Frequently asked questions

Welcome to our frequently asked questions page!
Here you can find many answers to many questions, hopefully some of them will help you. We highly encourage you to look around here first before contacting the playroom moderators directly with f4. Some of your questions may already be answered on this page. However, if you are still unsure about anything, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are ready to help you.

To see the list of the global playroom keystrokes, please click here

General playroom questions

Which screen reader does playroom work best with?

You probably don't need to worry about this. Playroom is currently supporting all popular screen readers such as Jaws, NVDA and Narrator, and there's a high chance that the less popular screen readers won't do badly either.

Will the playroom be compatible with my operating system?

The client is designed for Windows, and the current newest version (3.0) only supports Windows 7 and higher.

What about the other operating systems? Can I access the playroom via my iPhone / Mac / Android?

Yes. Although there are no other desktop clients or mobile apps available for download, the playroom web client should work with most of the web browsers including Chrome and Safari. The web client is accessible through this link

Can sighted people play on the playroom?

Of course, anyone can join us in the playroom, most board games such as chess and reversi even have a graphical interface. However, bear in mind that the developer is blind, and thus most things will be in a textual interface which makes it a little uncomfortable to sighted users. Nevertheless we have got some sighted close friends or family members that join their blind and visually impaired peers.

I am unable to connect to the playroom!

First you should check the error message it displays to you, it will most probably give you a hint. Your credentials are incorrect means that you need to take a look at your username and password. Unable to connect to the server can mean various things, such as your internet connection has problems or the playroom is currently unavailable. To find out whether something is wrong on our side, click the service status button on the login screen of the client.

I’m constantly being flooded with needless information about who joined or left what table. Is it possible to turn this off somewhere?

Yes. You have two ways to achieve this, one of them gives you greater customization:

  1. If you go to options/privacy, you have an option called "Notify table creations?". This option will let you enable such messages for everybody, only your friends/favorites, or turn them off completely.
  2. Go to options / reading and appearance / channels / global messages, and set speech reading to never. Once you do this, you should no longer be bothered with these messages anymore. This setting is independent of the option described above and takes priority, so if such messages are completely turned off this way, the setting above has no effect.

My screen reader suddenly stopped reading all table messages and chat in the playroom window. How do I fix this?

You might have pressed Shift + F8 by accident. This shortcut allows you to enable or disable automatic reading of incoming playroom messages. Thus, try pressing Shift + F8 again to turn them back on.

Minimizing the playroom to taskbar with Alt + F4 doesn't work.

It does, but once you Alt + F4, you still need to press Alt + Tab to move away from the window. Note that the client is no longer visible then, and you can bring it back either from the taskbar directly, or by just pressing enter on the desktop icon or the qcgc.exe file itself.

Sometimes the client freezes. I hear no sounds and nothing seems to work.

Most likely you are having internet issues and are getting disconnected. Usually it’s enough to wait a couple of seconds but of course it depends on the quality of your connection. Killing the app in the task manager and launching it again sometimes speeds up the process of reconnecting.

Messages, chatting and tables

What are the views and how do I use them?

In some situations it might not be very convenient to display every single message in your history. For example, you're chatting with a friend while playing a game, and you only want to read a part of your conversation without having to scroll through the messages about who played what cards and other game information. Or vice versa, you'D like to check the progress of the game while ignoring private messages and chat. Thus, to make your life easier, you can switch to a specific view and choose what kind of content you want to see when browsing history items with page up and down. To switch between different views, hold down the alt key while pressing the left and right arrow keys. Alternatively, you may simply press alt+1 through 0 and quickly choose a desired view. There are 7 created views by default. With a bit of exploration, you'll easily get your bearings and figure out what each view is useful for. If you want to customize what content should be displayed in any of the views, or if you want to add a new one, you can find everything you need in options / reading and appearance / views. Note that this only applies to browsing the history using the page up and down keys. The views do not affect the content in the history box, it does not change. However, you can also customize separately what information should not be displayed in this field in options / reading and appearance / channels.

