Upcoming features...
•	More games, music, tilesets, backgrounds and layouts.

Things-you-should-feel-free-to-submit-if-you-want-and-if-you-want-to-get-a-free-license...
•	New tilesets... (Please don't use copyrighted materials you don't own...)
•	New sound effects... If you think you can create beautiful sound effects !
•	New backgrounds. Took a great photo of a landscape ? Anything from a trip to Asia...? Send it, send it !! ;-) (no more than 50kb, in JPG format)
•	New translations. If you speak a language that is not yet included in Kyodai, maybe you could help...? (I'm not offering free licenses anymore for this)
•	Please note that I'm not likely to send a free license for translations or backgrounds. Great original tilesets that make it to the Kyodai package will be rewarded, though.

Minor issues :
Depending on what video card you use, Kyodai may not work perfectly in 24-bit color depth (3D mode) and 32-bit color depth (2D mode). Don't blame me for this. Also, some older ATI drivers may have problems with recent versions of Kyodai (please update to the latest ATI drivers). Finally, for some reason, if you're in DirectX Fullscreen mode, switching to 2D/3D then back again and pressing the DirectX button is likely to crash Kyodai (especially on Voodoo2 cards). Please try to quit and relaunch Kyodai before changing the DirectX settings when you're in Fullscreen mode.

New features in version 15.00 (October 24, 2000)

•	[Language] Updated translations : German, Polish and Greek.
•	[Music] New song from our favorite composer, Miguel Samiez ! Electric Soul, with a fantastic guitar solo at the end, was first featured on the Kyodai Mahjongg Original Soundtrack CD, and is now finally available in Kyodai itself ! Congratulations for another great piece of music, Miguel ! Stay tuned for more songs from him !
•	[Layout] Kyodai reaches his 100th layout. Added 18 layouts from Ernie Polegato (a Zodiac series with 12 signs, and a Chess series with 6 characters), a layout called "Coffee Cup" from an anonymous author, and "One Move" by Vincent Krebs, which originally had no name. The name comes from the fact that it only has one possible move at startup...
•	[Great] Finally implemented the layout editor in 3D ! Now, you aren't thrown anymore to the 2D mode when you try to edit or create a layout... Phew ! ;-)
•	[Cool] Switched to DirectX 7.0 (previously I was using DirectX 6.1). In the process, the overall performance seems to have improved automatically (I noticed a jump from 95 fps to 115 fps with all options enabled in the background cube mode). I'll try to see if I can implement hardware T&L in the future. But it probably won't help more.
•	[Cool] Implemented cubic environment mapping. It is a DirectX 7 specific feature available on GeForce and Radeon cards... And it looks good ! :-)
•	[Cool] Implemented emboss bump mapping. It's an effect similar to the G400's environment-mapped bump-mapping (which has been in Kyodai since v11.21), but it works on a lot more video cards. I could have implemented the same effect, but I chose to make it different - now the effect depends on the tileset, which seems to be "carved". Works fine on highly-contrasted (and not too colorful) tilesets.
•	[Cool] Added an optional "specular" special effect. This simply adds a spotlight effect at some light angles. Nice effect, and easy to implement. I should have done this earlier.
•	[Cool] Modified the status bar to make the text fit in all translations, and to put the layout editor bar in there as well (so as to avoid resizing the screen when not needed).
•	[Cool] Now you can switch between games via the menu, without going back to the game selector. Although I still prefer the game selector method... ;-)
•	[Cool] Now, the "High resolution Textures" option also improves the background texture resolution (used in the Background cube mode for example), except if you have a Voodoo or Voodoo2 card (where the texture size is limited to 256x256).
•	[Cool/Fix] Fixed a lot of long-lived problems in the layout editor... More exactly, the layout name was incorrectly specified in the menus when you just finished saving a new layout. Also, there were a lot of problems with high scores being erased when using spaces in the layout name. These problems are no more.
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed all the small problems with the Shuffle feature in two-player games.
•	[Fix] Removed the small lag during Rivers and Slider animations.
•	[Fix] Fixed the zeros appearing in the status bar at startup...
•	[Fix] Fixed a problem that would prevent unregistered users to play online.
•	[Fix] Fixed other problems I forgot about. But there were a few... ;-)

New features in version 14.00 (August 28, 2000)
No 13.xx versions, as I suspect many users are even more superstitious than me ;-)

