What’s New Recently In GameSmith?

GameSmith 4.0

CHANGES:

• Added EverHost. This allows everyone to host games all the time, without having to adjust their routers, when slots are available. (Each game must be updated to use this feature.)
  
  
• It will soon be possible to buy premier accounts on Gamesmith. Upgrading to premier status has several benefits:
  
  
• Priority access to EverHost slots. Even if the server is very busy, resources are always reserved for premier users.
  
  
• Additional emoticons to use in chat.
  
  
• The ability to hide advertisements on GameSmith.
  
  
• Access to an exclusive premier-only Room.
  
  
• A nifty blue name in the userlist.
  
  
• Styled chat text. Words surrounded by *, /, or _ will become bold, italic, or underlined respectively (i.e. "*Hello*" becomes "Hello").
  
  
• Numerous minor bug fixes.
  
  

GameSmith 3.4.3

CHANGES:

• Added an auto-response when paging another player. This auto-response informs the sender that the page has been sent and to wait for a reply.
  
  
• Added more information to the “You’ve been paged” message letting you how you can respond.
  
  
• Added support for :mrblue: and :mrred: to match the 3D .3 update
  
  
• Many areas that currently report a player as Playing in game xyz will now report Waiting in game xyz if the game is still open and waiting for joiners.
  
  
• In the first pane of the Player Info dialog there is now a small … link right after player’s current game stats. This link takes you online to see their stats in detail.
  
  
• Fixed a problem where double-clicking a game to join it would sometimes fail.
  
  
• Fixed a minor cosmetic problem with the Player Info dialog when switching to the Game Stats pane too quickly.
  
  
• Fixed a minor cosmetic problem related to banner ads.
  
  
• Fixed a problem where typing into the Enter Password dialog for games could sometimes end up with a Join button that was diabled until clicking the password field.
  
  
• Added support for Ranked Bots which allows for the bots in the 3D Card games to get actual ratings and a real rank. An example.
  
  

GameSmith 3.4.2

CHANGES:

• The game list now shows most games from other rooms. Only for games hosted by fairly old clients does this not happen. (The really old clients do not send notifications of their hosted game to all players, only to players in the same room as they.) This change helps makes it much easier to get into games regardless of which room you may be in.
  
  
• The Game Info dialog has been updated to better match the look and feel of the Player Info dialog. It also now includes information about which room a game is hosted from.
  
  
• Added new /save command which saves chat to a file on the desktop. You can just use /save by itself or you can supply a file name: /save myfile. In this case emoticons will be lost. If you have the Mac OS X developer tools installed you can use the -w command to save it in WorldText format which will then save the emoticons. (So either /save -w or /save -w myfile)
  
  
• Improved the /version playername command. It now reports version information for all games that player is logged in with.
  
  
• Improved the /find playername command. It now reports room information for all games that player is logged in with.
  
  
• Added Control clicking text items in the Player Info dialog. You’ll now get a Contextual menu with options to copy the text to the Clipboard and to open links if appropriate.
  
  
• Double clicking a game that is not full and a different type than yours still tells you “you’re playing Spades, you can’t join a Hearts game”. But now there is a button in alert message that can open Game Info (which is probably why you double clicked).
  
  
• Fixed a bug trying to Host a game while already involved in a game as a joiner. It would basically end up kicking you out of the game you were in. Now it asks you if that is really what you want to do.
  
  
• Fixed a problem with Local games where you could not join a game that was on your local subnet by selecting it in the list without typing at least one digit into the IP address field to enable the Join button.
  
  
• Improved support for GameSmith Chat, Player Info no longer reports "Unknown" in the first tab pane for the game stats.
  
  
• Removed a horizontal line near the bottom of the Player Info dialog when using Mac OS 8/9.
  
  

GameSmith 3.4.1

CHANGES:

• The Player Info dialog has been significantly redesigned. Changes include:
  
  - Tabbed interface with personal info and game stat panes
  - Better layout of information
  - Partial IP address visible to all
  - Game and OS version information available to all
  - Win/Lose percentage column
  
  You can open player info by double clicking a player, control clicking or selecting Get Player Info from the Network menu of some GameSmith games.
  
