Change History

3D Spades Deluxe 3.3

New Features

• GameSmith 3.4.3 is now bundled with Spades. For details, see GameSmith Changes.
• NOTE: some of the new features described below require that all human players in a network game are using Spades 3.3 or later. When this is not the case, a warning message will be displayed in the game chat.
• New game variation: Suicide Spades. In Suicide Spades at least one partner must bid nil each hand.
• New Blind Nil game variation: Blind nil can only be bid when behind by at least two hundred points.
• Bots now automatically substitute in when a player drops out of a network game.
• Added support for an iPuppet Images folder. Put a folder (or an alias) with this name at the same level as the game (i.e., Plug Ins) and/or in your Home folder’s Pictures folder and put images in it, or folders of images (aliases to either are OK). This is a super-quick way to manage many iPuppet images.
• Added support for the new Game Info dialog in GameSmith. The rules and status information are now properly provided to GameSmith, so anyone using GameSmith 3.4 can track the progress of your game.
• Added support for Speech Synthesis. The pre-recorded chat messages that are normally spoken by puppets can instead be spoken using Apple’s Speech technology. In the Puppets dialog, you can specify which voice (if any) to use for each position. In Network games, once you assign a voice to another human player, the player will retain that voice even after changing positions.
• The Rules, Puppets and Solo Stats dialogs are now sheets in Mac OS X, which means you can open them and still interact with GameSmith.
• Added a new /help command in the game chat to see which commands are available.
• Added a new /save commmand to save game chat.
• Control-clicking in the game window allows various operations, depending on whether you click on a puppet or the game background and whether you are playing a solo game or hosting or joining a network game.
• You can now mute players by control-clicking.
• You can hide the iPuppet image for a single player by control-clicking.
• There is a new option to Resign. This is only available in network games after the fifth hand, and all players must agree to it. It can only be used when losing.
• Added new automatic be-right-back support in network games when using iPuppets: just type brb into game chat and then click when you are back.
• Added a new option to automatically shuffle player seat positions after each game via a checkbox in the Puppets dialog.
• Added a new Network menu item to shuffle player seat positions on demand.
• Added a new game rule for Suicide Spades.
• Added a new game rule to only allow blind nil bidding when behind at least 200 points.

Bug Fixes & Minor Improvements

• Team bids are now limited to thirteen, so if your partner bids six, you cannot bid more than seven. Avoids accidental impossible bids.
• General improvements to many game messages to include additional information about who has not clicked to be ready, who is dealing and who will lead, etc.
• Fixed a bug that caused games to sometimes stall or “lag” unpredictably.
• Rules dialog has been improved visually and now allows the game to points to be to any value you like.
• Emoticon menu has been rearranged and includes emoticon images in Mac OS X.
• Chat Bubbles now include emoticon images instead of their text equivalents.
• As players move from seat to seat (say, because of swapping), they now maintain the same chat color for consistency.
• Keyboard support for bidding and passing has been disabled in network games so that chatting cannot trigger inadvertent bids.
• Pressing Escape clears the chat edit field in the game window.
• Chat Bubbles are drawn more smoothly in Mac OS X.
• Preferences now has an improved iPuppet Preview.
• Added a new Show Scoreboard item in the Game menu.
• Improved Quit & Open: supports Crazy Eights and Gin Rummy and also includes the game icons.
• Added a notification when a network player is using a puppet you do not have.
• Joiners can no longer restart network games after they end. Only the host can do that.
• Hide Desktop was very seriously broken. Now it’s not.
• Command ` can no longer cycle to the desktop’s hidden window.
• Fixed the Puppets dialog so that, when making changes (adding a bot, swapping seats), it no longer tells you there is a game in progress when the game is actually over.
• Fixed the Puppets dialog so that it can be used to change the seats of GameSmith account names with special characters.
• Improved the appearance of score pad.
• Added Command-F as a keyboard equivalent for Restart Game.
• Startup time has been reduced significantly.
• The Help has been updated and cleaned up.
• The end game win/lose animations require fewer CPU resources on older computers.
• Removed the random, occasional “grumble” sound that players could make in network games.
• Fixed a number of issues with Exposé when using the Hide Desktop option.
• Fixed a problem where players would sometimes be invisible after first joining.
• Added support for new XML-based puppets.

3D Spades Deluxe 3.2.5

• GameSmith 3.4.1 is now bundled with the Spades. For details see GameSmith Changes.

3D Spades Deluxe 3.2.1

• GameSmith 3.3 is now bundled with the Spades. For details see GameSmith Changes.

