CyberBoard™ Release Notes

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Version 3.10 Release

New features and bug fixes for CBPlay.exe:

Assign Ctrl-P hot key to start a Plotted Move, ESC cancels, and Enter accepts.
Added ability to use markers in a Plotted Move.
Upgrade multiplayer feature to support up to 26 players. The prior maximum was 8 players.
Added ability to directly transfer ownership to another player. Previously you had to release ownership and then assign ownership. A possible use for this is to make it easy to pass a card to someone.
Prompt and create multiple markers if dragged from marker tray while holding the Ctrl key. For example: If the marker tray is set to deliver random markers and the markers are graphical images of dice faces you essentially have created a graphical die roller.
Change piece X & X stagger maximums from 16 to 256. This is used by the Autostack feature.
The die roller has extended maximum die face value to 32767. The prior maximum was 100.
Added "Select All" and "Clear All" buttons to tray import dialog in scenario editor.
Added "Select All" and "Clear All" buttons to board selection dialog in scenario editor.

New features for CBDesign.exe:

None. (Sorry)

Version 3.03 Release

New features and bug fixes for CBPlay.exe:

Added ability to rotate the selected group of markers and/or pieces around the selection's center point. This can be used to "wheel" as set of playing pieces.
Added ability to rotate pieces and markers down to a single degree of resolution.
Added hot keys for "Action / Rotate Object - Incremental" (Ctrl-Shift+R) and "Action / Rotate Group - Incremental" (Ctrl-Shift+G) menu commands. You'll need to delete your CyberBoard CBPlay.exe registry key to get the new hotkeys to work. To do this you can Double-Click on the provided "CBPlayRegDel.reg" file.
If pieces and/or markers are selected then the view will be centered on the selections when using the zoom feature.
The mouse wheel scrolls the view horizontally or vertically based on location of the cursor. If it's near the upper or lower edge of the view, the mouse wheel will scroll the view horizontally. Otherwise it's scrolled vertically.
Bugfix: If the first action after starting a new move recording involved a random number (a die roll or a marker draw) a fixed result was generated. Now the result is simply random.
Bugfix: If an incremental rotation is the first action in a move recording, the incorrect game state is stored in the move file. This caused a prompt to synchronize the game state when your opponent loaded the move file.
Bugfix: Fixed the dialog used to enter text for pieces or markers to automatically wrap text rather than horizontally scroll the edit box.

New features for CBDesign.exe:

None. (Sorry)

Version 3.02 Release

Patch release that fixes launching files by double-clicking on them.

Version 3.00 Release

A revamped user interface including such features as:

Dockable trays and markers.
Tabs that allow direct selection of open windows.
New XP menu style with icons.
Customizable tool bars.
Compatible with XP skins

New features for CBDesign.exe:

65536 color (aka 16 bit color) support. Along with the new UI framework, this was a large chunk of the work for this release.
Greatly improved color palette window:

The first 3 x 8 area from the left are standard colors along with a grey scale.
The next 6 x 8 area are the custom colors that can be set in a variety of ways.
The box to the right of the 6 x 8 area is the current color mix created by changing the bottom Hue picker and the Saturation/Value picker on the far right.
The 48 custom colors are saved with the gamebox file.
You can double-click on a custom color to adjust it using a color setting dialog.

New features for CBPlay.exe:

Playing boards can be rotated by 180 degrees during play.
The message history window is now stand-alone and can be docked.
Message history text is now color coded.
Playback functionality is greatly improved:

The default hot key assignments have been changed:

The spacebar can be used to do "Next Move"s instead of F3.
You can hit the "Next Move" command before the current move is totally played back. With this you can blast through moves if you don't want to see the time animated playback.
You can enable an option that causes the "Next Move" command to automatically load the next history record when at the end of the current history record.
You can turn on an option called "Automatic Playback (F6)". When you hit the "Next Move" command CyberBoard takes over and steps moves all the way to the end without you having to hit any keys. You hit the next move command again to abort the playback.

