This is a living document containing daily gammon app team's current priorities as well as release notes for previous releases. Future roadmap last updated 30. December 2022.

The following is a summary of the team's backlog for the next few months. Some completed items are included to provide the context and progress of the work.

The order of the items here is purely random and has nothing to do with prioritization. Depending on who joins the team, the points will be worked off as the mood takes us. Just remember to have fun. (Scroll to Release Notes)

The complete readme text (https://github.com/hape42/dailygammon) would have to be rewritten when the first people participate in the project. As of today (13. November 2022), everything is described from my personal point of view. This is no longer correct, if it has become a community project.

The code was originally developed by one person. It was never originally intended that others would need to understand the code. Much of it has grown over time and has become far too large and confusing. The code needs to be reworked class by class and method by method.

By now we have a good selection of boards, but more is always better.

There are always problems that are somehow related to the chat . It is very difficult to find the right place to fix the chat issues effectively. Before that, the code must be restructured and divided into smaller classes. This is a job that only an expert or someone with a lot of experience can do.

very many warnings (>100) have to be processed

Particularly, the app would feel much more intuitive (and dare I write "snazzier"?) if we could replace the synchronous network calls to DG with asynchronous ones and a good waiting animation. All these are marked as warnings but probably hard to fix...

It would be great if I could select text blocks or phrases in the chat window. This would speed up the game enormously and save typing the same standard phrases over and over again.

Could you implement a chat history? Something like WhatsApp? Where then automatically always my conversations from games and messages with a player are stored.

A way to implement this would be to

• add a persistence (locally or in icloud), eg a Map Name -> list of chat strings, that stores all communication from or to a player in that map
• Enhance the dialog "quick message to " to show shows all these strings in a list above/below the text field to enter a new message.
• add code in the message dialogs to add user type messages and answers from opponents to the opponent's map
• maybe even sync this with iCloud.

The current notification system is not perfect, but the best we can achieve without server-side changes from DG.

Trying out different moves before submitting one is very tedious - undoing a move will cause a server roundtrip, which takes a few seconds. This makes playing different moves, seeing how the position looks, undoing them, slower and less enjoyable as it should be.

Probably also a big one as it requires some persistance of match comments:

In some matches you submit your final move, get the alert that allows you to send a chat message. It would be great to have a functionality in thi alert that allows me to write down a personal note like "don't forget to double when this match continues". The next time I enter this match, this note is shown, e.g. in another alert, so I remember what I wanted to do.

Playmatch and iphonePlaymatch should be merged.

Very likely, you can also outsource many methods.

This is from the early days of the project. In the initial phase, the focus was only on the iPad. This was then copied and tried to adapt to the iphone.

This resulted in two 2500 line monsters. This must be urgently cleaned up and decluttered.

But here is to proceed with much caution, these are the central functions of the app

The chats should sometime be a separate module (class / method), but the complexity of the 2500 line monster has always deterred me.

For stability reasons, the chat function is disabled on final moves in a game. This way sometimes a match ends not giving the player the chance to write the final "Thanks for the match, good luck next round" etc to the opponent, which is probably DG netiquette to do.

• v2.0

  Version 2 is a major update with many new features across the app:

  • Tiles: All lists are now using tiles to show more information on the screen.
  • Improved chat: A chat history shows you your complete past interaction with your opponent. Use chat text modules to write standard messages with a single tap.
  • Support for Portrait mode and dynamic device orientation changes: You can now use the app in portrait and in landscape mode and switch whenever you want. For example, play a match in landscape mode and compose a message in portrait mode.
  • Game Information: Improved display of information during the game - pip count, current match score shown more prominently.
  • Player info: click on a player's name to see a screen with information about that player including buttons to invite this player or send a message to her/him, the history of your conversation, and a private note you want to remember.
  • Performance: Significant performance improvements when playing the game.
  • Support for Umlauts and other special characters in chat.
  • Slight visual improvements of the board.
  • Bugfixes and internal improvements.

• v1.5.3

  • The tournament bracket that shows a tournament tree now features a back button for easier navigation.
  • The rating chart is now displayed only for the logged in user. This is convenient if you use several DG users.
  • We've introduced a new graphics library for the rating chart, featuring pinch-to-zoom functionality and an updated look.
  • The "finished match" page now supports directly sending messages: The player names are now buttons. Use them to easily congratulate your opponent if the DG server does not offer a "finished match chat".
  • bugfix: Resolved an issue where viewing a tournament that hasn't begun caused the app to crash.
  • bugfix: Enhanced handling of the "There has been an internal error" message to prevent disruptions.

• v1.5.2

  This version is a bugfix release, fixing three bugs:

  • When using a custom sort order of your matches in the top page and the list of matches gets empty, the app no longer crashes.
  • The beaver functionality in money games now works properly.
  • The logout button now logs you out properly.

• v1.5.1

  • bugFix preview match browse to last move

• v1.5

  • Faster load times: We have made significant enhancements to the load time of DailyGammon's top page. You should notice a significant improvement in the speed at which the page loads.
  • Refresh Button on TopPage: Once you've pressed the refresh button on the top page, the app will now automatically request the newest information every 60 seconds. Simply keep the app open, and you'll always receive the newest changes.
  • Notifications and badge count when the app goes into the background: you will receive standard iOS notifications whenever an opponent makes a move in one of your matches.
  • New board schemes: We have added four new board schemes – Steampunk, Sea, Traditional and Spring – as well as an improved metal board. These new designs add some variety and excitement to your gameplay experience.
  • New "lists" button: We have added a new "lists" button in the top menu, which provides easy access to a variety of lists that can help you keep track of your matches and tournaments. Here's what's included:
    • Active matches: Lists all of your active matches, with the option to see the current tournament bracket and review the match.
    • Active tournaments: Lists all of your active tournaments, even ones where there is no active match, with the option to see the tournament bracket and your active match.
    • Finished matches: Lists all of your finished matches, including a review and the ability to export to a file for analysis.
    • Tournament wins: Shows all tournaments you have ever won, including the date and time of your victory. The tournament bracket is a new UI that graphically shows the progress of a tournament. It offers the option to scroll to your most recent match ("find me").
    • A new review feature shows the list of all moves of a match. Click on a move to see the respective position and replay your game forward or backward.
  • Bug fixes
  • Info that the new "Double Repeat" feature is not yet supported.

• v1.4.4

  Major restructuring of much of the app's internal workings that you won't notice.

  New Features:

  Overall, you can now customize the look of the app greatly by choosing from one of eight different board schemes and from one of four different button designs.

  • new board schemes: Wood HD, Metal HD, Mono HD, Unicorn, incl. much internal rework to support more board schemes.
  • button designs: user can now select one of four button styles (Outline, Gradient, Combined, Flat) in the settings.
  • about: app can now lead users who are interested in collaboration to the app's GitHub

  Bugfixes:

  • About: button "remind me later" appears only if not called directly
  • Game: clicking on opponent name crashed if opponent had a name that contained a space

• v1.4.3