3D Spades Deluxe 3.2

New Features

• Rebranded as a 3D Deluxe game instead of a Colin’s Classic Card game.
• Includes support for the new GameSmith game matching service from Freeverse:
  
  • The Connect dialog now allows you to create new accounts.
  • Guest access to GameSmith is not allowed, everyone must have an account. Accounts that have not been used for sixty days will automatically be removed.
  • When creating a new account, you can supply your e-mail, web page and a short comment for other players to see.
  • GameSmith is self-updating. As updates are available you will be able to automatically (or manually if you wish) download the new update. Note that you will not be allowed to connect to GameSmith until the update has been downloaded and installed.
  • GameSmith features rooms with new themes, including an old favorite.
  • Certain games can now start out in certain rooms when first connecting.
  • There is an options button that opens a GameSmith options dialog that enables you to set various GameSmith options including the font, alternating chat colors, and player list sort order (by game, name, time online or availability).
  • Control-clicking the names of players in the Player list now displays a contextual menu with various options.
  • The Page Up/Down keys can be used to change rooms or change games in the Player Info dialog.
  • #1 ranks are now drawn in blue
  • Added /version chat command
  • Added option-p as shortcut to /page command
  • ...and many other improvements and fixes!
• Includes a new registration system which requires new registration codes.
• Added the standard Window menu per Mac OS X user interface guidelines.
• The Connect menu item now has a keyboard equivalent of Command-K.
• The Show/Hide GameSmith menu item now has a keyboard equivalent of Command-G.
• The Preferences menu item now has a keyboard equivalent of Command-,
• Added Join Game and Host Game menu items in the Network menu
• Renamed the Leave Game item as End Game (when hosting) and Exit Game (when joining). This item now has a keyboard equivalent of Command-E.
• Added a Restart Solo Game item to the File menu which restarts solo games without randomly selecting new rooms or puppets.
• End Game is now available in Solo games. It’s useful to be able to stop solo games when you are connected to GameSmith and no longer wish to play the a solo game. By ending the game, you can stop the puppets from talking in the background.
• At the end of solo games, if the puppets are not randomly selected for the next solo game, then the current puppets remain at the table. This is an attempt to mimic the real-life metaphor: if you are playing again with the same people, you’ll see them at the table. If the next game will be with other players, you’ll see empty positions at the table.
• Removed Location pop-up menu from the Puppets dialog as it really doesn’t make sense to be in there anymore.
• Added a More Games dialog to the 3D Spades menu (the Apple menu on OS 8/9).
• Selecting About 3D Spades Deluxe plays the 3D Spades startup music and includes the registration code if registered.
• Added support for playing startup music once again. This can be turned off in Preferences. It’s a preference shared by all the 3D Deluxe games. If the music file is not available, the option will be disabled in the Preferences dialog.
• Bubble sound effects now play (assuming they are turned on) when the game is in the background. This is useful when you’re checking e-mail or something and the other players are yelling at you!
• Added status messages whenever players enter or exit a game. For example Bryan has joined and is sitting across from you.
• Added support for option-up arrow in the game chat to re-enter the last chat message.
• Expanded the emoticon support to use a menu of many different emoticons and emoticons now appear in the chat history as actual graphical icons. Shift clicking the emoticon button, or shift selecting an emoticon adds it to the current chat and does not auto-send the chat. This allows multiple emoticons in one chat message.
• The dialog explaining what Auto Play is when clicking on the coffee cup (or whatever widget a given location uses) is only presented once now instead of each time the game is restarted.

Performance Improvements

• The network message queue is now checked seven times a second instead of ten times a second to reduce CPU usage. Within GameSmith itself, this frequency was reduced from twenty to seven times a second.
• Reduced the frequency at which we play music from twenty to ten times a second. This is what is used to play the end game music and in a few other areas.
• To improve performance, on PowerPC 601, 603 and 604 class machines, fewer idle background animations are performed.
• The win/lose animations at the end of a game now use significantly less processor time and should be much less likely to interfere with chatting and other actions.
• The Player and Game lists should now be completely flicker-free, which means less time is spent drawing, erasing, drawing, etc.
• If the display is set to Thousands of colors, the various offscreen buffers used internally are now allocated at Thousands of colors instead of at millions of colors. This offers a slight performance gain on older hardware and significantly less memory usage.

Bug Fixes

• OpenPlay is now used as the networking library instead of NetSprocket. OpenPlay is an open-source version of NetSprocket that features many improvements and much greater stability.
• Fixed Quit and Open so that it no longer fails with a -50 error in Mac OS 10.2.
• Dialogs from GameSmith no longer cause the score pad to because visible. Specifically, the Player Info and Settings dialogs.
• Fixed a problem where, if the game window was window shaded while joining or hosting a game then it would basically disappear until the game was restarted or until the Hide Desktop option was toggled.
• Fixed a problem on Mac OS 8.6 where the game window would move up about 30 pixels every time the game started up.
• Removed a beep that occurred on Mac OS 8/9 when clicking in most areas of the game window.
• Fixed a visual glitch that left portions of the end game win/lose animation on the screen as the Solo Stats window was opening.
• Clicking in the game list and player list now toggles the selection.
• Corrected the URL that is opened when clicking the Forum button.
• Ranks for captains and admirals are now black.
• Quit and Open now works reliably in all cases
• The score pad no longer auto-hides when going to GameSmith windows. It didn’t work very well and the consensus was that it wasn’t really needed anyway. This may come back in the future as a preference depending on demand.
• Curse filter is now applied to name of hosted games, new account names and player info.
• Fixed a bug where the Remember Password feature of the Connect dialog did not always work correctly.
• Fixed a bug where drawing into the server window took place when clicking menus in 8/9. All drawing needs to be suspended in this case else memory can be trashed resulting in a crash.
• When joining net games where the host is using The Parlor or The Parlour, the room name is now remapped to Dobrin Manor.
• Choosing the Random option in the Location sub-menu item no longer chooses another random room. It now turns off the Random option. As there is a checkmark next to this item, the expected behavior is to simply turn off Random. Ditto for the Random item in the View menu.
• Old puppets are detected and there is a warning about them causing slight problems. Freeverse recommends using version 3.0 puppets. You can check the version of your puppets using Finder and Show Info.
• Corrected an error in the bot AI that would cause it to not cover its partner when the partner bid Nil and led the first card of the hand.