New game files by default render locked objects underneath other non-locked pieces and markers. For backward compatibility reasons upgraded games render locked objects in their current postions in the drawing order. This option can be changed in the board properties dialog.
All three zoom levels are available in the player program.

Version 2.00 Release

New features for CBDesign.exe:

GameBox files now support internal compression of bitmap images. The GameBox file size can now be greatly reduced. Multiple levels of compress are supported.
GameBox files may now be password protected.
The list of files recently opened (the so called LRU list) has been increased to ten.
When defining playing pieces there is an option allowing only the top (active) side of a playing piece to be visible in select lists and piece trays while playing a game. This is intended for implementing playing cards.
Top drawing layer objects now have the option to be drawn above the grid. They are rendered in a second pass after drawing the grid. This allows tables and such to be placed on the board and still have the grid on top of some terrain features that are drawn using lines and polygons.

New features for CBPlay.exe:

Ability to associate text with pieces and markers.
Ability to rotate markers.
Piece and markers can now be locked so they can't be selected.
Supports geomorphic construction of boards having hex style cells.
Supports shuffling (randomizing) pieces in trays and on the playing board. One application would be for playing cards.
The game player program now remembers layout of open windows in a game or scenario. The layout is restored when the file is reloaded.
Playing piece and maker trays now support several visibility and behavior options.
If you drag a marker out of a group that is set to deliver random markers AND you hold the CTRL key when the mouse button is released, you will be prompted for the number of random markers to be created. This is great for actually "rolling" dice. Say a 5D6 where the marker set is the six faces of a six sided die. This feature would also be great for games that use pictures rather than numbers for die faces.
The board's selection list now includes markers.
The board's selection list supports the use of the "Insert" and "Delete" keys. These keys can be used selective remove objects from the selection list. "Insert" keeps those highlighted in the list. "Delete" removes those highlighted in the list.
Markers now stack just like pieces.
New "Auto Stack Deck" command that is used to stack selected items using stagger values of zero.
Toolbar buttons for plotted moves.
The list of files recently opened (the so called LRU list) has been increased to ten.
The full path of the GameBox file is now stored in the Game file so the GameBox can be in different areas of the file system than the game file. This prevents your being prompted for its location when loading the game.

Version 1.12 Release

New features for CBPlay.exe:

A different style of cursor is displayed when you are recording a compound move.

Bug fixes:

CBPlay.exe - The die roller now supports 100 faces on a die.
CBPlay.exe - The cell visibility setting of a playing board is imported from the GameBox when adding new boards in the Scenario designer.
CBPlay.exe - The auto-stack feature now properly saves and restores negative offsets.
CBDesign.exe - The rotate tile option of the main menu no longer disables forever if the project window is selected.
Tiles in board cells that use the transparent color for the small image now work properly.
Various other small bugs.

Version 1.10 Release

New icons for files and programs. These were done by Pokke (the same fellow who did the CyberBoard logos on the Web page). They are much nicer than my artistically challenged hacks. Sorry for the delay in getting these out Pokke!
If the folder that contains CyberBoard is tagged as a system file then a nice CyberBoard icon will show up in the Windows file explorer for that folder. The batch file "CBIcon.bat" will do this for you.

New features for CBDesign.exe:

Keyboard nudging of graphical objects within the board editor. Note that this is the *FIRST* 3rd party programmed feature addition for CyberBoard. It was programmed by Donald McLean. Thanks Donald! A very cool feature. Here is the key list:
- Arrow (up, down, left, right) nudge selected components 1 pixel (or 1 grid width/length if grid turned on).
- Shift-arrow scroll window.
- Control-arrow nudge and scroll.
- Alt-arrow nudge 5 pixels (or 5 grid widths/lengths).
- Alt-Shift-Arrow fast scroll.
- Alt-Control-Arrow fast nudge/scroll.
- Page scroll window one page up or down.
- Control-Page (up, down) scroll window one page left or right.
- Home top of board.
- End bottom of board.
- Control-Home far left of board.
- Control-End far right of board.