•	[Language] Updated translation : German. Also, I completed the French translation (more exactly the Registration notes).
•	[Language] New translations : Serbian (by Igor Zivkovic) and Hebrew (by Adi Safin).
•	[Great] Finally added Online 2-player gaming to Kyodai ! If you can connect two computers via a TCP/IP link, or you have access to the Internet, then you can play Kyodai online ! This preliminary version has been tested a lot on a local network (where it works great), but needs more testing on the Internet. Hopefully it will work as good as on a LAN.
•	[Cool] The 2-player game had a problem : its "quick turn" concept was not very fun to play with. So I added two new game types : "30-second turns" (playable offline or online) allows you to play for 30 seconds before the game switches to your opponent. "Deathmatch" (online only) allows both opponents to play at the same time... Now have fun ! :-)
•	[Cool] Added a "Background Cube" option similar to "Background Sphere" and v10.21. This was a user request ;-) Actually it was a good idea to put it back.
•	[Cool] Applied Particle Animations to all the games (not only the Solitaire). I really like how they kind of improve Slider now !
•	[Cool] Now the "Kyo.ini" file is recreated with each new version and named accordingly (for v14.00 it's called "Kyo14.00.ini"). This way, the preferences are reset each time you install a new version, reducing the chances of compatibility problems.
•	[Cool] Now the MOD and MP3 files are clearly separated from the Midi files in the Music menu.
•	[Cool] Now the board's movement is smooth when you drag it with the right mouse button. Looks really good !
•	[Cool] Now the window coordinates are saved for the next time when you use the "Play in a Window" mode.
•	[Cool] Now all the questions that used to be asked when launching Kyodai for the first time are gathered into the language selection dialog box. This way, the questions can be translated on the fly when you change the language. Also, it allowed me to add several more questions.
•	[Cool/Fix] Changed "Moves left" to "Free pairs" because it makes more sense. I was getting bored of being asked what it meant ;-)
•	[Fix] You can now delete the current high score list right after you win a game. This was another user request ;-)))
•	[Fix] Fixed problem with the camera animation that made the board rotate several times on itself.
•	[Fix] Fixed lighting problems when shuffling in 3D mode.
•	[Fix] Fixed "Level 2-10" startup problem in Hashira. Now the game starts correctly at the level you ask for.
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed potential Z-Buffer problems in Hashira and Slider.
•	[Fix] As often, more minor fixes and improvements I forgot to mention... ;-)

New features in version 12.42 (August 3, 2000)

•	[Language] Updated translation : German.
•	[Cool] Added a Camera animation (3D) when you start a game. I'd been thinking of this one for years ;-)
•	[Cool] Added a Particle animation (3D) when you remove a pair of tiles, disabled by default (activate it via the Animations menu). I hope I'll be able to improve it in a future version.
•	[Cool] Modified Camera-based contemplation mode to make it more similar to the 10.21 version.
•	[Cool] Removed "Optimize Speed" option because I've been able to remove the limitations of the optimization - so now the game is always optimized. ^_^
•	[Cool] Added MP3 music support. You must have an MP3 codec installed on your computer to be able to play them in Kyodai, though. If you don't have one, install the latest version of the Windows Media Player from www.microsoft.com ;-)
•	[Cool] Modified startup code to make sure Kyodai can be started without a sound card.
•	[Cool] Modified board dragging (with the right mouse button) to make it look better.
•	[Cool] Improved the playing board and other things in Slider.
•	[Cool] Greatly improved the speed of Clicks, Slider and Hashira in Bump mapping mode.
•	[Cool] Fixed visual aspect of Hashira in Emphasized mode. (The tiles no longer bump into the wall ;-))
•	[Cool] Fixed a Matrox G400-specific problem where the tiles could be deformed in some cases in fullscreen mode. Matrox recognized that this is a bug in their drivers and will try to fix it. In the meantime we worked together and found a temporary fix.
•	[Fix] Removed the "Congo Nights" MOD music, maybe only for a short time. I'm waiting for a comment from the author. Sorry about that.
•	[Fix] Fixed problem when "Animate Tiles in Solitaire (2D)" was disabled (the tiles didn't disappear).
•	[Fix] Fixed ratio problem when starting Kyodai with "Maintain aspect ratio" enabled.
•	[Fix] Fixed all other ratio problems in 2D and 3D mode. There were more than I thought !
•	[Fix] Fixed or improved a few things here and there...

New features in version 12.07 (July 26, 2000)

•	[Language] Updated translations : Polish and German.
•	[Language] Now the name of the game in the caption bar is translated.
•	[Cool] Added a "Background Sphere" option to map the background on a sphere surrounding the board. It really looks nice !
•	[Cool] Added a High Quality Stretching option to the 3D mode. Same idea as for the 2D mode, of course.
•	[Fix] Fixed a problem where the high scores couldn't be deleted for any Solitaire layout (other games worked fine).
•	[Fix] Fixed a small bug that would prevent the Help window to show correctly in DirectX fullscreen mode.
•	[Fix] Fixed or improved a few things here and there...

New features in version 12.02 (July 18, 2000)

•	[Tileset] New tileset : Dreaming, by John Nicholas, based on Australian aborigen paintings. My girlfriend has been playing it exclusively for over one year so I guess it's probably a good one ;-)
•	[Language] The "Yes", "No", "OK" and "Cancel" captions in the dialog boxes can finally be translated ;-)
•	[Language] Updated translations : Russian and Polish.
•	[Cool] Implemented a camera-based contemplation mode, similar (but not identical) to Kyodai 10.21.
•	[Cool] Implemented "Play in a window" feature for nostalgics. I couldn't do it before because I had to optimize maximized mode first.
•	[Cool] Now the "View Tiles" feature (which is now in its own separate window) shows high-quality tiles.
•	[Cool] Improved the Memory game by removing the annoying delay between each pair of tiles. Still needs to be improved, though, IMHO.
•	[Cool] Added a cool new splash logo made by dines (David Durrenberger).
•	[Fix] Non-textured mouse cursor : found a workaround for flickering cursor problems. (Notably for ATI video cards)
•	[Fix] Textured mouse cursor : improved 2D support to avoid important lag times when moving the mouse over the background.
•	[Fix] Fixed a long-lived problem that would occasionally popup a Game Over window after one second...
•	[Fix] Fixed a problem that could cause Kyodai to forget registration details when upgrading from v10.21 to the latest version.
•	[Fix] Fixed a problem that could cause Kyodai to crash when attempting to exit after you'd clicked on the toolbar twice in a row.
•	[Fix] As often, a lot of other minor fixes and improvements I forgot to mention... ;-)

New features in version 12.01 (July 6, 2000)
From now on, I'll refer to the interface backgrounds as "skins".

