DailyGammon3.0 - App Store

- Play all your DailyGammon matches.
- optimized TopPage
- GameLounge, an overView of all Tournaments you can play
- many board color themes
A free DailyGammon account is required. Sign up at dailygammon.com.

Version History Rebuilt from scratch

The version you see here is a rewrite. The original app grew over years in Objective-C, and by the end every change was a small gamble: the code that fetched a page from dailygammon.com, the code that made sense of it, and the code that drew it on screen had grown into each other. Touch one, break another.

The new app is written in Swift and SwiftUI, and it keeps those three jobs apart. It reads the server's pages, turns them into a model of what's actually there — matches, players, threads, a board position — and only then draws that model. A change to any one of the three no longer breaks the other two.

That's not a feature you can see in a screenshot. What you can see is the consequence: it made everything on the list below possible in the first place.

The exception list

Knowing there's something to do

A count on the Matches tab. How many matches are waiting for a move from you. The website has no such number anywhere.

Notifications. dailygammon.com sends none, so the app looks for itself while it's in the background: more matches than last time and it says so at once; unchanged and it stays quiet for hours. Off until you switch it on. How often iOS actually lets it look is up to iOS, not to any setting — the app keeps a log of its own wake-ups so you can see what you're getting.

Sorting that's yours alone. The website's sort order belongs to your account. The app can also sort on this device only, leaving your account's setting — and your browser — untouched.

The board

Sideways, it fills the screen. Turn a phone and the board takes the whole height; the bars around it get out of the way. A switch in the corner brings them back, and it remembers what you chose.

Always your colour. The server hands out black and white per match. You can fix it instead — your board only; your opponent sees no difference.

A question before you roll. When the cube is yours to offer, the board shows Roll dice and Double side by side, and it's easy to tap the wrong one out of habit. The app can ask once whether you meant it. It's off by default, it asks every single turn, and it judges nothing — it can't tell you whether doubling would be right, only that you could have. The question switches itself off if you've had enough of it.

People

Tap any player's name — on the board, in a tournament, in a message — and a sheet opens with everything the app knows about them:

their profile, rating and experience
your record against each other: what's running, what each of you has won
the whole chat history with that player, gathered by person instead of by match, so it survives the match ending
your own private note on them: how they play, what to remember. It never leaves your device
a quick message or an invitation, right there
Opened from a board, the sheet knows which match you're in, so the tools below come up already filled in.

Quick messages can run long. The website's field stops at 80 characters. The server doesn't — so the app doesn't either.

The forum

It counts. A thread you've read shows how many posts have arrived since, where the website only marks that something is new — and it opens at the first post you haven't seen.

Hiding works both ways from the same button. On the website, un-hiding means going to find the thread under „Show Hidden Threads“.

Old threads are a month archive, reachable from the corner, back to 2004.

Tools

Rating calculator — what winning or losing is worth, for both players.

Match equity table with your own score already marked, so you don't have to find your row.

Dice statistics — how often each throw came up against how often it was to be expected. Reading it costs one request per match, so it runs on a button and you choose how far back to go.

Phrases — sentences you send often, kept for reuse.

Sharing a position. A finished match can be exported whole, or you can tap a single roll in the review and share that position as a GNU Backgammon ID. 3.0 6d ago bugFix textModul 2.01 07/25/2024 Version 2 is a major update with many new features across the app:

- Tiles: All lists are now using tiles to show more information on the screen.

- Improved chat: A chat history shows you your complete past interaction with your opponent. Use chat text modules to write standard messages with a single tap.
 
- Support for Portrait mode and dynamic device orientation changes: You can now use the app in portrait and in landscape mode and switch whenever you want. For example, play a match in landscape mode and compose a message in portrait mode.

- Game Information: Improved display of information during the game - pip count, current match score shown more prominently.
 
- Player info: click on a player's name to see a screen with information about that player including buttons to invite this player or send a message to her/him, the history of your conversation, and a private note you want to remember.

- Performance: Significant performance improvements when playing the game.
 
- Support for Umlauts and other special characters in chat.

- Slight visual improvements of the board.
 
- Bugfixes and internal improvements. 2.0 07/23/2024 - The tournament bracket that shows a tournament tree now features a back button for easier navigation.
- The rating chart is now displayed only for the logged in user. This is convenient if you use several DG users.
- We've introduced a new graphics library for the rating chart, featuring pinch-to-zoom functionality and an updated look.
- The "finished match" page now supports directly sending messages: The player names are now buttons. Use them to easily congratulate your opponent if the DG server does not offer a "finished match chat".

- bugfix: Resolved an issue where viewing a tournament that hasn't begun caused the app to crash.
- bugfix: Enhanced handling of the "There has been an internal error" message to prevent disruptions. 1.5.3 11/08/2023 This version is a bugfix release, fixing three bugs:

- When using a custom sort order of your matches in the top page and the list of matches gets empty, the app no longer crashes.

