Riverboat Gambler Brazil 18 17+

This is another “great release”!

I think it’s “great” because the changes that were made addressed issues that impact the user experience and the changes that I made were elegant and cleaned up some pretty bad code. I always feel better when I find opportunities to streamline the code and correct spaghetti code that was created when I was first learning to program this app.

While I was testing the new screens for the iPad 11 (M2) in “zoomed” mode, I noticed an issue related to a lack of Loyalty Bonus notifications. Basically, what I discovered was that, although the bonuses were being paid, many times there was no alert notification to tell the Player the award had posted and, in some cases, the timing was a bit slower than one would expect.

As I normally do in situations like that, I posted a message to let everyone know what I’d observed and to communicate that I was working on a fix.

I want to thank Nick for reaching out to me using “Send Feedback”. Nick not only confirmed the issue and how frustrating it was, but he provided some extremely valuable and detailed insights and observations from his own experiences. Based on what Nick shared with me, I was able to immediately identify the root cause of the problem and craft a solution. Were it not for Nick’s input, it would have taken much longer than the three days I worked to isolate the problem and fix it.

In essence, the alerts were being sent, but they were being “swallowed” (hidden) by other messages that might be on the screen (e.g. a Holiday Purchase Special or one of the many Player Messages I include to share tips). Those types of “messages” were incompatible with how I was providing the alert.

Given how long the Loyalty Bonuses have been around, that was some of the first code I wrote for the app. It was also some of the worst code from a proper patterns and best practices perspective. What I give you now is sleek, streamlined, and should prove to be very solid. Once again, Nick gets a lot of the thanks for helping me to isolate the issue. In an app that consists of 100s of 1000s of lines of codes, that is never easy.

Another important bug fix in this release affected all six of the Blackjack games because they share a lot of the same code. Basically, the Deal button, that also serves as the Hit button, was not always changing its text like it should. The game logic still worked as expected, but the failure to update properly was creating a bad user experience.

Mike, who reached out a couple weeks back to report a massive problem in the Blackjack games, again took the time to let me know about this issue. He wasn’t complaining, he was just focusing on “attention to detail” and letting me know. Well, now that problem no longer exists! Thank you, Mike! I likely never would have caught it because I rarely play Blackjack.

Mark, a long time supporter and Craps Player requested that the number of rolls be tracked for each “run” in Craps. Now, that count will be included with the net impact of the run. Additionally, Mark correctly pointed out that the Loyalty Bonuses were being included in the net impact of a run if one was awarded while the dice were being rolled. For now, the simple solution is to defer awarding any Loyalty Bonus while Craps is active. I’ll be working on a more elegant way to track the impact of a Shooter’s run.

Lastly, one of the most frequent text messages I receive on “Send Feedback” is from Players telling me that “Omaha Hold’em is broken” because, after the cards get dealt, all they can do is fold. As soon as I ask “have you selected two of your four cards to play?”, the issue gets resolved.

I assumed the message that was being shown must have been too inconspicuous and folks were missing it. So, for this release, I went it to extend the duration of the message. When I did, I discovered that the message wasn’t being displayed anymore. Well, it is now. Many thanks, to "another Mike" for reaching out!

Stay safe!

~Danny