What changed in v5

This page is for anyone who used an earlier version of the Controller. The layout of the interface has changed: buttons have not merely moved, the structure of the screen is different.

The screen

The header and the footer are gone. A band at the top used to show the game’s title and the opponents’ avatars, and one at the bottom your own. Both are gone; the playing area took over their space, and the avatars moved to the edge of the toolbar.

The screen is made of three bands, from top to bottom: the opponent’s hand, the table, your hand. They move together. When you switch to an opponent, the whole thing slides as one, and the slide itself does not move the camera, and the table does not jump. Every switch used to recalculate the playing area, and the board shifted underneath you.

Tapping a head takes the camera to that area afterwards, and going back to the shared table restores the view you left there. That is deliberate, and it happens separately from the band slide. The detail is on the Camera page.

The hand bar no longer disappears in landscape. In landscape the hand and the opponent band used to vanish, and the toolbar hid itself as well. Now everything is reachable in landscape too, only the proportions are different.

The buttons sit along the four edges of the screen, not in a strip beside the hand bar. A button’s size comes from where it is: the corners and the middles of the walls hold a large button, the ends of the walls small ones.

Buttons do not disappear when there are many of them. When a wall runs out of room, the buttons either shrink or the wall becomes scrollable, but not one of them drops out. Dragging along the wall scrolls or reorders, while dragging perpendicular to the wall carries what the button holds.

Mode switching is gone. There is no “piece selection / container selection” mode any more: the actions live where their subject is.

Opponents and areas

The opponents moved to the top wall. Tap one to switch to their view, and their hand slides in from the top. You can still drag a card onto them: pick a card up, carry it onto their head, and it flies over to them.

Your own head is at the bottom, in the middle. One tap takes you to your own area, another one back to the shared one. While you are there the button is lit.

Tabs appeared under your area’s avatar. They belong to your area, and they show wherever the area is, rather than on the toolbar:

shield, protecting your area: nobody else can touch what you left there
curtain, hiding your area: what is on it is visible neither on the other players’ phones nor on the shared display

Protecting your hand and protecting your area came apart. A single switch used to protect both. Now one shield (on the left edge of the hand bar) protects your hand, another shield (on your area’s tab) protects your area, and the two are set independently. Both are enforced by the server too, not only by the interface.

Your hand

The box sits beside the hand bar, or your right hand does. You have two hands, completely equal, only stored separately: whatever you can do with one, you can do with the other. On a wide screen your left hand and the contents of the right side show side by side; on a narrow one, one is open and the other collapses into a thin strip, and tapping the strip swaps them. On the right side the Box / Hand button chooses between the box and your right hand. Detail: Your hand.

The card count is always visible, open and closed alike, and tapping the strip opens it.

The selected cards moved to the right wall. A separate tray above the hand used to show them. Now they stand on the toolbar’s right wall: tap them to take them out of the selection, drag from them and the whole selection moves.

Zoom

You can look at a card full screen, and page through its neighbours from there. It starts in two places:

from the top left corner of the hand bar, which opens your hand at the card you are standing on
from the bottom left group, which opens the selected cards on the table; with nothing selected the button is dim

While the zoom is open only the closing X is visible, in the top right corner. The table, your other hand and the box do not cut into it.

Camera and bookmarks

The two navigation buttons at the bottom left finally work. They used to do nothing but flicker: the arrow button now switches stepping from container to container on, and the eye button fits the camera to the area you are looking at.

Bookmarks belong to the area. On the shared table the host can make a bookmark and everybody sees it; in their own area everybody makes their own. The wall always shows the bookmarks of the area you are looking at.

A bookmark can be deleted. While you are standing on the bookmark, a remove button appears in place of the save button. Before, a bookmark could be created but never got rid of.

Jumping back is accurate. A bookmark takes you back to what you saw when you saved it. Before, it put you a little lower than where you saved it from.

Rotation

New: everything can be rotated, a card, a container, even a whole area. Tap the Rotate button that appears in the top right corner and you turn by one step (45 degrees on a card and on a container, 90 degrees on an area); drag from the button and a dial opens for finer rotation. Detail: Cards, Containers, Areas.

The camera follows what you are looking at. Turn towards a rotated area and the camera always squares up to that area, while the whole table view is never turned. Detail: Camera.

The menu can be closed. A back arrow at the top left, or Escape. Before, the interface offered no way out of an opened menu.