The cell layer now supports tiles that have transparent regions. For backward compatibility this feature is off by default. To enable it for a playing board check "Enable transparent tiles in cells" in the Board Properties Dialog.
You can now clone a playing board by right-clicking on the board name in the project window and selecting the "Clone Selected Board" command.
The tile selection pane in the bitmap editor now supports scrolling so you can select different tiles even when the full scale tile is really large.

New features for CBPlay.exe:

The main playing area can now be split vertically and horizontally. Each board view can be zoomed and scrolled independently. To use the feature select the Window menu or right click on a board view.
The select list and tiny board view can now be hidden. To hide them, uncheck "Show select list and tiny board view." in the Board Properties Dialog.
The Scenario designer now supports automatically creating piece trays from the piece groupings defined in the gamebox file. See the command "Create Trays from Piece Groups..." on the "Project" menu.
The die roller now supports rolling multiple sets of the specified roll. For instance, you could roll 50 2D6's at a time (if you're so inclined).
The message view dialog now displays the entire history of messages that have been viewed during playback.
The message entry dialog now displays the entire history of messages that have been entered during the current recording.
A message can now be recorded without closing the send message dialog.
If the pop-up map is too large for the screen it will be scaled down so all of it is visible.
If you chose to discard a compound move, you are now prompted to verify your decision. This is to prevent accidental loss of moves.
The delay between submoves of a compound move has been increased.

Bug fixes:

CBDesign.exe - If you used the "Apply Cell Mask" feature in the tile editor and cancelled the dialog the program would crash. This embarrassing bug is now fixed.
CBPlay.exe - Importing move files that contain no moves will no longer enable the move stepping buttons. These buttons would cause the program to crash if used.
CBPlay.exe - names in marker tray are now alpha sorted.
CBPlay.exe - Tiles that are greater than 255 pixels in height are now truncated properly in lists. Note that due to a limitation in Windows listboxes items larger than 255 pixels are not possible.
CBPlay.exe - If the board cell grid is set to use very large cells in messes up the auto-scroll code. This is now fixed.

Version 1.02 Release

Bug fixes:

CBPlay.exe - The random number generator used for die rolls has been completely overhauled.
CBPlay.exe - Sort the tray name combo in the tray palettes by name. Also doubled the length of the combo box's drop down list.
CBPlay.exe - Fixed rare crash that occurred when merging move files with a new game created from a modified scenario. It occurred when the "Use move game state is selected" option was used.
CBPlay.exe - Hitting the Close History button while moves were in mid-playback caused the program to crash.
CBDesign - If tiles are deleted that aren't being used anywhere in the GameBox, don't consider it a major revision. This prevents messages about the GameBox file being newer than the game file when the file really is OK for play.
CBDesign.exe - When drawing on tile bitmap images with a zero width pen nothing was rendered. Now the pen is assumed to be one pixel.

New features for CBPlay.exe:

The key "F9" toggles playing piece visibility. This is handy for a quick check of the underlying hexes.
The key "F10" toggles between showing move indicator lines above the playing pieces or below them.

Version 1.01 Release

Bug fixes:

CBDesign.exe - Sheesh! I screwed up the File/New command so it crashes the program <blush>. This update fixes it. Many thanks to Luca Saletti for reporting this so quickly!

Version 1.0 Release

Here it finally is...a version with no time limits!

The file format has not changed from the final beta version. Existing games and gameboxes will work fine.

Enjoy!

Beta 5.13 Board Editor Update Release Notes

Bug fixes:

CBDesign.exe. Yet another bug exists in Beta 5.12 and earlier versions of the designer program that could cause a GameBox file to be damaged beyond repair. This is a very rare bug that only rears its ugly head on GameBoxes with many tiles of differening dimensions. Almost all users of the software will not be affected sinze they only use a small set of tile sizes. Those who have been impacted no doubt know about it already (as far as I know only one person was affected and I managed to repair his GameBox).