What is the difference between private and permanent messages?

Private messages are chat messages that can be sent exclusively and directly to one user at a time. You can receive a private message only if you are online, and they are lost as soon as you leave the playroom.
Permanent messages, on the other hand, are private conversations between two or more participants (up to 7 including the sender), which are being stored on the server, so you do not need to be online in order to receive or read them. They will stay in your imbox until you decide to leave the conversation. Use them for a group talk or if you want to make sure your message will not be missed. You can think of them as e-mails.

What is a free table?

A free table is similar to a chat room. It is a table for chilling and chatting, and a great place for meeting people and making friends. You can give it a topic by pressing Control + t. Being the table master, you can share some interesting content in the form of a stream, such as a radio or a live podcast. Enabling dice rolls might also make playing an RPG adventure with friends easier. It’s all up to you!

What is a private table?

A private table is a table hidden from all other players, so that they cannot join it nor know who is in it except with an invitation. You can switch your table between public and private by pressing Control + h.

A certain person has insulted or abused me. What should I do?

We are very sorry for the unpleasant experience. In most cases, we recommend kicking/banning the user in question from your tables, or eventually blocking him/her. However, we know that in some situations these tools are not enough, that’s why you have a feature to send us a history report in case an intervention from the helpers is needed. You may press f9 to access the functions and more menu, then scroll down to send history report. Always make sure to choose the right history you need to send, game history includes only the game view, and it is used in case of bug reports. While the discussion history contains your public chat messages and the private messages in order for us to figure out what happened. It would be helpful to briefly explain the situation in the comment part and to direct us to a specific part of the history you’re sending. Please note that we get only your current history, this means from the last time you have connected to the playroom, up until the moment you send us the history report. So it wouldn’t make any sense to send us a history report about a problem that happened the previous day, for example.

The client tells me that I have a request to add to the friends list. What shall I do?

If you want to respond to the request, go to the functions and more menu (accessible through f9) / friends list and select received requests. You will be presented with a list of users who added you to their friends list. Press enter on any user and choose either to accept or to refuse the request.

What are favorites?

Your list of favorites is A selection of people in your friends list you talk to most often. People who you add as a favorite will always be at the top of your list of friends, and in addition to that, you can further customize your privacy options so that only your favorites can interact with you, or to hear only when your favorites enter/leave the Playroom.
From your list of friends, pressing enter on any person in the list will allow you to add them as a favorite.

Why can’t I invite anyone?

To prevent spam, you are allowed only to invite 4 people, and then you are stopped until 1 or more of them joins you. Similarly, you are allowed to invite a person only once until he/she joins you or enough time passes. Please note that some people set their privacy to only friends can invite them.

How to stop random people from messaging/inviting/joining me?

Press f10 to access the options menu, go to privacy and you will have all the needed settings there.

I was typing a longer message in the chat, pressed the down arrow key to check my last line and everything I wrote got deleted.

Yes. Be careful about that. The chat box isn't multi-line, so instead of the classic behavior, you can use the up and down arrow keys to navigate through the history of the last 30 public and private messages you've sent. So as soon as you press the down arrow, your text will be deleted, and if you scroll up, it will be replaced with your previous message. An interesting thing to point here is that if you move to a private message and start typing immediately, the @user part will stay at the beginning of the message, so you may use this feature to quickly target a user you've recently messaged.

Sometimes when reading through the history, my keyboard randomly switches from my preferred language to English. How can I prevent this?

Unfortunately, this tends to happen when you browse in the history field and someone is using a different keyboard to type. We recommend using page up and down for reading the history in such situations.

What are all the chat commands I can use?

There are quite a few of them:

What kind of content can I stream at a table? Will YouTube links work?

Since the streaming links must lead directly to the audio file, YouTube, Soundcloud and other such links sadly can't be used for this purpose. By far the most popular way of streaming on playroom is Dropbox; Remember to change the 0 at the end of each Dropbox link to 1 in order to make it a direct link, otherwise it’s not going to work.