   
  
  
• Pressing ESCAPE now clears the chat edit field.
  
  
• You can now double-click full games to open Game Info. Handy if you want to track the status of a game.
  
  
• Worked around a problem in BMPL that caused new account creation to always fail.
  
  
• Added an icon to the GameSmith Help menu item in the Help menu of some GameSmith games.
  
  
• GameSmith now checks that the URL Access extension has not been disabled on Mac OS 8/9 and warns that GameSmith will not be able to update itself or artwork without it.
  
  
• Fixed a bug where if GameSmith went away while at just the wrong time it would crash. One example would be if you were scroling the player list and your connection was lost. The result was likley Boom!
  
  
• Fixed a problem where badly formed configuration files no longer disable GameSmith access. Or, put another way, no more “oops” when we install a bad config file on the server!
  
  
• Fixed a small typo in Help for the /back command.
  
  
• Fixed some cosmetic glitches on Panther.
  
  
• Fixed some minor issues with the curse filter.
  
  

GameSmith 3.4

CHANGES:

• Added the ability to Lock out access to GameSmith. For example, this allows parents to lock GameSmith away from children. Options to lock all GameSmith or only the current game are available. Please note that option-clicking allows you to edit the settings
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Game Info can now display information about the rules and current status of a game
  
  
  This is only available if the hosted game is using GameSmith 3.3.3 and supports this new feature.
  
  
• Local Play now supports manually entering any IP address, even if not on the LAN. Guess we should rename this Global Play!
  
  
  
  
• Significantly sped up initializing Gamesmith. In the 3D card games this reduced the startup time by 40% and four bounces on a G4/867
  
  
• Began adding limited support for Premier Members. Their names are drawn in blue.
  
  
• Added a GameSmith Support menu item to the Help menu of most games using GameSmith 3.4
  
  
• Fixed a problem with the filter where words like document would get changed to docutment.
  
  
• Fixed a problem where new banner ads would not appear until you had disconnected and reconnected
  
  
• Fixed the /sort command to actually work with just one switch, so /sort -n or /sort -g to sort by name or game, etc.
  
  
• You can get game and OS version for most GameSmith users with /version playername or /version -a for all players
  
  
• Fixed a long standing problem where there would be two downloads: you get a bunch of things downloaded and then you’d disconnect and reconnect and you’d get a bunch more things to download.
  
  
• Related to this, this bug fix addresses the green icon bug some people experienced.
  
  
• Fixed a really bad bug that could cause memory corruption and possibly a crash or perhaps just very funky behavior. This could happen any time the artwork configuration was updated and images were already being downloaded. This bug has been in GameSmith since day one and likely accounts for crashes people might have while downloading.
  
  
• Improved the handling of bad Room configuration files: we now work harder to delete it automatically and ensure a new one gets downloaded. This was important because of the bug above: if you crashed while downloading, the Rooms file was in a bad state and you could have gotten the infamous bzip error which would cause you to delete your GameSmith cache which would cause a massive download which could lead to a crash which .... can you say vicious circle??!?
  
  
• Decreased the delay between starting downloads from 1.7 seconds to 1.2 seconds when on Mac OS X. That should reduce the time to download everything by about one third.

GameSmith 3.3.2

CHANGES:

• On Mac OS X, sheets are now used for the Player Info, Game Info and Settings dialogs:
  
  
  
  
• Player rankings are drawn in a smaller font now:
  
  
  
  
• When a Captain or Admiral /shout, the message is now seen by all players, even if they had previously /muted that Captain or Admiral
  
  
• Expanded the curse filter to include more offensive words
  
  
• Fixed a problem (that has been there forever) that could potentially cause a crash at some later point after a window had been opened and closed (any window). It wasn't a likely crasher, but it was theoretically a possible problem.
  
  
• Added a new /back command to turn off the /afk command (for irc users)
  
  
• Made a small change in the behavior for connecting to local games to provide better compatibility with some GameSmith games.

