NETWORK PLAY
Playing a network game
During most of the phases of the game, all the players have the possibility to send any message visible by all and that simply by selecting SHOW MESSAGES in the NETWORK sub-menu of the FILE menu (or more quickly Cmd-M).
The Network window is displayed during some phases of the game, with a text explaining the reason of waiting.
It is not possible to open or save a network tournament.
At the end of the tournament, the players online go back to the connection dialog and then may decide to stop or begin a new tournament.
1) Free deals tournament
During these tournaments, the players online play one computer against each other on the same game’s carpet.
Each time a player must carry out an action, the other participants have, visible on the screen, a signal of waiting indicating who is playing.
Thus during bidding, waiting for the bid of South:
And during the card play, waiting for the card of South:
All the remainder of the interface is completely identical to the play without the network.
2) Duplicate tournament
During these tournaments, the players online receive one deal that they will play simultaneously each one in the position of the Taker. The 3 defenders are played by the computer.
If there is less than 4 players online, the computer can also take part to the tournament. In this case its game will be played instantaneously, as soon as the hosting player will have finished his game.
The only difference with the play without the network is the display of the Score window which makes it possible to follow the progression of the game of the opponents.
Thus at the beginning of the game, as long as the card play of the opponents did not start, a waiting signal is visible at the position of the score of the game in progress.
Once the card play has started, you can see the progression of the 18 tricks of this player.
If this player finishes its game before you, its score is temporarily hidden by ???.
At last, as soon as your game is finished, the scores are immediately visible.
