**PokerStars Software Improvement Thread***

[cero_dinero]

make the chatbox have some kind of scroll lock, its so frustrating trying to reread chat

[demon102]

Played a session earlier today and this happened.

POKERSTARS GAME #15452286903: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($0.10/$0.25) - 2008/02/21 - 18:19:06 (ET)
Table 'Hippodamia' 9-max Seat #4 is the button
Seat 1: @cid - |3urn ($7.50 in chips)
Seat 3: EarlMcbearl ($27.95 in chips)
Seat 4: DOM112 ($24.30 in chips)
Seat 5: dm78 ($24.05 in chips)
Seat 6: traffic17 ($11.90 in chips)
Seat 7: MADDADD ($18.65 in chips)
Seat 8: Perdix80 ($23.65 in chips)
Seat 9: potier ($54.10 in chips)
dm78: posts small blind $0.10
traffic17: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DOM112 [Ad Ac]
MADDADD: folds
Perdix80: raises $0.75 to $1
potier: raises $0.75 to $1.75
@cid - |3urn: folds
EarlMcbearl: calls $1.75
DOM112 has timed out
DOM112: folds
DOM112 is sitting out
dm78: folds
traffic17: folds
DOM112 has returned

Not a huge deal given the stakes but If I was playing higher I would prolly had a hissy fit and went on mega tilt. Stars PLEASE CHANGE THE SOFTWARE IN THIS SITUATION!!! This was on a fast table and I was in the middle of a hand on another table and the software autofolded after about 15 secs wich really sucks. Can u make it so that it activates the time bank automatically or something? I was only playing 9 tables so its not like I was mega tabling or anything.

(I had the stars urgent table script running so if anyone knows y the script might not have activated the time bank please let me know. Im running v0.75, it worked every other time as far as I could tell but this one time.)

[_dave_]

The only reason it wouldn't activate is if timebank was allready spent and therefore never appeared. It *will* click time soon after the NL slider appears, no fail.

[demon102]

Originally Posted by _dave_

The only reason it wouldn't activate is if timebank was allready spent and therefore never appeared. It *will* click time soon after the NL slider appears, no fail.

I had a full timebank as I was only 5 mins or so into the session. Immeaditely after the hand I reloaded the script from the taskbar or whatever the bottom right is called. You have never heard of the script failing?

[_dave_]

I've seen it "fail" once in a leatherass stoxpoker vid, where he had indeed already spend his timebank - that made me cringe I've never had it fail on me (that I've noticed) in a few 100K hands.

However, I do not play FR - and did not make the 0.75 edits - I expect it works perfect on all table sizes, but there is a possibility it is targetting so as it will miss at certain table sizes, sue to the way stars "snaps" to a different set of buttons etc. as table size decreases. If it started working properly after a reload, no idea what the problem was - and I wouldn't expect to ever see it.

I guess you dont (or would have seen the OMG aces) - but did you notice the timebank button appear? and did the table get the red border? we should probably take this to the SW thread - but I pretty much agree, it would be nice if Stars would auto-enable time.

EDIT: it is pretty strange it doesn't erven say "XXX has 8 seconds to act" or whatever in the HH - does it usually, or is that other sites?

[_dave_]

Originally Posted by Alex Scott

Please continue with the feedback everyone. Just to quickly address some recent points:

Alex, Thank you for dropping in this thread and letting us know we are not posting in vain - much appreciated

These files are absolutely NOT trivial. Imagine, for example, that your flatmate decides he will play a trick on you, so he changes the image files in the PokerStars directory so that deuces look like aces, treys look like kings, and fours look like queens. Don't you think that this could cost you a lot of money?

Now imagine a virus that targets online poker programs, and does this on a much larger scale, to thousands of players. You can see why it's important that PokerStars checks the integrity of these files before it starts.

I do have 'better support for custom card mods' on the wish list, however.

You should really only do this if you're having technical problems with the updater and have been told to make this change by our technical support team. I can't stress how important it is that you use the latest version of PokerStars where possible. If you intentionally bypass the updates and then experience technical problems, you have only yourself to blame.

Just to contradict this - are you aware how *very* difficult it would be to swap about the face & index of the cards without it looking dodgy? It is nowhere near a trivial task to be undertaken for a laugh, like it would be renaming the old-style card bitmaps (like one still gets on Party).

