Hi. I'm using an Imac, with the latest software, and have newly discovered the playroom web client. I've been having fun with all the games, but have found a little bug with ninety-nine. It would seem that sometimes, depending where the cursor ends up, you can't do the extra keyboard commands, like space to draw a card etc. Before the game starts, all seems fine, but once it gets going, you only seem to be able to draw a card, see the total, etc, if you're on the very top row of the 'game tool bar item pallet' (whatever it calls it) Therefore, if you forget to draw your first card, you're in deep trouble, because if you only have two cards, the extra keys don't work at all. However, once you're down to one card, you can then draw a new one once you've played it. This gives you a real disadvantage though, because you can't make any choices.
I'm aware that both the client and that particular game are in beta at the moment, so maybe this is already being looked at, but I thought it best to pop a note in here, in case it hadn't been spotted.
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Last edited by Aminiel, Apr 7 2014 14:16:56
2. Aminiel,
Hello,
Do you encounter that problem only in ninety nine specificly, or do you also have that problem in other games where you ahve to draw cards , e.g. uno, 1000 miles ?
Could you also give us the browser and version you are using, as well as your version of OS X ?
Do you have the opportunity to test in IE or firefox on windows and tell us if it works fine or if the same problem appears ?
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Last edited by Aminiel, Apr 7 2014 19:45:02
3. LynnR,
Hi
Thanks for your reply. I'm using Mac OS 10.9.2, and I believe the very latest safari. It has a very long version number: Version 7.0.3 (9537.75.14) I hadn't thought of trying other similar games. I'll do that as soon as I can and get back to you. Also, I don't have Windows myself, but I have a good friend who does, and who uses the playroom, although she normally uses the downloadable version. I'm sure she'll be happy to test the web client for us though.
i'll get back to you with my findings as soon as I can.
Oops! Forgot you can't post twice in a row, so I'm editing this message to tell you my latest findings.
It seems it's not just ninety-nine that's having this problem. i tried 1000 Miles just now, and it has a similar issue. At first, if you're on the tool bar item pallet, you have full keyboard functionality, but as soon as you draw your first card, and the focus is placed on it, you lose it completely. If I use the voiceover cursor to go up just once, onto my original six cards, all functionality resumes, that is until i drop back down onto the seventh. as the game progresses, it would seem that the more cards I play in succession, the higher up the tool bar item pallet I need to be to keep the keyboard working. However, if i junk a card, it seems to refresh things. Even going onto the dialogue for junking a card and saying no, seems to resume almost normal functionality, except for that seventh card. It's as if the use of the dialogue refreshes things.
My friend who uses windows was going to try and see what happened for her, but she uses NVDA, and finds the web client completely inaccessible. However, as she quite rightly pointed out, most windows users would download the windows friendly client anyway.
I haven't tried Uno yet, but I will if you'd like me to, and interestingly, i played Dominos a while ago, and never had a problem with that. (you draw in that too). Maybe Dominos is written slightly differently though.
Although I'm no technology expert, I love this playroom, and would like to help you get it working as well as it possibly can, so that all can enjoy it.
Score: +0
Last edited by LynnR, Apr 9 2014 11:53:54
4. fleurette,
Hi! It's true that I couldn't get the Playroom web client to work when lynn_r asked me to test it a couple of days ago, but I tried it again more recently, and I found that it does work for me on Windows after all, using the latest versions of both NVDA and Firefox. As I write this, I have only tested Scopa on the web client, and that worked perfectly, but I hope to test 99 Beta there soon, after which I will come back to this forum thread with my findings.
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5. LynnR,
Hi again. Just to let you know that I tried Uno this morning, and it seems to be completely free of the bug. It's strange that it's only certain games. I wonder if those games effected are written in a different way.
I did discover a little workaround for ninety-nine, when using voiceover, but you have to be very quick to do it. To draw, if the game has decided to go tempramental, you have to stop interacting with the game tool bar item pallet, and voiceover once to the right, to where it says "game group", then hit space. This works, but when playing with a bot, you have to be extremely fast-fingered. 1000 miles is workable with voiceover, but does get very tempramental the more cards you play in succession. as I mentioned in my last post though, going to the "junk card" dialogue seems to refresh things, and it behaves normally for a bit again.
I wonder if we can pinpoint just when this bug started. are there any other similar games I could try, to see if they also have the bug?
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6. fleurette,
Hello again! In the interests of testing Ninety-Nine on the Playroom web client with NVDA and Firefox in Windows, I played that game against lynn_r a few hours before writing this post, and I, too, have focus problems on the web. At the beginning of the game, the web interface behaved as it should, but it didn't take long before I was unable to easily read what my cards were, plus the keystrokes, such as those for seeing whose turn it was, didn't work: I could sometimes regain focus on my cards by tabbing back and forth, but then I often only saw one of my three cards, and the only way I could sometimes read all three was using the rview cursor in NVDA which I am not very skilled at using, so I often ended up playing the wrong card, leading to abysmally losing the game. I'm glad I can use the web client for at least some of the Playroom games, just in case the downloadable Windows client goes wrong, but I will definitely use the downloadable client most of the time.
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7. Aminiel,
I have found and fixed something that might be the cause of these problems. It seemed to happen in all the games where drawn cards are always put at the end of the menu without completely refreshing the rest. 99 and 1000 miles were doing so; in uno it didn't happen because the just drawn card not necessarily appear at the end, depending on what you sort the cards by.
Could you try again the web client both on safari mac and firefox windows in order to check if the bug is still here, if it has disappeared, or if it behaves differently now ?
Thank you for your precise observations and comments so far.
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8. LynnR,
Hi
It certainly seems like you've fixed it from a Mac user's point of view. It's working perfectly here now. I'll ask my friend who tried it on windows before to try it again, to see if it works there too.
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9. fleurette,
I have just tested Ninety-Nine on the web client again, using the latest versions of NVDA and Firefox as I did before, and this game now works perfectly. I could use the arrows and keystrokes in exactly the same way as I do on the downloadable Windows client.