•	[Skin] Added a new Wood texture to the Interface backgrounds.
•	[Language] Updated the English and French language files to remove most (all ?) of the unused entries.
•	[Language] Updated translations : German, Polish and Finnish.
•	[Cool] Improved the buttons to give err, well, a much better look.
•	[Cool] Slightly improved the way tiles disappear in 3D (they shrink when fading away).
•	[Fix] Fixed the problem involving the space being replaced by an underscore in the Hall of Fame... Now you can enter again spaces in your name ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed the broken alpha blending effect at startup.
•	[Fix] Fixed potential problems with long lists of items in the menus.
•	[Fix] Fixed potential problems in the status bar, especially when using small skins.
•	[Fix] As often, a lot of other minor fixes and improvements I forgot to mention... ;-)

New features in version 12.00 (June 24, 2000)
I would like to dedicate this update to John Nicholas, who passed away on April 14, 2000.

•	[Music] *sob*... Great moment for me. I have the pleasure of adding to Kyodai an excellent music called Stranglehold. It's a very small MOD file composed by music genius Jeroen Tel, who gave me his authorization to include it. Jeroen is the artist who composed two of my favorite tunes of all times, Cybernoid and Cybernoid II. Isn't that moving ? ;-)
•	[Music] And a new original song from Miguel Samiez ! It's called Rain Dust and it's a beautiful blend between oriental and south-american music. Thank you, Miguel ! :-)
•	[Language] Updated translations : Polish (by Wojtek Michalski), Finnish (by Sampo Vesanen), Czech (by Petr Simek), German (by Klaus) and Danish (by Per Wogelius).
•	[Background] New background : Cowra Gardens, courtesy of Geoffery Sharp. As for Seashore, this picture was taken in Australia.
•	[Background] New background : Galadriel's Pool, courtesy of William Hayes. Nice colors !
•	[Tileset] New tileset : Ancient, by Marc Lesselberg, based on John Nicholas' Ivory tileset.
•	[Layout] 10 new layouts : Fortress (from Sampo Vesanen), Scales of Justice (by Tony Wood), and several by Nanami Nakamura : Abstract Building, Angel, Three Wells, Eight Stacks, and Four Winds : Bei, Dong, Nan and Xi.
•	[Great] Implemented a new skin-based interface where you can choose the Interface Background (skin) for menus and windows.
•	[Great] Implemented a self-made menu that works on all video cards (including Voodoo). Better than the normal menu in all aspects. I'm proud of this one :-)...
•	[Cool] Re-implemented version 10.21's good old game selector. The "new one" was simply not good-looking enough, and everybody was complaining about the difficulty levels having disappeared, even though the status panel clearly said how to set them... ;-) Also, the new selector benefits from the new design changes.
•	[Cool] Implemented 2D mode on Voodoo cards. The engine is now much more flexible but slightly slower (I'd say 5 to 20% depending on your configuration). Still fast anyway ! :-)
•	[Cool] The new improved toolbar allows translations to be of any size. The buttons will enlarge in case the translation is longer.
•	[Cool] Modified window structures to allow Voodoo users to see them without having to go out of fullscreen mode. This one took a long time to implement !
•	[Cool] Modified Voodoo support to enable textured mouse cursor and background without interfering with the main driver.
•	[Cool] Now the DirectX settings can be modified from within anywhere in Kyodai (instead of just the selection screen).
•	[Cool] Added splash logo, designed by Marc Lesselberg, based on some of my concepts plus my older splash logo ;-)
•	[Cool] Added choice between the old Hall of Fame background and the new one, which is actually the default background texture.
•	[Cool] Added "Enable DirectSound engine" option in the Configuration menu. If you have some problems with the sound engine introduced in v11.21, you can choose to disable it and use the 10.21 Wave engine instead. Note that it will disable automatically the MOD music support.
•	[Cool] Modified Total Immersion mode : moved the option to the View menu, and removed the menu from the elements it controls. The menu can be quickly shown or hidden via the "Menu" option in the popup menu.
•	[Cool] Removed resizing ability for the window. A quick poll proved that virtually everyone was playing Kyodai in a maximized window, so I've modified the behavior of the caption bar so that when you double-click on it, Kyodai will either show or hide the taskbar. Please note that when the taskbar is hidden, you're not yet in a DirectX fullscreen mode. You have to call the DirectX dialog box and enable the "Fullscreen" checkbox if you want a real DirectX fullscreen mode.
•	[Fix] Removed limitation of INI-files to 32kb - which caused a problem with the hall of fame file when a lot of entries were recorded. Also, the new INI-file loader is twice faster.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug from v11.56 where switching between 2D and 3D would generate an access violation if "Quick DirectX Start" was enabled. Also fixed the Cool Borders access violation (when using 3D mode).
•	[Fix] Fixed popup menu positions while playing.
•	[Fix] Fixed broken load/save game support.
•	[Fix] Fixed broken Automatic Quicksave support.
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed tile corner problems in 32-bit mode.