Colin’s Spades 3.1

New Features

• Score Pad cosmetically improved. The bottom portion of the score pad now supports most Edit menu options: content can be selected, copied and cleared using the Edit menu items.
• When connected to AspyrWorld, using the Quit and Open option to open a different CCC game will automatically log you back in to AspyrWorld.
• There is a new preference to control how talkative the puppets are. When using "terse" talking puppets, only essential information is spoken by the puppets (bids, and so on).
• Redesigned the Solo Stats window. It now includes the number of hands played and an option to open after each solo game.
• Added Drag and Drop support for iPuppet image in the Preferences dialog
• Many network play messages now include more information about who is dealing or who won the trick. For example, "Ian dealt, Colin is bidding"
• Slightly redesigned the Rules dialog to be more compliant with the Mac OS X interface guidelines.
• The main game window's chat typer now supports Undo on Mac OS X.
• The AspyrWorld window now uses Mac OS X’s “Quartz” text drawing for the chat typer and chat history
• The font used in the chat history text areas can be specified with new chat commands: /font fontname and /fontsize pointsize. These commands are available in both the game window chat and the AspyrWorld window chat. The defaults are Lucida Grande 12 on Mac OS X and Verdana 12 on Mac OS 9.
• The Score Pad window is automatically hidden now when the AspyrWorld window is frontmost. When the game window resumes being frontmost, the score pad is once again shown.
• Hiding the desktop now attempts to switch screen resolutions to 800x600. Hold down the option key when the desktop is being hidden (at startup or when changing it via Preferences) to confirm the the switch. Once the desktop is hidden, if the resolution is switched to something other than 800x600, the games will remember that and use your preferred resolution the next time.
• Locations, Puppets and Views all support a random setting now that will give you a different location, view and set of opponents each time you play.
• When the desktop is hidden, the game window is now larger if the monitor resolution is higher. This allows for a larger chat history area.
• When joining a new network game, a welcome message from the host is now displayed (in case the game name does not include the name of the host).
• Home/End and Page Up/Down work when the chat history areas of the game window or server window are focused.
• Copy, Select All and Clear now work in the chat history areas of both the game and server windows.
• The game list in the server window now displays the lock icon immediately after the game name
• The Music menu has been removed. We were ahead of our time, but iTunes is just too good at this.

Performance Improvements

• Drawing performance of the game window is significantly improved. People with older machines should find the games much more playable, and Mac OS X users should find that the games use far fewer CPU cycles.
• A delay between cards played in network games has been removed speeding up game play in network games
• The time to quit games is approximately 700% faster. This reduces the time it it takes to switch to a different game and get back on to AspyrWorld.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a problem where the game window would sometimes "white out" and not redraw correctly.
• Fixed a problem where changing your Puppet or iPuppet image using the Puppet menu in the game window could cause a crash. This could also be seen as a crash when first joining a game. (And often occurred in Pitch more so than the other games.)
• Improved support for drag and dropping images into the iPuppet menu in the game window. The Drag and Drop "frame" is now more visible.
• Corrected many scrolling and other visual issues with the score pad.
• The names of players in the score pad "history" are now correct when first beginning a new network game, previously, most the the player names would be something like ???.
• When starting new network gamest he height of the game window is properly restored when the window is sized smaller than the default height.
• When connecting to AspyrWorld, the position and size of the lobby window is not properly restored in all cases.
• The correct room is used when playing a network game hosted by a 3D player using “Sophie’s Kitchen”.
• Fixed some minor glitches where the cursor was not being set correctly in all cases
• Corrected the help tag for the Taunt chat button in the game window.
• The scoreboard at the end of each hand now uses a smaller font to avoid cosmetic glitches.
• When the rules change, the message asking if you want to view the changed rules no longer blocks incoming network messages which could lead to bad things.
• Fixed a problem where the background of some rooms could be solid black (Wonderland for example) in certain specific cases.
• When the desktop is hidden, a window named 'Background' no longer appears in the game's window menu that appears when control click on a game in the dock on Mac OS X.
• iPuppet images can now use only file extensions (.jpg, etc.) instead of file types if the image was created by some Mac OS X applications.
• Fixed a problem when chatting in the game window that could sometimes "wipe out" partially typed in chat before it was sent.