GameSmith 3.3.1

CHANGES:

• Fixed a number of minor cosmetic throughout GameSmith.
  
  
• Fixed a problem where the info tags could be really, really small in some cases:
  
  
  
  
• Made a small change in the behavior for connecting to local games to provide better compatibility with some GameSmith games.

GameSmith 3.3

FEATURES:

• Adds support for local games on your LAN without using GameSmith:
  
  
  
  
  
• Added new chat coloring. The name of the person is now in a different color than the chat itself:
  
  
  These can be configured with new /color commands (see help)
  
  
• Added many new settings, including options to show messages when players enter or leave the GameSmith room; new options to control which sounds are played and added the ability to hide your game rankings from others:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Added a /sound command to turn off only GameSmith sounds. Different variations of the command can turn off (or on) sounds for pages or private messages.
  
  
• Added an /info command to get player info on people in other rooms. Option-l (letter el) is a shortcut for this command.
  
  
• Added a /find command to find where and what someone else is doing online. Option-f is a short-cut for this command.
  
  
• Added a /color command to open a color picker to change the color of various portions of chat:
  
  
  (/color -n for changing the name, /color -t for the text and so on, see /help for more details)
  
  
• Improved the /people command by adding support for -g or -r flags to sort by game or room:
  
  
  
  
• Added a /ping command to get information on the round-trip time for sending messages to other players:
  
  
  
  
• Added a Why AFK menu item to the player contextual menu:
  
  
  
  
• The GameSmith help button, , now always goes to the web-based help, even for 3D games which used to open their Help Book (which was outdated).
  
  
• The /font and /fontsize commands with no arguments return the current settings
  
  
• The message warning about Network Address Translation when trying to host now has the Host Anyway button as the default since most people will want to try anyway:
  
  
  
  
• Expanded the chat filter to include more inappropriate words and introduced the concept of self-gagging for people that try to abuse the curse filter.

BUGS FIXED:

• Fixed problems that sometimes caused artwork to not be updated on Mac OS 8/9. This was usually seen as the continued existence of the Happy New Year artwork in some games.
• Attempted to fix the bogus errors, can’t find host and can’t host two games at once. In particular, trying to join a second time or host a second time would usually work. It says attempted to fix because this is difficult to duplicate to test to confirm the fix.
• Fixed a problem where viewing chat when scrolled back on OS X was not working very well (at least not in 10.2.x where Apple made some changes in MLTE).
• Fixed a problem where some hosts were advertising themselves as unreachable which would prevent older clients from joining even when they could.
• The Settings dialog sometimes had the font and font size set to blank pop-ups when first used. This is because the defaults were 0 and 0 means use system font and system font size. Now check for 0 and get the current values when building the pop-ups.
• Updated /help to reflect all the recent changes
• Fixed a bug where using the Scroll Wheel on the player list on OS X would result in munging the background of the list.
• Fixed a bug that could cause crashes if the room had more than 64 people.
• Fixed a problem where your game did not appear in to you if the GameSmith server crashed and you reconnected.

GameSmith 3.2

FEATURES:

• Includes a redesigned Player Info dialog. The new dialog includes a scrolling list for game ranking info (making it easier to see more info) and has options for hiding your game rankings from other players and changing your AFK status. In some cases, it can also report which game a player is playing in.
  
  
  
  
• Added a new Game Info dialog. (Some of this information is not available for games that were not hosted by games revised to take advantage of this new feature.)
  
  
  
  
• Some GameSmith games now feature a new Get Info menu item in the Network menu which can be used to get Player or Game info depending on what is selected.
  
  
  
  
• Added support for hosting unranked games. A new checkbox in the Host Game dialog determines that a game is to be unranked. Unranked games do not affect the participants’ wins, losses or ratings (though their number of games played is changed). Unranked games appear in blue in the game list and are identified as being unranked in the Game Info dialog.
  
  
  
  
• Added support for Emoticons in GameSmith chat:
  
  
  Emoticons can be turned on or off using the /emoticons command (see /help) or by turning off the Show Emoticons option in the Game Settings dialog.
  