Details:

The problem occurs when you hit an internal limit of the program. CyberBoard internally stores tiles in bitmaps called tile sheets. Tiles that are the same height and width are stored in the same tile sheet. If the a tile sheet gets too large I create a new tile sheet. CB supports up to 255 of these tile sheets. If you exceed 255 tile sheets the problem occurs. I never imagined in the early days of CB (in 16 bit Windows) that more than 255 tile sheets would be needed.

To really fix this I need to expand the number of tile sheets internally supported (which changes the GameBox file format) but this will produce GameBoxes that are not compatible with earlier versions of the program. For now, Beta 5.13 expands the allowable size of each tile sheet and more efficiently reuses tile sheets that are empty.

Beta 5.12 Board Editor Update Release Notes

Bug fixes:

CBDesign.exe. A bug exists in Beta 5.11 and earlier versions of the designer program that could cause a GameBox file to be damaged beyond repair. This bug only rears its ugly head on VERY large GameBoxes. Almost all users of the software will not be affected. Those who have been impacted no doubt know about it already. This is a good news / bad news fix:

The Good News

The bug is fixed. This bug has been in the program since its first release. Basically CB tries to keep the size of internal bitmaps (internally dubbed "tile sheets") smaller than 4096 pixels high. A tile sheet contains tiles that are all the same height and width. The code that checks if a new tile sheet should be created was not working properly. The result: bitmaps that can be much taller than 4096 pixels. GameBoxes that have exceeded this limit are OK until they exceed 65535 pixels--a very unlikely event.

The Bad News

Any gameboxes that have tile sheets larger than 65535 pixels high are damaged for good. A rare occurrence but can happen. Tile sheets that are larger than 4096 but less than 65535 will still work fine.

A thousand apologies for any trouble this may have caused some folks.

Beta 5.11 Release Notes

This release was primarily made to provide a new date for the program's "Time-Bomb".

Bug fixes:

CBPlay.exe. If you used the window close button (X) of the message reading dialog, no other messages in the playback could be read.
Both programs. Cyberboard files types are no longer available on the Windows "New" menu (normally seen by right clicking in the Windows Explorer). CyberBoard doesn't support this feature.
CBPlay.exe. Two sided playing pieces using different sized tiles on each side didn't properly repaint when flipped over.
CBPlay.exe. When changing a playing board's zoom level CyberBoard now tries to maintain the center of the view (if possible). This should give more consistant results when zooming in and out.

New features for CBPlay.exe

There is a new board properties option called "Automatically Show Board on Open". If this is checked, the board will automatically be viewed when you open that Game or Scenario file. (Happy Bart?)

Beta 5.10 Release Notes

Bug fixes:

CBDesign.exe. Fixed a bug in the PolyGon drawing tool that made it impossible to draw right and bottom areas of a board. I accidentally introduced this bug in Beta 5.08. Sorry about that!
CBPlay.exe. The popup mini-board now can be dismissed without affecting the main board. Either hit the ESC key or click off of the mini-board window.

New features for CBDesign.exe

The polygon board drawing tool functionality has been extended to allow "free-hand" drawing. Just hold the mouse button down and scribble.
A new color changer tool has been added to the tile editor. It works just like the paint bucket (flood fill) tool except that all colors in the bitmap that match the clicked color are changed to the new color.

New features for CBPlay.exe

An "Indicators on Top" command has been added to the "View" menu. Indicators are the lines and boxes that indicate piece movement during playback.
A "Single Step Compound Moves" command has been added to the "Playback" menu. This command allows you to step through a compound move to see every piece of it.

Beta 5.08 Release Notes

Bug fixes:

Fixed a NASTY crash bug in CBDesign.exe. The crash was most likely to occur if a session of program use was very long and you were doing a lot of bitmap editing (copies, pastes, etc.). Basically the program was leaking bitmap resources. When you close the program the resources were reclaimed. In rare cases you could cause Win95 to operate strangely since it would get resource starved. This problem wouldn't show itself on Windows NT since NT essentially provides an "unlimited" amount of resources. This is why I never saw it--I do my program development in Windows NT. A special thanks goes out to Tim Cropley who reported the crash problem and worked tirelessly with me to nail it. He gave very good bug reports that helped me narrow the problem down. THANKS TIM!

