So a lightning fast edition where all the tiles just blink into place?

it'd only work against AI

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What's really interesting about that screen shot is that game center name belongs to a close family member of mine...

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Well hopefully they weren't too mad when I quit out early. Had an intramural game so I exited out after about 5 hands. Works like a charm so far though

Had a few disappointing multiplayer games.

On one, I was playing with someone, and not sure if the game hung, the person walked away, or he was just taking a really long time thinking... Not sure what to do about that, maybe add a "thinking" button for multiplayer so that the other players at the table know you're just contemplating. Also, maybe give the other players an option to kick a non-responsive player.

On the other, my wife and I were playing, and our games got unsynced or disconnected or something, but there wasn't any indication. My game was ahead of where hers was. Looked like I got disconnected and was probably playing the AI, but still had her name and the other persons we were playing with, and they still saw me as in their game.

Ohh, also, can you make it where if you invite someone that they get to pick the spot at the table first? When my wife and I play, we usually want to be on the same team, but someone else joins and selects the seat before me, and then I'm playing against my wife...

Not sure if this is on your side or game center's, but when I try to invite someone it fails, but I can create or join a game that gets random players.

Last one, I promise....
Is it possible to have an option to wait for more players rather that start with the computer? A couple of times we had 2-3, but would have waited another minute or two if it meant being able to get up to 4 players for a full table, but the game just automatically started...

I probably spent two months on trying to figure out how to make the program wait for more players after it finds a match. I even got desperate and looked for a free lance developer to pay just to get that code right...they either wanted $1000+ for ten lines of code or didn't know how to do it. I might revisit it in a few weeks now that I'm older and wiser.

I'll need to look into the invite thing. One of the trickiest parts of the code is to set the host device, but I think it's possible.

A thinking button is a good idea. When I play my wife, she keeps asking if it disconnected, but its almost always me being indecisive.

I submitted a 2.0.1 release last night to tackle that iPhone 5 issue and a few other lag related problems. In doing do, I found an area that was keeping the disconnected message from being displayed longer than .001 seconds. Now at least you should see something when someone leaves.

About your invitation failed thing...they have to be logged into GC for the invite to work. If you invite 3 people and one of them is not logged in, it fails across the board.



[This message has been edited by Philip j fry (edited 4/8/2013 8:19a).]

Just updated our app and noticed the multiplayer! Have a question though....

My wife and I each have the game on our own iPads. We are both under the same apple ID so that we can share cloud services. We have never done anything with gamecenter so not sure exactly how it all works. It looks like the only way to sign in is with the apple ID so is there a way that my wife and I could sign in under different accounts and be "partners" and then we can play other friends? Do I need to create a separate apple ID just for the Gamecenter?

Thanks!

I believe all you need for game center is a valid e-mail address. I personally have 4 game center accounts, so getting separate IDs should not be a problem.

Ok I think I have my new Gamecenter ID created with my email and I am signed into GC. Now we can't figure out how we can connect up to play the same game? We thought we were doing it but it just keeps doing a spinning wheel on our screens alternating between 2-4 minutes to connect, even though we are on the same wifi? We saw how you invite another player. What do you do to accept that invitation - hit the white banner at the top of the screen hat briefly appears while playing the trumpet "charge" sound?

[This message has been edited by BuLi97 (edited 4/8/2013 9:23p).]

What iOS are you running?

I also suggest you change that banner to the "alert" setting under notifications. That banner doesn't last very long.

If the person who sent the invite is on iOS 5, they have to hit "play now" after it shows that you are ready. Otherwise, it should move on to the next screen on its own.

[This message has been edited by Philip J Fry (edited 4/8/2013 10:01p).]

We got it figured out finally. We've played a few games. Biggest problem lately is my wife had to go to the bathroom and I had a lay down, she came back , her game said she had left the room, but she picked back up while my game was just stuck waiting for her to bid. I was the host player. I couldn't get mine to unfreeze. Had to quit game.

Yeah. That's something I plan on addressing in some later releases. It shouldn't boot her from the game unless her screen lock comes on. You should be able to turn "Auto-Lock" to a higher setting in the mean time.


Do you know where the game froze? I know of one place where the game will not continue if someone leaves, but I'm curious to hear if there's another place I haven't thought of.

[This message has been edited by Philip J Fry (edited 4/8/2013 10:16p).]