New features in version 11.56 (May 15, 2000)

•	[Language] Updated translation : German, by Klaus Gahlmann.
•	[Very Cool] Optimized Kyodai in 3D to get up to 20% better performance compared to the previous versions ! Wow ! ^_^
•	[Very Cool] Added Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2 support - more precisely, support for these (old but popular) 3D cards that can't render in a window. It took over a week to make the needed modifications to the engine. Phew ! ;-)
•	[Cool] Added "Texture as mouse" option in the (new) Compatibility menu, for video cards that don't support the hardware mouse cursor correctly in 3D mode. Cursors made by Marc Lesselberg and me.
•	[Cool] Added "Quick DirectX Start" option in the Configuration menu. It allows you to bypass the DirectX driver enumeration process.
•	[Cool] Added "Texture as background" option in the Compatibility menu, for the same reason. The texture's dimension is 256x256.
•	[Cool] Added "Double-sized Mouse cursor" option to show a larger mouse cursor if you have trouble seeing it (this can be useful in large resolutions).
•	[Cool] Put back missing animations from v10.21 to the 3D mode, for the Rivers, Clicks and Slider games.
•	[Cool] Put back missing option from v10.21 : "Highlight in 3D mode".
•	[Cool] Implemented "Animate Board while building it" option in the 3D mode. Well, I don't like this animation anyway... (I prefer the fade-in ;-))
•	[Cool] Added "Vertical Synchronization" option to synchronize the display with the current monitor refresh settings.
•	[Fix] Fixed small bug which disabled the animated cursor since v11.21 - took me hours to figure out the few missing lines I had to add to my code.
•	[Fix] Fixed startup crash that happened if you didn't have the mppsdk.dll file in your Kyodai directory. Now that explains why so many users had problems with the Light version...
•	[Fix] Now the game is more playable in software mode than before, because the selection mechanism's precision doesn't rely anymore on the framerate.
•	[Fix] Fixed a strange bug after you entered the hall of fame, which either slowed down or crashed your machine. Phew ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed a stupid (and old !) bug that happened if you played the Memory game with the option "Only possible moves" enabled.
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed the infamous speed problem of the Rivers game, when you're about to finish it.

New features in version 11.42x (April 28, 2000)

•	[Fix] Fixed a startup crash that happened only in fullscreen mode.
•	[Fix] Fixed a crash that happened when switching from a resolution to another (via the DirectX settings). This one took a long time to understand... ;-)

New features in version 11.42a (April 27, 2000)

•	[Cool] Added a useful option if you experience problems with Kyodai. If you're in a situation where you need to delete the "Kyo.ini" file as recommended in the help files, you can just browse through the Start menu, go to the Kyodai submenu and click on "Reset options" instead of "Kyodai". This will automatically delete the "Kyo.ini" file before launching Kyodai, enabling you to get the original settings back.
•	[Fix] Fixed bug from v11.42 where the menu items and toolbar buttons would be incorrectly enabled and disabled.
•	[Fix] Fixed a startup crash that happened if you'd selected "Show Manga Girls" and activated the 2D mode.

New features in version 11.42 (April 26, 2000)

•	[Tileset] New Small Tileset : "Desert", from Marc's site. Cool colors !
•	[Tileset] New Tileset : "Catalin", courtesy of John Nicholas.
•	[Background] New Background : "Lovers", courtesy of Desktopdreams.net
•	[Language] Updated translations : German, Slovenian and Polish.
•	[Language] New translation : Hungarian (Magyar). I actually don't know if that's a variation of Hungarian language or just an updated translation... ;-)
•	[Language] At last ! The help files have been translated to French ! Namely the Rules, Miscellaneous, Troubleshooting file and the Menu descriptions. Thanks to the translator, who wishes to remain anonymous ! ;-)
•	[Cool] Added a "Set Volume" option to call the Windows control panel for setting volume. This time, it should work ! ;-)
•	[Cool] Added an optional animation effect for Shuffles in 3D.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug in the "Show Menu" feature.
•	[Fix] Updated some parts of the help files I'd forgotten to modify.
•	[Fix] Fixed possible memory leaks when changing a background or a tileset.
•	[Fix] Fixed possible bug in Hashira which caused the game to end immediately.
•	[Fix] Fixed a small bug that would show an empty board when you start a Slider game.
•	[Fix] Fixed the 2D and 3D animations in Rivers, Clicks and Slider. They were just too fast to be seen ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed two language strings I forgot to include in the translation files : "Select a game..." and "Tile Borders".
•	[Fix] Multiplied by 10 (or so...) the speed of high-quality stretching. Sorry for this problem from v11.21 and v11.25 !
•	[Fix] Fixed broken support for older tileset formats in 3D mode (the tile backgrounds were always black with v11.21).
•	[Fix] Removed the scrolltext (some people didn't like it at all, and I hadn't enough inspiration to write a new text for this version... ;-))
•	[Fix] Applied various user requests, including the fact of removing the scrolltext when "Animate Pause and Start screens" is disabled.
•	[Fix] Also optimized the speed of the 2D engine in general. In any case, though, it's still recommended to run Kyodai in 16-bit color depth.

New features in version 11.25 (March 27, 2000)

•	[Language] Updated translations : Russian and Czech.
•	[Cool] Added a new tile border type in 3D mode : "Ivory". It actually simulates a real Mahjongg tile, with ivory and wood.
•	[Cool] When you enter the hall of fame, the focus is now set on the player's name, so that you could change faster if it's not yours.
•	[Cool] Improved "Optimize Speed" performance gain by about 5-10% :-)
•	[Fix] Fixed a minor bug in the registration process.
•	[Fix] Fixed the tileset disappearing in 2D mode when selecting a solid background.
•	[Fix] Fixed some color problems when removing tiles with Colored Layers enabled.
•	[Fix] Fixed the texture coordinates for tile borders, improving realism on some tilesets.
•	[Fix] Fixed (hopefully) a problem that corrupted the small font in 32-bit mode.
•	[Fix] Fixed the absence of 3D alpha-blending in 32-bit mode.
•	[Fix] Added a few missing entries to the language files.
•	[Fix] Fixed some French language text.

