Tuesday, December 23, 2014

possibility of a short outage

Hi all - there's a possibility of a brief outage overnight tonight (Wednesday Dec 24, between 1 AM and 6 AM CDT). This is due to a network issue mentioned in my previous blog post. My hosting service tells me the site will probably experience a brief outage for about 1 minute, but it could be up to 15 minutes. Ugh. My apologies, but there's nothing I can do!

Friday, December 19, 2014

outage last night

Last night, from about 1:15 AM CST to about 6:10 AM CST, there were sporadic network outages at World of Card Games. My apologies! This was beyond my control - my hosting service had network issues due to a software problem. They seem like a good, reliable service, and they're working on fixing the issue. I don't expect any more problems at this point.

Monday, December 15, 2014

player news - books published

Some of you will be interested to know that Karen Garner has published not just one, but two, books! Who's Karen Garner, you ask? Well, you may already have played a few games with Karen at World of Card Games, where her handle is "AG Butterfly." I've played many games with her, myself. She is friendly, chatty, and kind-hearted.

In a happy coincidence, she met her publisher while playing cards at World of Card Games! That publisher is Joe Perrone, Jr, of Escarpment Press. He plays at World of Card Games under the handle "catsklgd1." His business is tailored towards authors who want to self-publish, and he provides everything from the cover design to print and e-book formatting, and help with advertising campaigns.

Are you curious yet? Follow these links to Karen's two books:

They are currently available in paperback, and will soon become available for the Kindle and Nook. Congrats, Karen! I wish you much success!

Edit Dec 17 2014 - here are the links to the Kindle versions:

Sunday, December 14, 2014

site is back up, and there's a new feature - redeal in spades

The server is now up and humming again at World of Card Games! Sorry for the interruption in service.

A new feature has been added to the Spades game. If a player leaves the game, the remaining (human) players are given the opportunity to fold their hand and re-deal. All current tricks taken and bids made are wiped away - the hand is effectively a do-over.

To make this happen, all players must agree to re-deal by clicking the "redeal" message box, which appears in the upper left corner. Redeals are allowed a maximum of 5 times per game.

redeal link in upper left corner
This is a new, experimental feature. As always, feedback is welcome. In particular, if you notice any problems, please let me know.

[Edit: as of December 27, 2015, you are given 30 seconds to vote for a redeal.]

Friday, December 12, 2014

scheduled outage

World of Card Games will be down for about 4 hours starting Saturday, December 13, from 9:45 PM CST until Sunday, December 14, 2 AM CST. Here's a link to the time window in worldtimebuddy: scheduled downtime.

The outage is due to my server being moved, so it's not something that I have any control over. If the site is up any earlier than planned, or if there is any delay, I'll post a note here.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

world of card games available in chrome web store

Recently, a player at the site (you know who you are!) suggested that I add World of Card Games to the Chrome Web Store.

So here it is - World of Card Games at Chrome Web Store!

This won't matter to most people, who come to the site by typing the site name into their browser address bar. However, it will be handy for those who use Chrome's app launcher - you can just click on an icon and go directly to the site. It saves a little time.
If you like this widget, please give it a good review in the web store :) Remember, this widget is only available for Google Chrome. But anyone can play at the site - most browsers will handle the games without problems. Things do work best on Google Chrome, though.

If you experience any trouble with the widget, please let me know! I've tested and it works fine for me.

Friday, December 5, 2014

server updated for bug fixes

The server was out for about 5 minutes this morning, so that some bug fixes could be applied. Sorry for the disruption in games!

I've attempted a fix for the blank screen bug. I was not able to reproduce it reliably, but I could find one case where it rarely happened, and I've fixed that. Please let me know if you see it again!

I've also received reports that the table listings are sometimes incorrect - empty, when they should not be. This appears to have been caused by the "blank screen bug" as well, so it should be corrected now. (Keep in mind that an empty table listing can sometimes occur - it just indicates that there are no tables with seats open at the moment.)

There are a couple of other bug fixes that you can read about in the changelog at the site (under "about" > "show change history").

I'll take this opportunity to let everyone know that there will be a longer outage on December 13, from about 10 pm - 2 am. The company that hosts my server is moving the server to a new data center. Sorry but there's not much I can do about this! I'll post another blog the day beforehand to remind you.