- The beaver functionality in money games now works properly.

- The logout button now logs you out properly. 1.5.2 06/26/2023 bugfix endOfGame message 1.5.1 06/07/2023 - Faster load times: We have made significant enhancements to the load time of DailyGammon's top page. You should notice a significant improvement in the speed at which the page loads.

- Refresh Button on TopPage: Once you've pressed the refresh button on the top page, the app will now automatically request the newest information every 60 seconds. Simply keep the app open, and you'll always receive the newest changes.

- Notifications and badge count when the app goes into the background: you will receive standard iOS notifications whenever an opponent makes a move in one of your matches.

- New board schemes: We have added four new board schemes – Steampunk, Sea, Traditional and Spring – as well as an improved metal board. These new designs add some variety and excitement to your gameplay experience.

- New "lists" button: We have added a new "lists" button in the top menu, which provides easy access to a variety of lists that can help you keep track of your matches and tournaments. Here's what's included:
-- Active matches: Lists all of your active matches, with the option to see the current tournament bracket and review the match.
-- Active tournaments: Lists all of your active tournaments, even ones where there is no active match, with the option to see the tournament bracket and your active match.
-- Finished matches: Lists all of your finished matches, including a review and the ability to export to a file for analysis.
-- Tournament wins: Shows all tournaments you have ever won, including the date and time of your victory. The tournament bracket is a new UI that graphically shows the progress of a tournament. It offers the option to scroll to your most recent match ("find me").

- A new review feature shows the list of all moves of a match. Click on a move to see the respective position and replay your game forward or backward.

- Bug fixes

- Info that the new "Double Repeat" feature is not yet supported. 1.5 03/30/2023 Major restructuring of much of the app's internal workings that you won't notice.

New Features:

Overall, you can now customize the look of the app greatly by choosing from one of eight different board schemes and from one of four different button designs.

- New board schemes: Wood HD, Metal HD, Mono HD, Unicorn, incl. much internal rework to support more board schemes.
- Button designs: user can now select one of four button styles (Outline, Gradient, Combined, Flat) in the settings.
- About: app can now lead users who are interested in collaboration to the app's GitHub

Bugfixes:

- About: button "remind me later" appears only if not called directly
- Game: clicking on opponent name crashed if opponent had a name that contained a space 1.4.4 01/18/2023 - Faster loading of the TopPage
- smaller bugfixes 1.4.3 12/08/2022 smaller bugfixes 1.4.2 10/16/2022 minor bug fixes

small improvement in the chat window

small improvements in rating graphics 1.4.1 04/13/2022 - Dark Mode
- smaller Bug Fixes 1.4 04/01/2022 - smaller bugfixes
- GameLounge improved
- If you enable iCloud for your device (you have to do this in the settings of your device), your rating data will be stored in iCloud. This is only a few bytes per day.
The green (or red) dot gives you a hint if iCloud is switched on or not.
You have several advantages:
- If you play on multiple devices, you have the same rating data on each device.
- If you have a new device, the rating data is automatically available.
You can also switch off the iCloud at any time. However, then you only have the respective local data available for each device. 1.3.3 03/16/2022 smaller bug fixes 1.3.2 09/30/2021 Done a big bug and unfortunately shipped a small bug with 1.3.
In some constellations, the "small" error can lead to a crash. I am very sorry.
with this version this crash can no longer occur 1.3.1 09/27/2021 finally fixed that annoying chat bug
New feature: Player list for messages and invitations 1.3 09/26/2021 smaller bug fixes 1.2.4 06/04/2020 - The rating graphic has been improved.

- The problem with "daily backups" has been solved

- You can now sort the list of games (TopPage) additionally by each column. Of course ascending and descending.

- minor bugfixes 1.2.3 10/16/2019 - On DailyGammon your checker color is determined at the start of each match.
Depending on the draw, or whether you sent or accepted an invitation, you get one color or the other.
A new option allows you to override this and choose the same color for all your matches instead.

- smaller bugfixes

Thank you very much for all the feedback. This helps me a lot to improve the app.
What do you miss the most? Please write me to my support email address dg@hape42.de.
I will continue to try to implement your suggestions as soon as possible. 1.2.2 05/10/2019 - Finally you can accept or decline invitations to a match
- Handling of chat significantly improved
- smaller bugfixes

Thank you very much for all the feedback. This helps me a lot to improve the app.
What do you miss the most? Please write me to my support email address dg@hape42.de.
I will continue to try to implement your suggestions as soon as possible. 1.2.1 04/12/2019 - smaller bugfixes
- redesign of Memory management 1.2 03/29/2019 - mini-Board Problem fixed
- some smaller bugs fixed
- chat problems fixed
New features:
- Personal Preferences 1.1 02/20/2019 1.0 02/06/2019