New features in version 8.52 (May 17, 1999)

•	[Language] Updated various translation files
•	[Language] New translation : Japanese (by Takashi Yonemura)... Ureshii ^____^
•	[Language] New translation : Danish (by Per Wogelius)
•	[Language] New translation : Spanish (by Rafa Soria, dathomir5@hotmail.com)
•	[Language] New translation : Swedish (by Daniel Haragås, geezen@yahoo.com)
•	[Background] Added a new "Chinese painting" as a background : "ShoSuha.jpg"
•	[Tileset] Added "Easy" tileset (specifically designed for beginners...)
•	[Cool] Added optional Cool Window Background to all windows (except the main one) and the Game Selector.
•	[Fix] My... I can't believe it. I made a spelling mistake when I wrote my name in kanji in the Splash screen...! The "Ha" from "Haga" used the wrong character ! ^^;...
•	[Fix] Removed the strange "squares" that appeared on some backgrounds that were stretched to smaller dimensions.
•	[Fix] Fixed the various Layout Editor bugs that happened in Fullscreen mode. Also fixed another bug related to the Fullscreen mode.
•	[Fix] Improved Window position's handling (you can quit the game in maximized or Fullscreen mode without losing the initial position information).
•	[Fix] Fixed the Slider saved games to include the difficulty level.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug where the Cool menu remained in English while you had previously selected another language.
•	[Fix] Fixed the "All green tiles" bug in the Slider game ("oops !")...
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that happened with a few external Layout files.
•	[Fix] Fixed the "Edit Layout" button bug in the Layout Selector.
•	[Fix] Fixed a potential cosmetic problem in the Hall of Fame panel at startup
•	[Fix] Fixed two cosmetic bugs in the Layout Selector's Preview.
•	[Fix] Again, many fixes and improvements that I always forget to mention (for example : the Player 1 and Player 2 mentions are centered correctly now, switching to Fullscreen doesn't erase your current window position settings anymore, and so on...)

New features in version 8.42 (May 3, 1999)

