IMS: New Features
The Internet MahJong Server 0.21 has the following new features:
- Integrating the player list with the finger player feature.
- Integrating the table list with a new table info window,
and join/serve/leave table operations.
New features since version 0.2beta:
- A menu-driven interface.
- Users can now change their passwords.
- The ability to configure fonts and size of message windows to
suit your taste and screen resolution.
- Per-user configuration can be stored permanently on the server side
and used automatically upon start.
- The ability to store and edit personal information like E-mail
address, home page URL, and a "plan" file on the server.
These information can be queried by other players by the "finger"
feature.
- The "help" menu is integrated with the navigator to give instant
access to documentation.
- Changes from 0.2beta to 0.21: (5/15/96)
- A new class TableInfo replaces the old TableOptionWindow.
This new component class displays more detailed table information.
- Home-brew ScrolledList class to implement the player and
table lists. These classes are better adapted to our situation
than plain old TextArea.
- Found and corrected a synchronization bug that could be
causing deadlocks (hmm, wonder how many more there are...)
- Changes from 0.1 to 0.2beta: (4/21/96)
- New player database file format. A fixed block size with
variable number of blocks structure allows variable length information
for each user to be stored and retrieved with good efficiency. A
utility class to convert the old file format into the new one is
also included.
- A lot of new classes for the new menu-driven interface.
- Cleaned up TileWindow class. Got rid of the obscure and
pretty much obsolete TileFinder class and its associated methods.
- Rewrote packet handling code. Instead of one class per
packet type, we now use just one Packet class. This is a work-around
that's necessary due to Netscape's limit on the number of user-defined
classes (too many classes cause Netscape to core dump with bus error).
This also brings forth a revision of the client-server protocol.
- Greeting applet now loads Client applet on start-up (4/10/96)
- Minor changes in scoring system (4/2/96)
- Fixed some synchronization bugs that occasionally causes
deadlocks (4/2/96)
- Updated the documentation (4/1/96)
- New images for flower tiles (3/28/96)
- First step code clean-up: separated code into several packages,
Makefile, a more organized directory structure, final touches (3/20/96)
- Changes from the alpha version to the beta version: (3/10/96)
- The server automatically kicks idle players off tables
when there is a game in progress. Also provided are an "Urge"
button to be used occasionally, and a waving "Duke" figure in
addition to a "Cookoo" sound (only on systems that can play
.au sound files) to get players attention.
- An entirely new game playing interface. Players are no
longer required to group tiles together. There is auto sorting
of private tiles. Also, the server automatically
figures out the MahJong pattern with the highest score.
- Now the server uses two threads per player, one for socket
reads, the other for socket writes. Hopefully, this will eliminate
those nasty server lockups altogether.
- Added time out on dead connections. It usually takes something between
1 to 3 minutes to clear up a dead slot (2/29/96)
- Will now run "Top 10 scorers" regularly (2/28/96)
- Added a backup server, because weird lock-ups still happen, could
this be due to some bugs in the Java socket library?? (2/28/96)
- Added the ability to MahJong on someone's fourth tile of quadruplet
(2/23/96)
- Show the names of players on your table on the desktop (2/23/96)
- Added round-wind, seat-wind, dragon scores, plus other adjustments
(2/23/96)
- Found bug in old monitor code on server side, hopefully fixed now
(2/23/96)
- Changed to counter-clockwise player rotation (2/21/96)
- Added 3 levels of play, selected by SOUTH (2/21/96)
- Added simple scoring system and bookkeeping (2/21/96)
- Applet now loads all tile bitmaps before starting (2/21/96)
- Moved documentation to another site (2/21/96)
- Added player database (2/16/96)
- Fixed minor bug in dragging tiles around (2/15/96)
- New game interface: Connect, Triplet, and Quadruplet
in stead of a single Grab (2/15/96)
- Corrected the bug where game freezes when someone wins (2/14/96)
- Hopefully more robust monitor usage on the server (2/14/96)
- Added 'Cuckoo' sound when your table is full (2/13/96)
- Corrected tile-counting problem (2/13/96)
- Version 0.1a, hopefully more robust (2/12/96)