After what seems like a very long time to me, and I'm sure to others outside of Fuller Systems as well, we are simply over the top excited about the new manual counting and muggins features of the latest version of Cribbage Pro that was put to the Android Market early this morning (around 3am PST). As we were playing, I mean "testing", this release I have to admit we all got very addicted to counting manually and mugging each other at every possible moment. It really adds a new dimension to the game and it is a lot of fun.
We spent a long time in testing on this one too, as we developed it for both single player and multiplayer versions at the same time and it introduced a lot of complexity to the turn, count and point systems. I mention this because although we did thousands of tests against it, you all are much better at testing all the variations then we are (there are over 150,000 of you now), so if you find any bugs or quirks, please do let us know at support@fullersystems.com
Other features are in this release (version 1.0.8) as well, that are worth mentioning here. We have traded out the old "comic" style default avatars for a new set while at the same time letting you change the image to your own custom upload as well. Although I know many of you really liked the old avatars, there were just as many who did not, and so we felt it best to go more neutral with the default set we provide while still giving the option for everyone to have whatever they want to represent them. You can find the old ones with some searching if you really want your old one back. The only other note on this feature; please keep it clean. We will remove avatars from public view (you can keep them on your phone of course) if we get complaints and find that they are offensive. We reserve that right at our sole discretion as is noted in the EULA, but really don't ever want to have to use it. Right now everyone seems to be doing good with it (mostly dogs and family actually).
Some other things changed too. We changed the settings/options screens to be categorized and added a password protection setup/registration to the process. This let's you move from one device to another (say one of those cool new Droid X phones) or create an entirely new account should you ever need to. It will also let you recover your account more easily, without having to contact us and wait. Perhaps more obviously, it also lets you keep your pesky friends/kids/significant other from killing your points and ranking or making you look bad in multiplayer.
Before you ask, we did also tweak the shuffling a bit in the release too. Most everything is the same, except we changed the algorithm that generates our random numbers to use what is called a "Mersenne-Twister" algorithm that we seed with random bits from the device. I'll spare you the details, but in the end we think it is faster (easier on your CPU) and produces a better random result in our tests. You will find that many computer based card games use this algorithm when a true random source does not exist. I doubt you will find it much different, but if you think the card mix is different in this release, I suppose it could be this change (although you would probably have to be a computer analyzing hundreds of thousands of hands like we did to really notice). I should note here that on multiplayer games we actually have a true random source (it uses a mix of sources you can find by doing a Google search like random.org for example). This means the results you get in multiplayer games for a hand are as true to random as anything could be (that we know of anyway).
Finally in regards to changes, you will notice some UI tweaks in the game that include updated and bigger buttons, a mix of other alignment changes (like the lobby chat in multiplayer) and a new "Multiplayer Top 50" button in the stats page. This new "Multiplayer top 50" is really just the same point system used for the regular/old "Top 50", but you have to have played at least 5 multiplayer games to be on that list. We will make a few more changes to this list as time goes on to help provide a purer look at where players stack when put up against other real players.
To sign off for today, a final thought/request of you all. What do you want to see next? We have our ideas, but would love to hear from you! Leave us your comments here, or email them to us.
-- Josh
