Kyodai Mahjongg

 Hmm, it's been a month and a half without any news... Sorry about this, I was pretty sure it'd be easier for me to post often with this new system. Turns out I was wrong. I did, however, resume work on KMJ at a slow pace, which is a great deal to me since I spent most of 2004 working on other projects.

Here are a few of the changes:
- Two surprise improvements in the graphics... These are major things that really help KMJ look even better than before. If you're on the registered users forum, then you already got screenshots and I think you all agree ;)
- The layout selector's layout preview window now shows different layers in fading colors, in order to look like kyodai.com's preview system.
- Now, on Solitaire and Rivers games, the time counter will only start after your first click. This is in order to encourage users to develop a strategy prior to removing tiles. This is an idea I got last year but was too lazy enough to integrate. Surprisingly, some people on the forum suggested this, and I told them it was already in my to-do-list. So I finally did it ;)
- The dialog box animations are now a little more noticeable.
- Fixed a vertex list unlocking bug that may have been the cause of ingame crashes on some video cards (most likely when clicking on a pair of tiles).

Unfortunately, there are two bugs that I'm not sure are already in v20.00b1, and am unable to fix in the current beta (which is why I'm not releasing it yet for public testing):
- KMJ freezes from time to time when quitting. I managed to narrow it down to a thread that wouldn't let it go, but couldn't figure out which thread, and why this can't be reproduced while debugging the game...
- KMJ says "reference device will be used" at startup and ends up awfully slow (I hate the ref device). Strangely, this has happened even to me. Just quitting the game, modifying the INI file to use another device and relaunching KMJ will fix the problem, but I need to find out how I can prevent the problem from happening in the first place.

Apart from that, the forum has been very lively. 165 threads, 1260 users and over 1800 posts: that's more than I could ever hope for a board that is only two months old! The file uploads are also quite interesting: nearly 70 tilesets, 30 small tilesets, 50 backgrounds and 90 layouts have been posted! I'm also quite active there, as I'm responsible for about a third of the messages. As you can see, the fact that I'm away from the official news posts doesn't mean I'm not around! :)

(French) Hmm, déjà un mois et demi sans nouvelles... Désolé ! Je pensais que ça serait plus facile pour moi de mettre les news à jour avec le nouveau système, mais visiblement c'est surtout dû à ma paresse légendaire (ou au fait que je sois très occupé ailleurs, si vous préférez). J'ai toutefois repris le travail sur le jeu, et c'est important pour moi puisque j'avais passé la majorité de l'année dernière à travailler sur d'autres projets. Les nouveautés ajoutées à ce jour sont d'ordre graphique (deux très belles améliorations du visuel qui ont déjà fait le tour du forum), mais aussi au niveau du gameplay. Plus d'informations dans la version anglaise de cette news... Oui, désolé, je n'ai pas le temps de la traduire en entier... ^^;

A part ça, le forum est toujours aussi actif depuis sa création il y a deux mois, avec plus de 1200 utilisateurs, 1800 messages (dont un bon tiers de moi, ce qui rassurera ceux qui pensent que je ne suis pas très présent !), 165 sujets de discussion, 70 tilesets, 30 petits tilesets, 50 fonds d'écran et 90 layouts. Pas mal, non ? :)

TWIMC (to whom it may concern)
1st of all thank you for the best Mahjongg anywhere.

Since more and more homes now have two or more computers in them my suggestion is to work on having more two player games so we can play against each other.  Is that feasible?

The online two-player option is very unstable. Rewriting it from scratch is on my to-do-list. I can't promise anything for next version, though... I'm already flooded with work and I'm so late ;)

Aw come on. We know you can fit it in! ;-)  <---just kidding. Take your time. We'll have fun with it whenever you finish...

If you're curious, here are updated stats for the forum--

2000+ members
7000+ posts
~300 topics
~110 tilesets
72 small tilesets
53 backgrounds (the only thing that seems to stagnate, even though files are posted regularly... I'll have to check why...)
And 124 layouts :)

Thanks to the community!

THANK YOU!   :app:

I didn't do nothin', sir!

You, Sir, are too modest!

You are too talkative :lol:

You are too talkative :lol:

Intrepid in real life might be a quiet, shy fellow who keeps to himself.  ;-)  On this forum all we know for sure is that he is very typeative.  There, I invented a new word. :-D

53 backgrounds (the only thing that seems to stagnate, even though files are posted regularly... I'll have to check why...)

I have 100+ backgrounds Naoki.  Most of them "borrowed" from websites with copyright notices everywhere.  Hence my hesitation to share. ;-)

You, Sir, are too modest!

Agreed, Intrepid!  :)

I have 100+ backgrounds Naoki. Most of them "borrowed" from websites with copyright notices everywhere. Hence my hesitation to share. ;-)
Yes, I'd rather keep these at a minimum :p