Account questions

Why can’t I send inbox messages neither write on the forum?

If you are a new user, an anti-spam system was developed to avoid trolls that create new accounts to spam. After a week or so, hopefully your restriction will be lifted automatically.
Additionally, there are some minor limitations on private and permanent messages in place to curb spam. You're limited to creating up to five topics on the forum per day, and you'll have to wait a little before you can reply to the same topic again, unless someone else has already replied before you. However, these restrictions shouldn't pose too much of an inconvenience.

I would like to change my username.

Open the QuentinC's playroom website and sign in to your account if necessary. Click the link at the top which takes you to your profile Settings, and find the heading that says change nickname. Fill in your password and your new username and click the button below. Make sure to check the text below the second heading, to see whether your request was really sent. Changing your username is possible only once per 30 days, and each request is validated by the helpers who are online, so don’t panic when the change doesn't apply immediately. The requests are checked regularly on a daily basis.

I would like to remove my account.

open the QuentinC's playroom website and sign in to your account if necessary. Click the link at the top which takes you to your profile Settings, and find the heading that says Delete your account. Fill in your password and check the check box, and then click the button below.

What are social score and forum reputation?

In your statistics, you have two values which may be unclear, "social score" and "forum reputation".

  1. Social score is a value that increases each time you play and finish a game with other users. It shows how active you are. The value will decrease if you leave a game in the middle, before finishing it. Of course, all of this applies only when you are a player, and not when you are a spectator. Games with bots and only one human are also not affected by this stat.
  2. Forum reputation shows how useful your posts on the forum are. It will increase each time someone marks your post or topic as useful, or decrease if your post or topic is marked as useless. You can also vote on other people's posts. To vote on individual messages, if using the forum from the client, open the context menu on a post with the applications key and select one of the options. On the website, all voting options will be available below each post.

Language and region questions

How can I change the language of the client?

You can do that either from the language category in the options menu, or by pressing Shift + F3 from anywhere in the client. Please note, that previously, you had to restart the playroom in order to view the forum of your newly chosen language within the client, now this bug is fixed, but if the recent topics category or popular topics don't work, restarting will help to fix it.

Can I interact with users who are using a different language than me?

Yes of course! Although you cannot see the game tables of users in different language servers, you can still view the list of all connected users by pressing Control + Shift + u and find the person you are looking for. Eventually you can message the user privately and join his tables without needing to switch to his language. Note though, that the table language will be determined according to its master. This means that if you use the client in English, and you decided to join your friend who invited you for a Scopa game in the French part, the cards and everything related to the game will be in French language.

The displayed time for posts is incorrect. Can I change my time zone?

Yes. By default, the website will display all time related information in French time. To change this, login on the website and click the settings link at the top. If you go to display options, you will have a combo box to choose your timezone, your date and time format, as well as the way numbers should be displayed.

I would like to translate playroom to my native language.

Thank you very much for willing to help us. It is important to consider a few things here:
First of all, translating is not a kind of job you can be done with in matter of hours or days. In fact, it’s a job that cannot be finished at all, as long as there are new games and features being added. Translating requires constant revision and once you take the job, you should always keep following what is going on in order to assure that the content in the other language will stay up to date.
Before offering to translate the playroom, you should be familiar with everything the client has to offer, including all the settings, the specific games terminology and so on.
Since the developers are based in Switzerland and playroom was originally written in French, you should have at least a basic level of French language, so that you are able to easily communicate with the staff without any problems, and so you can stick to the primary resource as much as possible.
Translating can be handled much better when you’re not working alone. Therefore, rather than doing this individually, you should be at least two or more. This way your work speeds up a bit, and you can get more creative if you have a chance to discuss the translations together and exchange ideas between each other.
If you really feel serious about the decision, and if you’re still willing to help, visit the website, change your language to French, and write your translation offer to the contact page in French language.

