Older News

07/31/2014 - It's been almost a year since our last update, but thanks to Ramsey, we found and patched a fix for Google+ Hangout errors that occur when you create petty large boards (specifically we allow single piece updates to 2K).

09/20/2013 - We've moved our hosting of the website back to SourceForge

01/06/2013 - Our first release of the new year fixes issues with saving the board with scrollbars in a Google+ Hangout

10/29/2012 - The latest release adds the ability to redirect a game board to a new URL (such as a local ABG server). This allows you to use the same game in both mobile devices and a Google+ Hangout.

9/15/2012 - A new release provides better support for PHP 5.2 and Edward has added more details on how to use ABG in our documentation.

8/22/2012 - More updates to our documentation...

8/3/2012 - A successful open source project requires a team. I am thrilled to thank Edward Grzetich for organizing and developing end-user documentation from scratch.

7/16/2012 - We are wonderfully proud to have Level 99 Games recreate their game NOIR on ABG. In addition, our latest release improves support for IE9 (though due to technical issues, you can't load or save boards in IE9 yet... grrr...).

7/08/2012 - Two bits of news: First, we had an outage on our web page at Sourceforge.net. I temporarily moved it to a local machine, and tomorrow will hopefully move it to an Amazon EC2 instance (out of my pocket for now...). In happier news, we got a news article on ABG in RedFerret. Fun...

7/05/2012 - In a bit of marathon coding, the Google+ Hangout Application now works! Click the button at the top of the page to start it now. It is a lot easier than running your own server. Unfortunately scroll bars don't automatically appear, but use CTRL + and - to resize the window.

7/04/2012 - Google+ Hangout Application now being developed! Yes, it's been a while for an update, but I learned about Hangout Applications, which provide a perfect environment for ABG since anyone will then be able to kick off a game! I've got pieces moving, but I need to get multiple sides working again, and then load/save state....

6/02/2012 - We're getting closer to allowing piece and rules scripting. In this release we added the ability to assign custom CSS classes to pieces and add a JavaScript callback function that is called when a piece is moved or rotated.

5/02/2012 - In this release we make manipulating a piece a bit easier on the mouse: the middle mouse button now flips a piece and initiates moving it, the right mouse button initiates piece rotation, and the left mouse button moves the piece or brings up the pop-up menu (if the piece wasn't moved).

3/17/2012 - Two tweaks are in today's release: We fix an issue with pieces and the board flashing on the default Android browser (though we prefer Google Chrome since it is simply faster), and we added a confirmation dialog to the menu option to clear the board (my daughter accidentally cleared the board during a game).

3/13/2012 - The latest release of ABG brings a consistent feel and better stability on touch devices (iOS and Android). Touch-drag events now initiate multi-selection of board pieces (just like using the mouse). To pan and zoom with touches, first bring up a pop-up menu (by clicking on a piece or on the background). To make staking decks easier, pieces are now stacked at the location of the lowest piece. Finally, we were able to do some testing on Google Chrome beta for Android, and it works very well! So we suggest Google Chrome, Safari (iOS), and Firefox for use with ABG.

3/09/2012 - Now you can play Agricola Express without a paper and pencil. We used the new "attach HTML to a piece" feature to allow users to interact with check boxes and text boxes on the score card.

3/07/2012 - Finally, a modern game! This release adds Agricola Express (released under the Creative Commons License), 3-D die renderings (with POV-Ray source), and the ability to attach custom HTML to pieces (so that we can provide links and pave the way for scripting).

3/05/2012 - A new release adds Go, Chess, and Reversi (Othello). Chess demonstrates one issue we'll need to fix: the latest moved piece is on the top, while for this particular game, to keep the 3D feel we want the piece that is closest to the bottom to be on top. Maybe this will inspire us to move forward with a scripting capability.

2/29/2012 - We have a new game: Words (on ABG)! You also can open boards through a select list of pre-built games or from a URL. The Windows installer now uses Apache, which dramatically improves performance.

2/19/2012 - Thanks to Mongoose, we have our first Windows installer for the server. Now you can grab and run the installer executable, run the server program link, and then go to http://localhost:8080/ to access the server. It's slower than Apache, but runs wonderfully!

2/13/2012 - The newest release added an introduction page for first time installation, and support for multiple installations on the same server (a simple way of making multiple game rooms). My 8 year old daughter is now an early beta tester, and beat me in three games of the Pokemon TCG starter set.

2/11/2012 - New release with roll animation and some bug fixes! Also, I finally got Settlers of Catan scanned in for playing with my family (it won't be distributed with the game due to copyright).

2/8/2012 - Our new release allows a piece to be resized (you can set the width in the piece edit box) and you can view the details of a piece's face

1/18/2012 - Our latest release includes a pseudo-3D checkers set, a deck of cards, and bug fixes for Chrome

1/17/2012 - As can be seen in the updated screenshot, I've been working with POV to develop a nice checkers set that will be released with next update

1/1/2012 - For the new year, we finished all of the initial features needed to play deck and board games like Settlers and Pokemon including deck shuffling, multi-card rotate, and player hand shields. Now to start play testing!

12/29/2011 - Multi-select actions are getting there. Multi-select itself is working on mouse and touch devices, with multi-piece move, lock and unlock working.

12/25/2011 - For Christmas, my wife let me work a bit on ABG! The result is we now allow pieces with multiple sides, you can flip pieces, and for pieces with more than 2 sides you can "roll" them (randomly choose a side). Now to work on multi-select...

12/24/2011 - Z-indexing works: when you move a piece, it is brought to the front. A new piece menu-item "Send to Back" sends the piece to the back...

12/22/2011 - As you can see, we've moved to a new web site. Now we can focus on the next new features: z-index for pieces, multiple-sides, and flipping pieces...

12/20/2011 - We've finally rolled out our first PHP5/HTML version which supports single-sided piece board games on Google/Chrome/Safari and iPhone, iPad, and Android.