So without further delay, here is a quick summary of the things in Cribbage Pro 1.5
- Multiplayer Best of 1, 3, 5 or 7 Games
- We are very excited to finally release a tournament like option which allows you to risk your points and ranking in a "best of X" series as opposed to a single game show down. You can still play just one game where the winner takes all, but playing a best of 3 or more will allow you to avoid the loss of points/ranking from one bad game or a few bad hands.
- Add Friends / Send Private Messages
- You asked, we heard you, and here it is. You can now request to be friends inside the game with anyone you are playing (open the chat to see the "Add friend" button), or by entering a user name in the Friends tab of the multiplayer screen.
- Selecting any of your friends allows you to view their stats, hide/show them from your list and send or view private messages with them. Messages you send are not stored in any secure fashion, so treat these as unencrypted emails being sent freely over the internet (don't send anything sensitive in any way). However, it does give you a nice convenient way to communicate with your cribbage friends without the need to exchange email addresses or otherwise.
- New Multiplayer Top 50 and Single Player Top 50 Changes
- Here is where some questions are likely to arise, and where we want to be clear on what happened here and why. If you have followed the "Top 50" for a while, you have probably noticed some strange things like really high points and rankings for single player users and people listed on the multiplayer Top 50 that hardly ever play multiplayer at all. These things needed to be addressed, and so we did.
- The single player side of things now counts any abandoned or unfinished game as a loss for the purposes of ranking in the Top 50 (individual stats are not changed). This also changed how games are saved and loaded in the single player game which some may find as a great improvement well others will not like so much. However, it had to be done to prevent the "gaming of the system" that was clearly happening in the Top 50. We believe this should firmly resolve this kind of activity and make for a better representation of ranks.
- The multiplayer Top 50 side is completely redone. We have created a completely separate points and ranking/level for the multiplayer side of the house. Everyone got new points in this system based on the wins and losses they have had in multiplayer. If you have more wins then losses, then you are higher up then those with more losses then wins. We also set a baseline here so that to start with nobody was below 1500 points when we converted over. However, many are likely much lower then they were before, but over time if you win you will see your rank go back up. If you lose of course, it will go down.
- Abandoned/Forfeit in Multiplayer
- Another significant change here is that if you exit a game in progress in multiplayer (forfeit) you will take a loss and the other player will be given the win. If you are forced out and don't quit intentionally, the system will do it's best to determine if there could be a projected winner or loser and award the win/loss accordingly. Simply put, if you are losing and disconnected you will likely take a loss if you can't re-join. If you are winning and disconnected for some reason, you will not take a loss.
- These changes simply had to be made due to the constant reports of players quitting games when they are losing to avoid taking the loss. It was very unsportsmanlike conduct, and we had to find a way to punish that behavior, with the understanding that some players will undoubtedly be given a loss for a game when their phone dies or drops the connection for whatever reason even if they may have still had a chance to win.
- True Random Shuffling!
- We believe this is a first in any cribbage game on any device anywhere, and are very excited about releasing it out first to our Android users (iPhone/iOS users, coming soon).
- How does it work? Well, whenever available it will actually take true random data from the folks over at random.org to use when shuffling the deck and making some other of the random choices in the game. If your device is connected to the internet and can get data from their service, it will be used. If not, it will use the same device generated random source as before.
- One point of clarification is that this change is for single player. Multiplayer has always used various true random sources for it's shuffling since day one.
- New Layout in Multiplayer
- Android users saw the biggest changes here as with the addition of the new Friends system we had to make some more room. We hope you like the new layout and setup, but if you have any feedback or suggestions please don't hesitate in letting us know.
- New HD Graphics
- More and more users are using newer devices with screens capable of utilizing higher resolution graphics. So, in this release for both iOS and Android we have added new higher solution images for devices that support them. It makes the game a little bigger to download/install, but we think you will really like the crisp and clear images a lot better.
- Bug Fixes
- As always, there are some bug fixes in this release in both single player and multiplayer for both Android and iOS. Some bugs did not get fully fixed in time for release, particularly on iOS devices, so we appreciate your patience as we work through those and get out another release soon to address those (like the double tap of the deal button bug in single player, yeah we know, it's not cool, and we have a fix).
Thanks again everyone for your continued support of the game, and we hope you find the new features exciting, the fixes helpful and the game even more fun to play then ever before!