The web client

The web client is unstable and has lots of bugs!

The situation is rather interesting here, because the web client likes to behave slightly differently with each browser, screen reader and device. On iOS for instance, the cursor happens to jump at times, though not on all devices. Sometimes you’re not going to hear the incoming sounds for a while (curiously enough, opening your friends list or some other menu often resurrects them). On computers, most of the shortcuts are being the same as in the desktop client except Control + Page Up / Down will change to Shift instead, but some are going to interfere with your web browser shortcuts, and in some occasions the app decides to crash unexpectedly. Despite these little quirks though, we can safely say that the client is perfectly usable from anywhere, hence the situation is by far not all that bad.

Some actions are not available from the web client while playing on phone, such as junking a card in 1000 miles.

Some actions require you to press the equivalent of the applications key. This can be done by a double tap and hold in both iPhone and Android. However, there are two gestures to make junking and drawing cards easier. They should work in games such as 1000 Miles or Rummy:
Double tap and hold any card, then swipe right to junk a card, or swipe left to draw a card. Of course, without a screen reader running (for sighted users), this is only a single tap.

When playing on the web, my screen reader never automatically reads the table messages and chat.

If you’re using NVDA, you can fix this by going to options / channels and views and changing the speech priority of each element to either high or critical (both should work). You can also experiment with other screen reader & browser combinations, depending on your possibilities and what you are used to. Jaws and Chrome seems to work very well, as well as Edge and Narrator. Both combinations give a fast and responsive performance, except for some glitches here and there.

Game questions

Where can I read the rules of a game I want to play?

While being at the table of a game you want to know its rules, press Control + F1, it will take you to its rules on our website. Alternatively, you can visit the website and find the rules accessible at the home page.

Why are some game documentations missing?

Some games are considered to be too popular to have a rules page on our website. But if you wish to find how to play, internet is obviously your friend. Also, you can of course press f1 to get the detailed list of shortcuts specific for each of the games.

I would like to suggest a new game to be added.

you can suggest it in the relevant forum here. Please provide its rules clearly in order for your suggestion to be considered.

What is the eternal second? Where can I find how to play?

The eternal second was originally just a fun little idea intended as an April fool’s joke. At that time, it was called fishing aces. The game was removed shortly after few of the enthusiasts managed to guess the rules together. However, many people felt pity that the game should just go and stay only a memory, and expressed interest in bringing it back. Hence the game reappeared as the eternal second. So much for the history. :) The rules for the game were never officially published, but one of our community members has posted a nice summary here in this topic.

What is the F11 key used for?

From time to time, it may happen while playing that the game freezes unexpectedly, or that some things begin look strange. F11 forces a game & client resynchronisation, which should fix some of the problems. Try doing that first before leaving the table if you run into an issue. Saving and restoring the table may also fix the situation sometimes.

The bots play slowly or stopped playing completely.

This unfortunately happens most often due to server lag. The only thing we can say here is that we are aware of this problem, and the only thing you can do is to give these poor old bots a break and just hang in there.

I have a suggestion for a new monopoly board.

Please send any suggestion to the contact page in the following format:

Chess

How do I move a piece on the board?

There are two ways that this can be done:

  1. Manually: select the piece that you want to move by pressing enter, go to the square where you want to play the piece, and press enter again to drop it on that square. Note: when you select a piece, you’ll hear a sound. You can unselect the piece by pressing escape.
  2. By typing in notations: you can alternatively press space and enter the move in the edit box that appears. This can be done by either typing in:

Note

Which letters represent the different pieces?

These are the letters that are assigned to the pieces:

The same letters can be used to jump to the pieces on the board. Note: Q is valid when typing in the move, not while navigating on the board.

How can I castle?

Castling can be done in the same two ways:

How can I see the game moves?

You can see the list of moves that have been played by pressing Shift + h. The same keystroke will allow you to export the game in PGN format, by navigating to the bottom of the dialog box that opens.