New features in version 11.21 (March 21, 2000)
This version was released on time for my 25th birthday ;-)

•	[Background] New backgrounds courtesy of Desktopdreams.net : Stonehenge and Swan
•	[Background] New backgrounds courtesy of William Hayes : Inca and Horse Run
•	[Tileset] Replaced Tumi's 3D Marble with a better version called 3D Stone :-)
•	[Language] Updated translation : Korean.
•	[Music] New music from Miguel : The Sad Song (In Dulana Part 5). It's part of his Original Soundtrack CD for Kyodai. Another fantastic piece of music ! Judge for yourself... ;-)
•	[Music] Miguel replaced God's Reminding with his final mix from his Soundtrack Album, where he replaced the piano by a guitar and raised the tempo. The result is fabulous :)
•	[Music] It seems like the Remix version of Fairy Tale, promised v10.00, was never included in the distribution. Nobody complained about that mistake ^^;... Here it is now ;-)
•	[Great] Added support for DirectX : Direct3D (for 3D), DirectDraw (for 2D) and DirectSound (for these silly sound effects).
•	[Great] Added some cool multi-texturing effects to the 3D board... Environment Mapping looks cool, but you'll probably love the Bump Mapping effect if you have a G400 card !
•	[Cool] The menu option "Optimize Speed" will do its best to offer a fast speed in 3D (up to 20% better performance with the Traditional layout for example). If you are using Bump Mapping, Kyodai will remove it from the game areas where it slows down the game too much, such as Clicks.
•	[Cool] Moved the Highlight menu to a Configuration submenu. It makes some more room in the main menu... Also moved several other entries and removed useless ones.
•	[Cool] Added a nice new animation effect in 2D : Ghost, where the tiles fade out when they are removed (like in the 3D mode).
•	[Cool] Added game selection screenshots for the 3D version :-)
•	[Cool] All games now have their own difficulty level. NB : You can change it individually by clicking the right-mouse button when selecting a screenshot in the Game Selector.
•	[Cool] Made the Memory game funnier and harder at the same time, by using the whole tileset and not only the characters.
•	[Cool] Due to a massive request from my users (otherwise I wouldn't have cared much), I've added an option to determine if the hall of fame saves dates in French (dd/mm/yy) or US (mm/dd/yy) format.
•	[Fix] Fixed the benchmark routine to show a much more accurate framerate. But even without benchmark, anyone will notice how faster v11.21 is than v10.21 ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that seems to have appeared in v10.00 : when using the Quicksave or Save options, the board would not redraw automatically and would force the user to press the "Pause" button twice to show it.
•	[Fix] "Show Current Tile" now works in 3D.
•	[Fix] Removed the Volume Control option because most of the time it wouldn't work. Just use your Windows volume control panel...
•	[And of course] A *lot* of improvements and modifications have been made during the 5 months of development of this version. You'll hopefully discover the rest by yourself.

New features in version 10.21 (October 8, 1999)

•	[Language] Updated translations : Russian and Slovakian.
•	[Tileset] Added a great new tileset from Tumi : 3D Marble. Wow ! A little dark but impressive... Tumi is working on some very nice alternate backgrounds for this tileset.
•	[Cool] Implemented a new hall of fame format. It is able to read the old-style scores (although the old versions of Kyodai can't read the new format), and it is much more flexible than before. Only drawback : if you have a nickname with a space in it (for example, "It's me"), the entries related to this nickname will be screwed up. Sorry about that ! Also, I'm still not sure whether the hall of fame bugs are definitely fixed or not... But I strongly think they are ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed all charset problems in Kyodai. Someone sent me a screenshot of the Russian version of the About box, and I could find very easily what had gone wrong. This should be a great enhancement for the translations that don't use the roman alphabet. :-)
•	[Fix] Fixed the small problem that "cropped" the high scores above 10.000 for Slider in the Hall of Fame panel. The correct score was saved, though ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Enabled the MOD music player in Fullscreen mode. Previously, you could only hear digital music in window mode.

New features in version 10.00 (October 1, 1999)

