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Nitoware Mahjongg

Sundog

Member
Oct 21, 2008
66
4
I'm happy to announce the availablilty on the Android Marketplace of the fully-playable demo of Nitoware Mahjongg. Enjoy!

The first comment echoes something I'm a little worried about, that the 144 piece standard layout makes the tiles too small to easily choose. See what you think. I'm putting in an option for bigger tiles in the release version.

Edited to add, Apparently the "demo" designation is confusing, so we'll call it the free "lite" release version. Everyone happy now? ;)
 
It's been an experience ironing the bugs out and getting this out so fast... I began work on it last Friday evening and posted it to the Marketplace Tuesday morning... by Wednesday at noon it was installed on over 2600 phones. Cool.

There are some glitches in the Marketplace. I did a quick update with the features most requested and my downloads dropped to zero and all comments and ratings disappeared... bummer! They say they're working on it.

You have to just ignore many of the comments. Some people wouldn't like the game whatever you ran it on and many gripe about the size of the tiles. I'm making a free update with larger tiles, but if I hadn't done the full 144 tile classic version first, a whole bunch of OTHER people would be screaming that it isn't real Mahjongg Solitaire. You can't win!

My favorite comment was about the first version, that had the rule checking disabled to make it more fun for beginners: one gal was INCENSED that this free game she downloaded didn't enforce this rule. She was OUTRAGED! It ruined the whole game for her! One star!

The truly funny thing is, of course, that... she could simply CHOOSE NOT TO CHEAT. This kind of person is why we have police forces!

Then you have people storming that it's IMPOSSIBLE to play because of the size of the tiles. If so, then how come my wife can't seem to put it down? Even my fat fingers work just fine with it after you practice with it a minute.

Amazing to me that people's sense of entitlement is such these days that they can be abusively demanding about software that literally costs them nothing. I don't think I'll be putting out any more free stuff, just for this reason. Still, what a rush to have thousands of people playing my game. There will definitely be more coming, and if you're sitting out there wishing you could do it too, hey, you can.
 
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Sundog
Let me 1st thank you for all of your work!

I haven't downloaded your program yet, but I will later today.

I have *some* very modest programming experience, and I know from that how much work is involved. I can only guess how many hours you've put into this game!

Don't let the few whinners among G1 owners get you down! Thanks for giving the first version of your game for free, but by all means, come out with a more feature rich version and charge for it. Nobody works for free!

Thanks again, and once I've had a chance to download and check out your game, I'll be sure to post feedback.
 
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Sundog
I downloaded and really like your version of Mahjongg.

I do have one suggestion, which I think would greatly improve the game...

On other platforms such as Palm, which have had Mahjongg games on them, when you removed the very end tiles (I'm turning the G1 to landscape mode when playing, so the tiles on the left and right sides), the tiles which are one per row, ALL remaining tiles would suddenly enlarge, to fill in the screen. As you removed a few more of the end tiles, again, ALL remaining tiles would enlarge, again filling in the screen. The tiles would remain in the same order, but they would simply grow... I believe that the developer had, perhaps, three or four different size tiles, and when certain conditions were met (additiona free room on the left and/or right side of the screen) the tiles would increase in size.

I really believe this would GREATLY improve your excellent game! The major problem is that it's somewhat difficult (not that bad, but....) to tap the tiles, and it's also somewhat hard to view them. Implementing my suggestion wouldn't help for the first few moves, but as the player removed the far left and far right, single tiles, the tiles would enlarge, and the problem would diminish.

This solution would really solve both issues.

By the way, adding track ball support would also make it easier. Some people won't want to use the trackball for selection, but certainly many others will!

Again, thanks for an EXCELLENT game... hope you don't mind my suggestions.:eek:
 
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Hi Shel, and of course I don't mind suggestions! Thanks for the input. After all, I do want to fancy it up enough to charge a few bucks for it at some point. The interface is quite primitive, but I wanted to get this out fast!

The option for larger tiles will definitely be there. As for your idea about enlarging the screen as possible, yes, that could happen too. Nice idea.

Trackball support: Guess what, it DOES support the trackball. Unfortunately, in what seems to me to be a glitch in Android, the buttons don't highlight properly (I'm using the ImageButton class), so you can't see to choose...either that or I don't understand it enough yet... either is possible.

Thanks very much for the input and thanks for downloading the game! I shouldn't let the comments bug me, I should be used to that after all this time.
 
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LOL, released the final lite version last nite and already nearly a thousand downloads... this one seems to have made people happy, four and five stars from nearly everyone..

Of course - and I was expecting this - there were a few saying "bring back the small tiles, we liked them!" Hey no problem, buy the pro edition when it comes out, heh heh.

Then there was the gal who gave it one star because she said it didn't work at all: Hold the phone on its side, madam...

And one guy liked the larger tiles but said there weren't enough of them now. Someone explain the math to him, please!

All in all I think this one's in the can. I am now extremely anxious for the paid-app option in the Android Marketplace now for obvious reasons.

I am a bit irritated about this. Here we are helping Android look good for its launch and everyone's making gobs of money except us developers who were SUPPOSED to be able to benefit from this.

Coming in the next few days from nitoware: DrumDroid!
 
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