We were still in the bidding process. I was first bidder and bid 2 marks. Next person passed. She was up for bid but left for bathroom and that's when it froze. Current game score was like 4 to 2., I think.

P.s. - we are really enjoying the game! We love playing 42 and we really appreciate your efforts into making this the best 42 game out there.

P.p.s. I am on version 6.0.1.

Got a error for ya PJF, I'm on the newest version and all that jazz so here we go. Partner calls doubles as trumps, we win first two tricks, then lose the next one. For the final trick where we get set, the AI to my right leads the 6-5, me and the AI to the left have to play sixes (with the Sumlin playing the 6-4) so as you can see from the remaining dominoes at the end of the hand, my partner didn't have a six and still had two trumps left, but instead he plays the 4-2 and we lose the hand.

Picture of it:

Hmmmmm. I'll take a look at that tonight. Should have been a pretty easy decision to make.

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So a lightning fast edition where all the tiles just blink into place?

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Yes, also if you could lay a hand down after you know you won would be awesome but I would assume hard to code for. Also the lag between plays for the computer could be much faster in single player mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining because it has worked really well so far!!

So I have a screen shot of someone reneging during a live game. If anyone else has seen something like this...or better yet, reneged themselves(!), let me know.

2.0.1 has been released and 2.0.2 has been submitted for approval. 2.0.1 fixes that ridiculous iPhone 5 issue and should help with some lag problems. 2.0.2 fixes an issue keeping some iPad users from picking seats. I think/hope 2.0.3 will solve the remainder of these lag related issues...

[This message has been edited by Philip j fry (edited 4/11/2013 12:34a).]

Thumbs up for a dev who really, genuinely cares about his users. Thanks for continuing to add/improve on your product!

[This message has been edited by kbassil (edited 4/11/2013 11:44a).]

Eh. I just wish I understood the art of accounting for network latency better. I'm not used to needing to think in 3 dimensional code like this and I think it shows.

1st reply and now the 1000th

you can either use hard delays or response interrupt driven code.

I'm working on a project using UART communication between two microcontrollers. Each request packet is answered. The answer is caught by "Byte received" interrupt. If the proper response is never received it will eventually timeout and accept the failure. Too many failures indicate a broken link.

in my case any attempt to reconnect is unnecessary as the comm links are hardware based... if I get a broken link, it is physically broken. In your case, however, reconnect attempts are likely needed for the event a link breaks for a few seconds due to poor 3G service, a WiFi shadow, or an accidental lock.

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you can either use hard delays or response interrupt driven code

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I have a combination of both, but I think I need to increase the hard delays.

Also, the way it's working now...each device talks to one another, but the host makes all the decisions. I think I need to change it so that each player only ever talks to the host and the host transmits this data to the rest of the players. Busy weekend of coding ahead to re-arrange the structure to do this.

On reconnecting when people disconnect from the match....

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11675510/reconnecting-to-gkmatch-with-more-than-two-players

Is stopping me dead at my tracks right now.


[This message has been edited by Philip J Fry (edited 4/11/2013 1:52p).]

I'm not familiar enough with iOS yet, but are the hard delays based on time or cycles?

with the MSP430's I work with right now, any hard delay is based on cycles. Luckily I can determine approximate CPU speed (it still varies a little bit with voltage), which means I know the speed of a cycle. If your hard delays are a cycle count, but different devices have different processing speeds, you will need to find a way to adjust the cycle count for processor speed.

Luckily, it's based on wall clock time. There are a few cases where I didn't have a hard delay and the pace was driven completely by the processor speed. Unfortunately, in cases where you have 2 iPad 4s playing against each other, the faster processors actually cause a bug to show itself. I'd always tested it using a ipod/iphone/ipad/simulator combination that appeared to be less sensitive to processor speeds.

Interesting, if not frustating lesson learned.

Can we start talking English on this thread again? Thanks....

Much to the annoyance of my wife/friends/family, I no longer speak in pure english.

I bet

I can't get a game...

No one on or isn't letting you connect?

I'm not sure. It doesn't say.

I did get a game with a guy who left after the second hand. I guess nobody is on.

Alrighty. Just played 5 straight 3-4 player games to completion. I think my changes have made it significantly more stable.

Thanks for all your work on this. It's pretty doggone fun. Makes me miss the Chicken though.

Love it! But I wanted to go sevens tonight and of of course it's not optional. I know some people will argue playing sevens...the hand was just amazing. But I'm having a blast.