And if a roommate or a targeted virus were to do this, do you think they/it would not know to change your shortcut to the non-update pokerstars.exe?


I suggest a good idea - have pokerstarsupdate.exe have a confirmation that allows "continue anyway" - ideally listing the files that are flagged for download. This way we who use cardmods etc. could see only the cards are flagged - or that a "real" update is available - at this time we cannot tell, and just update now and again - usually when someone created a thread here or in software wondering what is new


I will re-post what I consider the most important thing - please revert the gx.ini to the way it used to be - plain text, user editable - or at least publish the decode/encode tools in the "xtheme creation guide", as you do with the alphamask converters.

A long time ago we could do some seriously useful modifications (such as making stack size font bigger, moving elements of the table to preferable locations, changing fonts/colours and so on - this is no longer possible, for reasons I cannot fathom.

[fozzy71]

Originally Posted by _dave_

Alex, Thank you for dropping in this thread and letting us know we are not posting in vain - much appreciated


Just to contradict this - are you aware how *very* difficult it would be to swap about the face & index of the cards without it looking dodgy? It is nowhere near a trivial task to be undertaken for a laugh, like it would be renaming the old-style card bitmaps (like one still gets on Party).

And if a roommate or a targeted virus were to do this, do you think they/it would not know to change your shortcut to the non-update pokerstars.exe?


I suggest a good idea - have pokerstarsupdate.exe have a confirmation that allows "continue anyway" - ideally listing the files that are flagged for download. This way we who use cardmods etc. could see only the cards are flagged - or that a "real" update is available - at this time we cannot tell, and just update now and again - usually when someone created a thread here or in software wondering what is new


I will re-post what I consider the most important thing - please revert the gx.ini to the way it used to be - plain text, user editable - or at least publish the decode/encode tools in the "xtheme creation guide", as you do with the alphamask converters.

A long time ago we could do some seriously useful modifications (such as making stack size font bigger, moving elements of the table to preferable locations, changing fonts/colours and so on - this is no longer possible, for reasons I cannot fathom.

As someone who creates Themes/Cards for Stars let me say:

Super-Duper-QFMFT+1

[Bar Nuthin]

dave for president

[BigBlind]

Originally Posted by maso

I wanna be able set the clock to a different timezone so I can see tourney start times in my native time rather than stars server time.

+1

I have missed playing or signing up for tournaments because i F:ed up time zones.

[SirNeb]

This is usually not a problem. But one thing I would like to see is to add a "0" second timebank button if you run out of timebank for whatever reason. It can be just greyed out and it doesn't even have to give extra time than currently. I just want it to give you like 1 second notification to act before it automucks you. I don't remember how many times I folded a hand I wanted to continue as I was pressing the "bet" or "call" button. When you are multitabling, you sometimes forget you have zero timebank on one table. It would be definitely nice to have, but it's not a huge deal, probably save me some money once in a while.

[Crane]

I'm playing in a game and a player elects to show his hole cards. They flash on the screen for a micro second, and then his button says "show hole cards," or something to that effect. I'm only playing four games, and I still usually miss what they showed.

I then go to the hand history to see what he showed, but it's not there. I don't use a HUD. Why can't the hand stay up there a little bit longer or instead of showing the dialog that says "show hole cards," (which is a mystery why it even appears) why not just show the hole cards.

If someone elects to reveal their hand, that knowledge should at least be in the hand history.

[Austiger]

I can't seem to sign up for multiple 6max SNGs. I'm not sure why they would be different than full-table ones, but you have to wait until the tourney starts to register for another.

[ICMoney]

The time bank on PS activates if you already have money in the pot (sb, $on turn, etc).

If you are OTB pf it will fold your AA.

[fozzy71]

Re: Better Custom Card Modification Management;

How about a "XCards" Menu, like the XThemes Menu. Where the custom cards would be saved, and unaffected by the daily updates to the default simplified deck. This would allow us to have multiple card mods, to choose from a menu, just like we can with XThemes.

*And please add Badugi to the list of available lowball/draw games.

[AaronL]

I play alot of the double shootouts and the most annoying thing is the level increase from 100/200 to 100/200 with 25 ante... the table is usually heads up at this point and, with 15 minutes, this increase is damn pretty annoying... since the next levell is 200/400 they should follow the sng model and make this level 150/300...