•	[Language] New translations : Slovakian (by Miroslav Halmo) and Hungarian (by Less Ferenc).
•	[Language] Updated translations : German, Czech, Danish, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Croatian, Chinese and French.
•	[Background] New background, Keshiki, drawn especially for Kyodai by Aurore Demilly. As you can see, she's a very talented French artist !
•	[Layout] Added 20 new layouts : 3D Pyramid, Checkers, Dude, Fish, Five Pyramids 2, Full Vision, Full Vision 2, K for Kyodai, Phoenix, Seven, Square, Stonehenge, Tower and Walls, Tree of Life and Wavelets, as well as several Traditional variations : Traditional Reviewed, H for Haga, K for Kyodai, N for Namida and Naoki Haga. I promise you these aren't from me... ;-)
•	[Music] Fairy Tale is now available in a new and improved version from Miguel again !
•	[Music] TWO new songs from Miguel !! God's Reminding and Legend : God's Reminding II ! Very Philip Glass-like, this time... :-)
•	[Music] Finally added some MOD songs to the Full version ! First, a music from Miguel Samiez : Folk'n'Storm. Then, three songs from three very talented Norwish composers, Spin Dizzy and pOW : Congo Nights, A World Against Me 2 and Flying. Thanks to them for allowing me to include them in Kyodai ! ;-)
•	[Music] Added the MOD DLL by default to the Full version.
•	[Tileset] Added a new tileset from John Nicholas : "Wood". As always, very nice work ! ;-)
•	[Tileset] Added Small Tileset : "Balls", by William Nesemeier. Another hard one ! ;-)
•	[Cool] Added the Keshiki background to the startup process. Better than a black screen, no ? ;-) Please note that it won't look good in 640x480 and 1280x1024... ;-) Also, it's not perfect yet. I'll try to improve that section in the future.
•	[Cool] Due to (heavy !) user requests, I've implemented the "Random Layouts" option in the "Play" menu. When you enable this option, clicking on the "New" button or the "Last Played Game" menu option will always start a new random layout from the list.
•	[Cool] Changed the "Hall of Fame" panel's background. I was starting to think that it needed to be a "real" picture instead of a simple logo on a purple box... It's a little bit less readable now, but it looks much better. Doesn't it ?
•	[Cool] Added ability to show and set the volume control for Midi and Wave, and show MOD Equalizer for MOD songs. You can right-click on the equalizer to set the sound quality.
•	[Fix] Corrected a small bug in "Random Music" with MOD support.
•	[Fix] The 2D Animation Speed was incorrectly loaded at startup. This is now fixed.
•	[Fix] Fixed a minor problem that would, in certain cases, "repeat" the tile removal animation in 3D mode.
•	[Fix] Fixed a long-lived bug in the Layout Editor where any new layout would cause trouble within the layout list.
•	[Fix] Fixed a small bug that would occasionally prevent you from disabling the OpenGL DLLs, even when you're not using them.
•	[Known Issue] The Hallfame.ini filesize is limited to 64kb. This is not a bug related to Kyodai itself. And it has always been there. But it's more likely to be a problem now that there are so many layouts and entries provided. I have no idea how to fix the problem.
•	[Possible Issue] A few beta-testers have reported that they experienced some "... is not an integer value" and hall of fame entries removed. As this may happen in case the Hallfame.ini file is edited by the user, I always asked them if they had edited it. No one chose to reply. So it may be a bug, but since I haven't made any serious changes to the score engine, it is very unlikely. My advice is to make a backup of your Hallfame.ini in another directory. In case I discover it's a real bug, I'll post a bug fix in a future 10.x version. I'm planning to start a new more reliable scoring format in v11.0...

New features in version 1999 / 9.99 (September 9, 1999)
This is Kyodai 1999, released on 9/9/99. My tribute to Leiji Matsumoto, for those who know his works :-)

•	[Language] Updated translations : German (a lot of help files from Klaus Gahlmann), Slovenian, Polish, Portuguese, Finnish, Swedish, Chinese.
•	[Language] New translation : Lithuanian, by Laurius Vaitkevicius.
•	[Tileset] New tileset : Egyptian, from Oubliette Ganryû. Nice Egyptian style set.
•	[Background] New background : Eclipse, from Stéphane Neveu, taken during the total eclipse in France on August 11, 1999. One of the most beautiful events in my life. It had to be in Kyodai, believe me.
•	[Layout] Ten new layouts (it's been a long time !), mostly from Kyodai users : Scorpion, F-15 Eagle, High & Low, Yin & Yang, Bridging, Gayle's, Inca, Portal, The Temples of The Sun and Moon, and Temple. There are a lot of "&" and "Temples", I know... ;-) Now there are a total of 50 layouts in Kyodai !
•	[Layout] Added a wider selection of layouts in the default Favorites, for those like me who are too lazy to add Favorites to their menu ;-)
•	[Great] [Music] New music from Miguel Samiez ! Fairy Tale is a wonderful Oriental music that will enlighten your day ;-)
•	[Great] [3D] Implemented the Slider game in 3D. Now, all of the games in Kyodai can be played in 3D ! ^_^
•	[Cool] [3D] Added cool effect when you move the mouse :-) Beware of the headaches ! ;-) You can access it in the "Contemplation mode" submenu. There are two different speeds for the effect ("Follow Me"). Works only in Highlight mode. Thanks to Takashi Nimura for the idea ! ;-)
•	[Cool] [3D] Added Contemplation mode to all games... ;-)
•	[Cool] [3D] Added a nice fade-out effect to the tile animations in 3D Hashira.
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented tile animation to the 3D Clicks game. I'd forgotten that.
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented score animation to the 3D Hashira game.
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented "Emphasize 3D effect" to the Small Tileset games (Clicks, Hashira, Slider).
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented "Keep Aspect Ratio" to the 3D Solitaire game.
•	[Cool] [3D] Improved tile animation in 3D, not to interfere with mouse moves and tile clicking. Now it's much more natural.
•	[Cool] [3D] Added several texture sizes for the background : 64x64, 128x128, 256x256 and 512x512. Please note that 3Dfx cards don't support 512x512 textures. No comment.
•	[Cool] Added 10 more entries to the Hall of Fame. Now you can have up to 20 entries for each layout or game. Switch between them with the lower-left corner's button in the Hall of Fame dialog box ! ^_^
•	[Cool] Implemented "Random Music" option to the MOD songs. Hopefully it will work perfectly now. :-)
•	[Cool] Added current game name to the title bar.
•	[Cool] Adjusted some code to, hopefully, improve the highlighting speed at all resolutions.
•	[Cool] Replaced the Small tileset Kanji's Joker tile with the one from the Embroid tileset.
•	[Fix] Updated the Menu.rtf help file... Forgot to do that in previous versions ! ;-) It's always a pain for me to maintain the help files... ^^;
•	[Fix] Finally fixed the possible problems with dates in the Hall of Fame... Now, the date is properly handled and stored under the format : DD/MM/YY.
•	[Fix] Finally fixed (as well !) the infamous score bug in Slider, where you couldn't enter a score over 10.000 points... Now the limit is 100 million points ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed a problem with the cool mouse cursor in Clicks 3D...
•	[Fix] Fixed a cosmetic problem in 3D mode when the highlight box hits a shadow.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that caused problems when using the mouse wheel when OpenGL wasn't activated.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that would cause problems in your hall of fame if you load a game that's different from the one you're currently playing, then you win it. Message to the one who reported the bug : phew, it took a long time to fix... ;-)
•	[Fix] A few other minor bugs were fixed...

