” option. This option is easy to implement from the player’s perspective, but raises wrinkles in the AI. Each computer opponent now has every decision affected by the possibility of grabbing the jack of diamonds, either during the current trick, or later in the hand. Therefore, we will hold off on implementing this feature until we feel the AI is in better shape. While the AI plays pretty well most of the time, it still makes mistakes. We don’t find that acceptable, and we are adding new decision-making modules and improving the AI all the time.
We’ve also added a new feature that enables you to send us useful information about the program’s datastructures - this should help us determine the source of any future problems.
Also, I wanted to let you know that Spades is coming! I submitted it to the Apple store about a week ago, so it should be approved shortly.