Beta 5.06 Release Notes

Bug fixes:

Send message dialog. If you type text after rolling dice, that text wasn't recorded.
Die roller security hole. It has been pointed out to me (thanks Paul!) that a person could simply type in text that looks like a die roll to get the results they want. Duh. I'll admit it never occurred to me. To prevent this, all lines of text produced by the die roller now have a chevron character (») prefixing them. The editable areas of the send message dialog no longer allow this character to be typed or pasted into a message.

Beta 5.05 Release Notes

Bug fixes:

The die roller was only r olling D6's. I'm very sorry for that one!

Beta 5.04 Release Notes

New features for CBDesign.exe

None.

New features for CBPlay.exe

Die Roller. Yep...you heard right. I guess I can be convinced to do something if I get hit in the head enough!

The die roller is integrated into the message send dialog. When you roll dice the message edit area is converted into a read-only part and an editable part. The results of the roll as well as any message text typed thus far are transferred into the read-only area to discourage "adjustments" to the results. Also, the ability to discard the message is thereafter disabled. If the roll had a problem the player would need to inform the opponent via the editable message area.

A quick navigation feature has been added to the tiny overview map. If you right click on the tiny map you'll get a pop up version of it that you can click on to quickly jump about in the main map window.
Playback truncation. You can now discard the trailing parts of a move playback. To use this, step to the place in the playback that you want to use as the new starting position of the game and select menu command "Playback/Accept Move File Playback...". You will be presented with a dialog that gives you the option of discarding the remainder of the moves.

Truncating the move file playback is useful for recovering from a hopelessly flawed set of moves. You would resume play at the state of the game where the playback was truncated.

When you are playing back a move file, the title and description of the file are now associated with the <Move File Playback> line of the project window.
You can now save a bitmap image of a playing board directly into a disk file.
There is now a menu command that allows you to select all markers that were created from a specific marker group. This is useful for only deleting a specific class of markers.

One use for this feature would be to have a marker group that contains markers used to indicate a piece has moved. So you would move a piece, mark it, move another piece, mark it, and so on. When all your pieces are moved, use the menu command "Select All Markers From >" and pick the group that has the "moved piece" markers and hit the delete key.

Bug fixes:

F1 key now pops up the Help file.
Using a "net" selection rectangle that clicks on the lower right and drags to the upper left now works properly.
A weird bug related to exporting game history records to a move file has been corrected. For the few people it impacted the bug gave the appearance of saving a previous move recording.
Some problems with the snap grid, which occurred when dragging multiple pieces, have been corrected.
Other little nits...here and there.

Beta 5.01 Release Notes

Bug fixes:

Problem with snap grid when dragging multiple selected pieces. Now uses the piece clicked on for snap grid reference.
Loading history record caused complaint about a missing playing board. If you get this message the game file is probably corrupted. Save the game file as a scenario and work from there. Problem is caused by too much text in the scenario description.
In half size board scale drags left artifacts if half piece size was odd number of pixels.
New Scenarios should inherit the snap grid settings from the GameBox.
When pieces are moved around on the playing board they now remain selected.

Beta 5 Release Notes

This beta of CyberBoard contains all the features that will be in the final release. I don't intend to add any more major features before the first unrestricted version is posted.

New features for CBDesign.exe

Context menus have been added to the right mouse button for most of the windows in the program.
You can now edit existing text fields on the map window by selecting and double-clicking them.
You can now copy an existing drawing layer bitmap to the clipboard. Just select the bitmap on one of the playing board drawing layers and use the Edit/Copy menu command.
ToolTips have been added to the color picker window to clarify its use.
The board creation dialog now displays pixel dimensions of a candidate board.
Some small bugs.