  
• Added support for Private Ratings. When turned on (in GameSmith Settings or Player Info) you can prevent your game ranks and ratings from being seen by other players.
  
  
• Added support for Premier Members. Currently, they have the ability to turn off banner advertising in the GameSmith window.
  
  
• Added a new /afk command to set your Away From Keyboard status. When AFK, the player name is drawn grayed out and the rank is drawn as AFK:
  
  
  When AFK, you can still switch rooms and chat, but any private messages or pages sent to you get an automated response sent back to the sender saying you’re away from keyboard and may not respond. Joining or hosting a game automatically turns off AFK. The /afk command can take an optional message which is the automated response sent to others.
  
  
• Added new /people command (see 3.3 notes above for appearance)
  
  
• Added a new Rank Icon to the player list to denote whether they are a guest, member, premier member, captain or admiral:
  
  
  
• The /mute command now remembers which players are to be muted when quitting. Using /mute alone will list the people you have muted. The /unmute command can now be used to unmute people that are not online at that time.
  
  
• Added page throttling. By default you can’t send or receieve more than one page every five seconds. You can change this with the /pagefreq if you want more or less time.
  
  
• Added an Info Tag when hovering the mouse cursor over a player in the player list or a game in the game list:
  
  
  
  They can be turned off in the GameSmith settings dialog.
  
  
• The Player contextual menu now has a menu item for the Away from Keyboard status when done on yourself.
  
  
• The Player contextual menu now lets you toggle your paging status when used on yourself.
  
  
• Control-clicking on a game name now displays a Game contextual menu to access the Game Info dialog.
  
  
• The /help command has been updated to reflect all the above changes.
  
  
• Players can no longer ignore private messages from Captains or Admirals.
  
  
• The game list is now always sorted by type of game.
  
  
• The Join button is now available even when you have selected a game you can’t join. A helpful message is displayed if you try to join a game different from what you’re playing. This should make it easier for new players to find their way around GameSmith.
  
  
• Changed the color of the enter and exit messages to be a medium gray instead of the bright red previously used.
  
  

BUGS FIXED:

• The /mute command now mutes all chat from that player, even if they are logged on with the same account name but in different games. (Previously only the first account was muted.)
• The Player and Game list now auto-scroll properly if you click and drag all the up or down.
• Fixed some problems that would cause severe cosmetic glitches if the GameSmith window were enlarged via the server config file.

GameSmith 3.1

FEATURES:

• Rooms limits have been increased so that the main lobby no longer becomes full when forty people are online.
• GameSmith now supports an unlimited number of games rather than the previous sixteen game limit. The new Freeverse Board games no longer appear as unknown games.
• Artwork updating now display a progress dialog while the artwork is being downloaded.
• JPEG images are now validated to avoid crashing QuickTime if a corrupted image is used. This fixes the crash-on-startup some people were seeing.
• When entering a room, the name of the game that person is playing is appended to their name.
• Added a link in the Player Info dialog to get more information about the player’s game rankings.
• The Host Game dialog now contains extra information explaining the purpose of the Password edit field.
• Sorting by game now sorts by game, then availability then name instead of just game then name. This makes it easier to see which players are available for the game your interested in.

BUGS FIXED:

• The curse filter now properly filters the same curse word when used more than three times on the same line.
• The player list is now resorted when players join and leave games.
• When the Player Info dialog is open, it no longer blocks incoming chat messages from other players.
• Getting Player Info for a guest no longer improperly shows game ranking info from the previously ranked player.
• The player info dialog now has proper cursor changing when mousing over URLs or over edit fields.
• Scroll wheels now scroll the player/game lists when the mouse is over scrollbar as well as when its over the list itself.
• Scroll wheel no longer scrolls both player list and chat history if chat history was focused when using the scroll wheel.
• Button clicking behavior was non-standard, you could click, but not let go, and then move the mouse off the button and let go and it would incorrectly behave like you clicked the button.

Updated 2/19/2003 bmp