New features in version 9.42 (August 10, 1999)

•	[Language] New translations : Slovenian (by Irma Curk) and Romanian (by Gabi Geana).
•	[Language] Hopefully fixed two problems : installation problems due to the strange characters in some file names, and the encoding used for the Japanese text.
•	[Language] Updated : Afrikaans, Swedish, German, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified).
•	[Background] New backgrounds : Garden and Buddha (provided by Antonio Manuel Ferreira), and Storm (originally Seashore 1 by Nick Frame, I believe).
•	[Tileset] New tileset : Spheres, provided by SNeuvi@aol.com
•	[Great] [3D] Implemented the Hashira game in 3D. Added an object around the playfield to make it easier to spot the possible positions.
•	[Great] [3D] Implemented the Clicks game in 3D.
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented the Two-Player Solitaire game in 3D...
•	[Cool] [3D] Speeded up the 3D routines with hardware acceleration. In software mode, with all options disabled, I still have 2 fps. But in hardware mode, with all options enabled, I jumped from about 80 fps (with Kyodai 9.0) to an average of 200 fps... Wow. I hope it will be the same on older video cards ! ;-)
•	[Cool] [3D] Improved the Tile-Removal animation. Now the tiles fade away in a nice way...
•	[Cool] [3D] Improved the Lighting routines. Now, lighting in Kyodai really looks like the way it was first intended. Please note that this lighting type is rather CPU intensive.
•	[Cool] [3D] Funny little addition : if you have a wheel mouse, click the wheel (without rotating it) to switch the wheel mode. There are two wheel modes : zoom and rotation. Press Shift while moving the wheel to quickly switch between these two modes.
•	[Cool] [3D] Rewrote the "camera" routines. Now they handle rotations much better, and all these strange effects from the previous versions are history.
•	[Cool] [3D] Added a "Normal Background" option. I've finally figured out how to reproduce the background like it's represented in 2D mode, so here is the option ! ;-)
•	[Cool] [3D] Removed a useless instruction in the 3D mouse pick routine... Now it's MUCH faster than before ! (Can be noticed on small configurations !)
•	[Cool] [3D] Added "Emphasize 3D effect" mode. It "twists" the tiles to make them even easier to see. This way, you can achieve a readibility close to that of the 2D mode.
•	[Cool] [3D] Added cool 3D text in the Start and Pause screens. Well, it's nothing amazing, but it's a good start, no ? ;-)
•	[Cool] Added automatic saving of the "Double Height" and "Enable Top Edges" properties for the tile borders. I'd forgotten them in the previous versions....
•	[Cool] Finally changed the 16-color icon to a true-color icon that looks much better... Maybe it's not better than the previous one, but I was bored with that one...
•	[Cool] Added a nice bitmap to the installation program. I also removed the gradient window behind it. The latest version of Inno Setup is really good ! :-)
•	[Cool] Replaced the "OnIdle" timer (used for the Hashira game and the Start and Pause screens) with a "Threaded" timer. It's a much better way to do a timer, I just hope I've fixed every problem related to this change.
•	[Fix] Allowed Kyodai to use the ModPlug and OpenGL DLLs together. It used to crash my machine when I used both, but now it seems to be okay... If you have problems, please e-mail me and disable one of these DLLs.
•	[Fix] Fixed some "oops" bugs in the 3D games' initialization...
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug in the 3D Tile Animation routines.

New features in version 9.21 (July 16, 1999)