New features for CBPlay.exe

Context menus have been added to the right mouse button for most of the windows in the program.
A new way of specifying moves called Compound Moves has been added. Compound moves allow you group an arbitrary sequence of single moves so they are played back as a single animated sequence of moves. For example, you could move a piece, rotate it and move it again as a single compound move. Upon playback your opponent will see the move as a single animated sequence. The Actions menu has the new commands for compound moves.
A new way to rotate playing pieces called Incremental Rotation has been added. Incremental rotation is done directly on the board so you can see the exact piece facing before committing to it. To do this, select a piece and use the Actions/Rotate Piece - Incremental menu command. You'll be presented with a popup window that you can use to rotate the piece either clockwise or counter-clockwise.
You can now step backwards through the moves during playback. When you step back a move you'll see a replay of the previous move.
The small overview map can be used to jump around on the main map view. The main view is centered on wherever you click the mouse in the small map.
You can now save the current state of game play as a scenario file.
Some small bugs.

Beta 4 Release Notes

This release of CyberBoard is mainly composed of bug fixes.

New features for CBDesign.exe

You may now toggle whether or not the Select tool is automatically reselected after drawing with another tool. The toggle is available under the Project menu.
You may now change the fingerprint of a GameBox. The fingerprint is a unique numeric ID that enables Game files to identify the GameBox they below with. The probable use of this feature is to make a new GameBox based on another GameBox. Once you change the finger print the GameBox will not work with any scenario and game files that were associated with them.
Fixed bug in initial default snap grid values.
Fixed bug that prevented app from being restored from a minimized state if a palette window was open.
Some small bugs.

New features for CBPlay.exe

Fixed a NASTY bug that prevented games history records from being loaded and replayed in pre-beta3 files. If you double-clicked on a game history record and it didn't work you were victimized by the bug.
Fixed bug in initial default snap grid values.
Fixed bug that prevented app from being restored from a minimized state if tray or marker windows were open.
Some small bugs.

Beta 3 Release Notes

New features for CBDesign.exe

You can now save and load tile libraries (file extension gtl). The file format is documented in file GTLFormat.txt so programmer types can create ad-hoc tile generation programs whose output can be directly imported into CyberBoard.

To create a tile library select the tiles you wish to save using the project window. Then use menu command Project/Save Tile Library File to specify the filename. To load a tile library select the tile group you wish to load the tiles into (in the project window) and use the menu command Project/Load Tile Library File.

You can now specify fractions of a pixel when setting up snap grids.
Various adjustments to the menus.
Bug Fixes.

New features for CBPlay.exe

You can now save a bitmap image of the current game board into a bitmap file.
You can now specify fractions of a pixel when setting up snap grids.
Various adjustments to the menus.
Bug Fixes.

Beta 2 Release Notes

New features for CBDesign.exe

When working with Tiles in the project window you may now select more than one in the list box.
You can now copy tiles (Ctrl+C) selected in the tile list shown in the project window onto the clipboard. You may then paste (Ctrl+V) them into tilesets in any GameBox.
You can now rearrange tiles in the tile window by using the mouse to drag and drop them.
You can now move tiles from one tileset to another by using the clipboard. To do this: select and copy the tiles you want to move to the clipboard (Ctrl+C) using the tile list in the project window. Then select the new tile set and use menu File/Move (Ctrl+M) to move them.
Added toolbar button for leaving history playback mode. The free form drawing layers of the board editor now allow you to paste an arbitrary Windows bitmap from the clipboard or a file directly onto the board. You can then move it around as you would any drawing object.

New features for CBPlay.exe

Added menu handling for accepting or discarding a playback of a move file. This was and still is an option available in the project window. It was put on the main menu to make it easier to find and more intuitive.
If the move file is accepted rather than discarded, the moves are entered into the game history log and the final board state (piece locations etc.) are now considered the current state of the game.
Added ability to copy a bitmap image of a complete game board to the Windows Clipboard. One possible use would be to paste the image into Windows Paint so you could print it.

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