Release 1.7 - Some Love For Single Player Cribbage

After quite a few releases that had a heavy focus on the multiplayer side of the game in Cribbage Pro, although we always give some single player improvements too, we are really excited to finally release version 1.7 which is almost entirely focused on just the single player side of the game (coming first on Android; iOS users it is coming soon hopefully with your iPad support too).

So without further delay, here is a run down of these new features in our now traditional bullet list style.

• New Single Player Achievements System
• You can now earn over 80 different achievements while playing Cribbage Pro on single player, and each achievement you earn gives you more points towards appearing in the "Top 50" leader boards.  That's right, you can even lose a game but have an achievement earned which off-sets that loss and still move up.  We think it's more fair then just earning for a win.  You showed skill in earning the achievement (say a nice 24 point hand) and that skill should be represented in the rankings.
• Not all achievements are for showing your greatness, some of them just mark a milestone in your game play.  For instance, you get one for playing 100 games, then 1000 and then 2000+ at each level of difficulty.  You may also get a "19 Point Crib" achievement if you find yourself unlucky enough to have 0 points in your own crib. This is of course not a good thing, but just a common slang used in cribbage in general that we thought would be fun to add in to soften that harsh blow.
• Right now there are over 80, and we have ideas for even more, but would like your suggestions as well.  So email us what you think might make a good achievement in the game and we will see what we can do to add it in for a future release.
• Real World Rewards from Kiip
• OK, so achievements are great and all, but what if they were not just points you could earn to get to the leader board but included other real-world rewards for significant game achievements.  Once we heard of Kiip and how it worked out with the timing of our achievements release here, we got really excited as we think you all will too.  If you have been lucky enough to earn one already or gift it to a friend, you know what we are talking about. For those of you who have no idea what Kiip is and why we are excited to bring it to you, check out their video on earning real rewards in games you are already playing.
• "Top 50" with new "Recently Played" and "All Time"
• We heard you all on this one a few times, and we are glad to be able to finally start to do something about the Top 50 leader-board for single player.  One of the big glaring issues was that someone who played the game over a year ago and did really well may be sitting on that list, but only now playing the game just intermittently enough to keep their spot.  This first set of changes in this release are starting to address this.  With the new "Recently Played" list being the default, players who have not played the game in a while will drop off the list and the list can change each and every day that ticks past giving the newer players who just found us a chance to make the list too.  Of course, there is still the "All Time" list to try and get to as well.  Note that we changed this for single player and multiplayer Top 50.
• Some Graphical Tweaks
• We made the "Count" box bigger, bolder, styled it and generally made it easier to read and we also made a few other tweaks to the overall layout which I'm betting nobody notices very much, but they were bothering us so we fixed them.
• Improvements to Using Random.org
• On Android we have been using Random.org for our random seed data in shuffling/etc. in the game for a while, but it was not as efficient as it should be and it would run out too fast at times and not be able to get new good random data (not a good enough internet connection, etc.) and be forced to fall back to using the devices random source (which we have to say almost universally terrible).  So in this release we added a few new technical adjustments to that system and how we utilize it to make the cards you get (and the cards the computer is dealt) as random as we possibly can as often as we possibly can.

We have already had a few requests for a list of all the possible achievements you can earn in the game, and when.  Right now we will not be releasing the full list (remember, that's 80+ so it would be a long list), but in a future blog post we will list out some of our favorites and/or ones that we are getting questions.  So more to come there.

As always, if you have suggestions, comments or feedback of any kind please let us know in the comments here on the blog or (particularly if you want a quick response) by emailing support@fullersystems.com