•	[Language] New translation : Portuguese (by Antonio Manuel Ferrera)
•	[Language] New translation : Korean (by Kim Hyungjin)
•	[Language] New translation : Afrikaans (by Alwyn Smit). I didn't even know this language existed in the first place ! ;-)
•	[Language] Updated several translations, as usual. Also, the Swedish translation was, I believe, rewritten from scratch by Margaretha Grimsen.
•	[Cool] Enabled clicking on a layout preview to play it (in the normal Layout Selector).
•	[Cool] [3D] Implemented the Memory game in 3D.
•	[Cool] [3D] Made various optimizations to the 3D mode, resulting in a 20% performance improvement on some configurations.
•	[3D] Improved Background Cube's and Tile Border's texture resolution in Anti Aliased mode.
•	[3D] Changed the "Height-based Lighting" option to make it more useful.
•	[Fix] Not really a "fix" but a change : I've removed the Cool Menu. It was painful to maintain two different menu styles, and it caused a lot of problems in 3D mode. I've kept the menu icons, although. I promise that, as soon as I find a good way to improve the menu's visual aspect, I'll do it. As a counterpart, the filesize is now 50kb smaller... :-)
•	[Fix] Enabled "Only Possible Moves" Highlight option in 3D mode
•	[Fix] Corrected two bugs with old-format tilesets that would mess up the borders in 2D mode and the tileface in 3D mode.
•	[Fix] As always, fixed and improved various things that I forgot to mention. Especially in the 3D mode.
•	[Fix] If your antivirus has detected a virus in Kyodai 9.0, just get another antivirus. It wasn't infected. I *always* check my PC for viruses. I've never had one on my machine. The problem is that ASPack (the packer I was using to compress Kyodai) is mistaken for a virus. So I switched to UPX. Which is also mistaken for a virus by some other programs. So, don't worry. Kyodai is safe. It's always been.

New features in version 9.0 (June 29, 1999)
Welcome to Kyodai 3D ! ^_^

•	[GREAT] A new giant step for Kyodai : the introduction of 3D ! It uses the OpenGL library, so you need to have a very good OpenGL-accelerated 3D card !! Otherwise the game will be unplayable. With my TNT2 video card, I've got a framerate over 100 fps ! I'd like to thank, for their support, Olivier Playez (author of MyMahj) and Dave Fileccia (who gave me some tips on implementing OpenGL). You can find more about the 3D version and the commands in the Miscellaneous help file.
•	[Great] Implemented in the 3D version : Tile-matching and Rivers games, shadows, textured borders, board rotation through right mouse button, mouse wheel and numeric pad, and so on...
•	[Language] New translation : Croatian, by Tomislav Mihalic
•	[Language] New translation : Simplified Chinese (for China), by ZhangZW
•	[Language] New translation : Russian, by Anatoly Svishchev
•	[Language] New translation : Polish, by Wojtek Michalski
•	[Language] New translation : Brazilian Portuguese, by Roberto Reboucas
•	[Language] There are now exacly 18 translations of Kyodai available ! For a total of 992kb of text files !
•	[Tileset] New tileset : China, by John Nicholas. This is currently my favorite tileset and the one I've been using extensively for beta-testing the 3D board. So, I guess I had to include it officially in Kyodai ! ;-)
•	[Tileset] New tileset : Real Tiles, by Mark Sanctuary. The most photo-realistic tileset available for Kyodai, scanned from an actual set. I wish I had one ;-) (Does anyone want to offer me a nice Mahjongg set for my birthday ? ;-))
•	[Tileset] Fixed the Kyodai.bmp tileset. On some configurations, the tiles would be messed up. So I converted it to 16 million colors (intuition ?), and now it works fine.
•	[Small Tileset] Added Fuji and Embroid (by John Nicholas), and Hard, Colors, Ivory and Relief by M. Lesselberg. These are the first alternative Small Tilesets for the Clicks, Slider and Hashira games.
•	[Background] Added new background : Dolphin, by David Webber. Nice and small one (37kb), but it looks much better in 24 or 32-bit color depth than in 16-bit.
•	[Cool] Added the ability to choose your own Small Tileset for the Clicks, Slider and Hashira games.
•	[Cool] Rewrote the tile animation in the Tile-matching game... Now it's smoother, it looks better, and you can keep playing while the animation is shown ! ;-) Also, when you play the Vertical variation and use the Classic or Nucleus animation type, the tiles will be removed vertically, not horizontally. Cool ^_^
•	[Cool] Rewrote, again, a large part of the graphic engine to allow for dynamic resizing of the tile borders... Which means you are no longer limited to 6-pixel wide borders :-)
•	[Cool] Speeded up the Clicks, Slider and Hashira games by rewriting their respective graphic engines... Hashira is now MUCH smoother than before !!
•	[Silly] For the record : between development of versions 7.77 and 9.0 (4 months), the About Box statistics showed me that I launched Kyodai over 7000 times ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed a "good old bug" where Hashira would stop when you paused it... As often, it was just a matter of adding a line of code ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Removed a really strange Clicks bug that made your score negative when you clicked on an empty area... Took me some time to figure out, but it was funny ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Improved some cursor-related routines to avoid having a "default" cursor when you should see the hand-cursor...
•	[Fix] Fixed a few links in the Help files (for example, the Spanish translation didn't show the translated help files).
•	[Fix] Fixed a few bugs (that could even lead to a crash) in the 2-Player and Board-building animation routines.
•	[Known Issue] The high scores are only encoded on 4 bytes, which creates problems when you score over 10,000 in Slider. The high score file format will be modified in a future version.
•	[Known Issue] The ModPlug DLL doesn't seem to accept the OpenGL routines. Until I have more time to investigate on this issue, I'm disabling ModPlug support when OpenGL is enabled. Also, the "cool menu" doesn't seem to handle very well OpenGL too, so I'll probably remove it in the future.
•	[Known Issue] The FullScreen and 3D modes are incompatible for now. I'm having trouble trying to find out why changing the window style causes problems with the OpenGL rendering context. Please keep in mind that I started learning OpenGL in early June, so I don't master it completely for now and there may be a few bugs hidden behind the 3D mode. Thanks for understanding.

Kyodai Mahjongg is © Copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by René-Gilles Deberdt.
All rights reserved.