Saturday, June 28, 2014

game win/loss statistics

I recently got an email from a player who thinks it would be better if the "stats" area in World of Card Games did not show your Win Ratio. Their idea is that people are too concerned about their win/loss ratio, and this motivates them to quit games when they are losing. They thought that without this ratio being displayed, people would be less likely to quit.

What do you think? Should I get rid of the Win Ratio under the stats area?

Monday, June 16, 2014

improved bot strategy in spades!

It surprises me, but I've had only a few complaints about the bot strategy in Spades. I rarely play with bots, so their problems haven't bugged me too much, and I haven't been highly motivated to fix them. However, when I do play, I've noticed one pretty obvious and irritating behavior: they tend to waste Kings. They'll play the King of clubs, for example, before the Ace of clubs has been played. This is a good way to lose the trick! With today's deploy, this bug is fixed.

In addition, someone mentioned to me that the bots sometimes bid nil when they are holding 5 spades! You will find various sites that recommend you not bid nil with 4 or more spades in your hand (e.g. sky_rockets1's page or the Rules of Spades site). This problem has been fixed as well.

I am far from finished with the bots. More improvements will be coming, when I have the time for it.
let's hope he's smiling because he got the bid right!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

twenty-nine bug fix

A couple of players pointed out to me that there was a bug in the game Twenty-Nine: after the first hand of cards was finished, bids no longer showed up in each player's nameplate. This made it harder to choose a suit because people weren't sure who had bid what... especially if they came into a game in progress.

This is now fixed. I've also added a little bit of information about the previous bid history. If a player has made at least two bids, their previous bid will show in parentheses. See the screenshot below:

twenty-nine: the previous bid shows in parentheses
In this scenario, you are Guest #89. You previously bid 15, and most recently bid 18. Guest #77 previously bid 16 but their current bid is 19. The dealer has only bid once; their initial bid was 17. HAL 9000 has passed twice in a row.

I hope this change helps to make the game more fun! Please let me know if you spot any more problems.