Memoirs of a Board Gamer

With the approval of my partners at Sophisticated games and the additional web traffic they send my way, I'm glad to announce that my implementation of Ingenious has been played over 1 million times.

Here's to hoping the next million are just as fun!

Over the last several weeks I've been exchanging emails with Sophisticated Games and United Soft Media Verlag GmbH, the makers of the Ingenious iPhone application. I've included a link on the Ingenious game page that will take you to the iTunes Store where you can purchase the iPhone app (circled below). And as a special bonus it's on sale for only $0.99 until Valentine's Day! So, if you're an iPhone user, take a moment to check out the app by clicking through the link.

Hubert Orlik-Grzesik was nice enough to devote some time to providing a Polish translation for Ingenious. Thanks Hubert!

Ronald Schalk, an avid fan of Ingenious, emailed me offering to provide a Dutch translation for my implementation. He quickly provided the translation and I've finally found some time to incorporate his efforts. Thanks to Ronald, I know can provide the Dutch "try before you buy" version. Thanks Ronald!

I periodically check the count of the number of times Ingenious has been played on Marquand.net and noticed that it passed 700,000 in the last day or so. Here's to hoping you're still enjoying the game. I encourage you to pick up a copy for you and your family to play.

In July I was contacted by the Marketing Director of Sophisticated Games, the original publisher of Ingenious. He'd seen and played my online implementation of Ingenious and was convinced that it provided a needed "try before you buy" experience for his customers.

He introduced me to a member of the editorial department at Kosmos and over the course of a few weeks and numerous emails, the three of us discussed how best to position my implementation of Ingenious as the official "try before you buy" implementation for prospective customers for the two companies. We agreed that I would host the implementation at Marquand.net and we would create bidirectional links to the game from all three sites.

However, before we could finalize the agreement, the implementation needed to provide multi-language support (namely German). So, over the last few weeks, I've changed the code so that the initial splash screen provides two language options (depicted as country flags) and when selected, the language content of the game changes appropriately. Given my changes, I can support any number of languages quite easily so if you would like another language supported, please send the suggestion my way.

I'd like to thank the efforts of my Sophisticated Games and Kosmos partners for their efforts at working through, at times, the rather mundane details but persevering through my incessant questions, i-dotting, and t-crossing. I'm proud of the results and I'm convinced the user experience has been greatly enhanced. I look forward to working with Sophisticated Games and Kosmos in the future whenever the need arises and in whatever capacity is deemed appropriate.

Enjoy the new version and, as usual, please reload your javascript by pressing F5, deleting your browser cache, or whatever is appropriate for the browser you use. Doing so will guarantee that you are running with latest code base.

I'm going to be taking Ingenious offline for a bit for an enhancement on Thursday, Sept 10 at 11pm EST. It should take me more than 30 minutes to install and verify that everything is working correctly. I've got some interesting news regarding the update but I'll post more on that when I'm finished. I apologize for the interruption.

After the update please refresh your browser (F5/Command-R) to make sure you've reloaded the latest codebase.

I've neglected the code base for many months but I've had a few bug reports so I want to thank a few hard core users that nailed down the issues. Honestly, I was dreading going back and figuring out how to fix the problems, not because the code is bad but just because I've mentally moved on and I'm currently focusing all of my energy into Uberbadger.com. However, that's rather unfair to those of you who come to Marquand.net mainly to play Ingenious, Coloretto, and Clans. So, with that, I dug into the code and wouldn't you know it, it's only taken about 30 minutes to isolate the issues, test them, and update the code on the site.

You should clear your cache or start a game and then refresh the page (F5) to load new javascript.

The first bug was a wording issue with dropping a tile in an invalid position. The text now applies to all moves rather than just your first move.

The second bug related to starting to move a tile while the computer players were playing. The moved tile would not snap back into its original position as it does if you wait for the computer players to finish, move a tile and then decide to start moving another tile. It was as if the game forgot how to snap the tile back to the rack. With the bug fix, if you drop a tile while it's not your turn, the tile will go back to your rack.

I've also updated the text on the game back to indicate that you can hit the x-key or escape to close dialog boxes. That's always been available but wasn't stated in the page.

Enjoy.

I periodically check the statistics for the games on Marquand.net and over the weekend, the Ingenious implementation surpassed 300,000 plays. I hope you all continue to enjoy the game and thank you again for the donations.