Previous changes are listed here.

Notes

• The game supports multiple screen names, giving you the option to have more than one person using the game per computer. To add and remove screen names, select Change User from the File menu. Please note, it is unadvisable to enter characters into a new screen name that your OS doesn't support. This is because the screen name is also used as that user’s scoreboard filename. The only OS-reserved character in Mac filenames is the path separator, ‘:’; attempts to put a colon in a screen name on my Mac just generates a “Name already exists” error. Under Windows, you can indeed create a user with a name containing invalid characters, but after each game an error is given when the game tries to update the scoreboard; no scores are ever saved. (this is only a development release after all ;)
• Mac OS X users note: the snapshot feature will freeze the Carbon build of the program, for some reason; don’t use it. Tho it sucks anyhow.
• When upgrading the program, please be sure to place the new version of the program into the same folder as the last version, so that the scores files (on the Mac) or the preferences file (Windows) is still available to the program (seeing as the files live in the program’s folder).

New features in 1.0d12

• Timestamps can now be shown in the chat console [Air]
• Off-screen buffered game grid, with anti-aliasing under Mac OS

Other changes in 1.0d11

• New sensible, lightweight about dialog that doesn’t eat a lot of RAM
• On Mac OS, the column button icons now work properly (they no longer vanish when you click the button)
• Concurrent pings can now be made without getting broken ping results
• Scoreboard files are now stored in Documents and Settings\Connect-4 under Windows 2000/XP
• Last-piece-played marker now works in Windows

Known bugs remaining

• [Win32] Clicking Finish in the auxiliary window during games with yourself (i.e. development tests) brings the other window to the front when clicked, before bringing the Yes/No dialog up.
• [Win32] Clicking Close closes both the main and aux. windows (and the whole program) during games with yourself [Potential solution coming].
• [Win32] If you attempt to connect to an incorrect address, the connect dialog closes and a connection dropped error occurs.
• Screen names can violate filing system naming conventions.
• If both players click Another Game at once, one player will receive a “remote state error: Not in position to request a new game.” error.
• The scores files extension “.scf”, is a hidden, reserved extension (for Windows Explorer Command).
• Under Windows, after producing a corrupted scores error (which is currently fatal) it fails to quit the program, and the code falls out of the ScoresContainer constructor, where the memory shortage error kills the program instead.
• Closing the game session with Finish in Windows will normally result in a connection dropped error at the other end.
• No file-type icons are being compiled in for preferences/scores files in the Windows version

Features and changes proposed

• Improved icon under Windows
• Chat logging
• Extended ASCII translation
• Sensible scoreboard sorting
• Scoreboard entry control (merge, remove) and contextual menu control
• StdDialog: pressing Y/N in a Yes/No dialog needs to activate the Yes and No buttons respectively.
• Customisable soundset

• (100% unlikely) Always-on-top mode [PhAtfiSh]

Considerations

• If you play against two people with the same screen name, Connect-4 will not be able to tell them apart, and their scores will get combined.
• Apparently, I’ve put in one row too many; I never thought there was any official number of rows, does anyone else really want there to be one less row? (ugh, that will really kill off older clients ;) [Steve]
• Deletion of the scoreboard files associated with screen names should be made none-fatal. Under Mac OS, I have access to the Trash and can put files in there, but not under Windows. For now, deletions are fatal. If in doubt, don’t ask it to delete the scoreboard.
• The player to move first should simply be alternated, rather than have loser first [lili]
• What effect would surrender (if implemented) have on the moves stored?
• Use Cancel for Abort in the connect dialog, rather than Connect
• In the delete screen name dialog, the OK and Cancel buttons probably should go the other way round under Windows
• Make the bold piece circles shown for wins not look so bashed up under Windows
• If the first win after x losses, different win sound?
• Time limits for moves? [PhAtfiSh]
• Chat command to show the time and position of the last chat entry and move?
• Make double-clicking a scores file select that player.

Credits for Testing
Twist, Air_Man (FlightSR), PhAtfiSh, version_lili, Telcontar (Morden), Vasudan66, Odiate, and Xavier WER.

Sound Sources
The sound in the game are not mine, nor could I be bothered to trawl the web for hours trying to track down anything good, when I already had lots of sounds on my hard disc that are what I want in the first place. Only trouble is, I… extracted… them from all my games ages ago, using SoundApp ;) Therefore, I present here a list of all the sources of the sounds. If anyone has objections to me using these sounds, I am willing to swap them with new ones, but make sure you find me some replacements ;)

• Game connected – Some sound from Soldiers of the Sun 3.0 by Mixed Metaphor Software, LLC
• Piece played – Low clunk from Soldiers of the Sun
• Poke received – “Aargh” from the Marathon Demo, ©1994 Bungie
• Game won – Laugh (game over?) from HemiRoids 1.1 ©1993 Sean D Ansorge (cool Mac asteroids game)
• Game lost – ‘Major Uh Oh’ from Soldiers of the Sun
• Chat received – Squeaky “Uh oh!” voice [unknown source]
• Game drawn – “Hmmmm” from Solitaire Till Dawn 3.4.2 ©1991-1999 Semicolon Software