•	[Language] Updated some translations...
•	[Language] Added support for Character Sets in the menus. This allows to view the text correctly with exotic language characters (the Czech and Chinese translations are especially concerned for now...)
•	[Language] Added support for Help files translation. If someone has the courage to do that... Good luck !! (You can, however, at least try to translate one file or two... But the hardest is not to translate a file, it's to maintain it if it was changed after a new release !)
•	[Language] Changed default language-file extension from ".lng" to ".txt", to allow for easier editing of the files.
•	[Language] New translation : Italian (by Marina Cerrai, marina.cerrai@connexia.com)
•	[Language] New translation : Norwegian (by Ingvild Karlsen)
•	[Tileset] Updated the "Ivory" tileset to add more colors and more "common" Flower and Season tiles (Thanks John)
•	[Tileset] Managed to re-introduce support for the old Tileset format... Kyodai now perfectly supports both formats, and there's no need to re-adapt the old tilesets anymore !
•	[Background] Updated the "Kanji" background with the new cursive characters... Looks more professional ;-) Also removed some backgrounds with unknown copyright status.
•	[Background] Added "Seashore.jpg", a photo took by Nick Frame from the Stanwell Park Beach, Australia.
•	[Background] Replaced "Dragons.bmp" with "China.jpg", a very old and nice Chinese painting provided by M. Lesselberg.
•	[Music] Great new music from Miguel Samiez : Endless. I loved it so much that I now use it as the default music for Kyodai.
•	[Great] Added Full Screen support :-)
•	[Cool] Allowed user to select Kyodai's main font. It is applied to the cool menu, the status bar, the toolbar, the Start screen and a few other windows. The main point was to allow you to choose a different character set (Charset) if you have trouble viewing your own translation of Kyodai.
•	[Cool] Rewrote the Center routine... Now the layouts are correctly centered, even in low resolutions. It makes the "Move Solitaire" function virtually useless, so I removed it.
•	[Cool] Added a progress bar in the status bar while loading a tileset. Interesting if you have a slow machine and the "Stretch Tileset" option activated...
•	[Cool] As for the ".kyo" games, I've added the ".lay" layout files in the registry. Now you can double-click a layout file to play it immediately ! The layout will be automatically copied into your Layouts directory.
•	[Cool] Added a dialog box at startup, called only the first time, to allow new users to choose their own language without having to browse though the menus...
•	[Cool] Optimized and speeded up the launching sequence (it's about 20 to 50% faster now) and the border-color changing (it's several times faster...)
•	[Cool] Added support for Personalized colors in the Color Picker (for setting your favorite Background and Tile Border colors)
•	[Cool] Now you change choose precisely what color you want the tiles' borders to have. Pretty neat.
•	[Cool] Added slight gradient effect to the tiles' borders. Toggled by "Cool Tile Borders" (View menu).
•	[Cool] Now the shadow size is relative to the tileset size (equal to a quarter of a tile's height).
•	[Cool] Found a really nice cursive kanji font on the Web, and used it to improve the "Kyodai Mahjongg" kanji logos in the Splash screen, the Hall of Fame panel's background and the Kanji background...
•	[Cool] Added new speed for Hashira : "Slow", which... slows down the columns to half the "Normal" speed.
•	[Cool] Rewrote the "Cool Menus" routine. Now, when you disable it, the "cool menu" is actually replaced with the default Windows menu. I'm glad I managed to implement this. It took me two days of work... Phew. By the way, the Windows menu looks cool when you change the language :-) Also, you can select "View all layouts" and scroll through the layout list with Windows' menu arrows ;-)
•	[Fix] Hopefully fixed another infamous bug where you couldn't remove a tile when it was on a border of the screen...
•	[Fix] Fixed a few bugs in the Layout Editor, including the infamous bug where you couldn't add tiles to a previously saved layout that has less than 144 tiles.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug in the "Back" function of Slider... (Oops ! ;-))
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that could happen at the end of a Slider game.
•	[Fix] Fixed the "Next" etc. positions when you change the language.
•	[Fix] As always, a lot of other minor bug fixes and adjustments...

New features in version 8.0 (April 8, 1999)

Production Notes :
- Well this new section in the "What's New" file will help me tell you things that don't fit in the list of new features.
- I've completely forgotten my private life to develop this new version in less than one month. I really wanted to have it released as soon as possible. Hopefully, thanks to the first Kyodai beta-session ever, all the bugs have been spotted and removed. However, since the whole structure has been widely modified, I may find some bugs soon. So, make sure you visit my website regularly to find new versions...
- I received the Ivory Tileset on the day I released this version, and I'm very enthusiastic about it, so I included it as the default tileset. However, it has a few drawbacks (lack of color diversity, confusing Seasons and Flowers), but I'll try to resolve them in a future version.
- That Statistics feature is cool. It told me that I've launched Kyodai over 2000 times since the release of Kyodai 7.77 ! 2000 times in one month... Wow.
- Make sure you read the "Menu" help file to find relatively detailed descriptions of all the features I've added in the menu.
- I was told there may be some problems with the Czech menu translations. I'm working on this. If you can read them correctly, please send me a mail.
- Don't forget you can download many optional components for Kyodai on my website : Tilesets, Layouts, MOD support and songs, new translations, etc...
- These translations are in the works : Danish, Japanese and Vietnamese... You'll find them on Kyodai's website (Extra Downloads) when they are available.

•	[Great] Completely rewrote the tileset format, in order to make them MUCH easier to create... Just have a look at a tileset file to understand how easy it can be to make a new tileset now...! The only drawback, aside from the incompatibility with the 10 other tilesets made for Kyodai before, is that the game doesn't look good in 256-color mode. However, Kyodai has always been optimized for 16-bit (or higher) color modes. I hope for you that you're not playing it in 256 colors and 640x480 ! ;-)
•	[Great] Partly rewrote the graphic engine as well, to make Kyodai fully resizable.
•	[Great] Added "Stretch Tileset" option to adapt the size of the tileset to the screen !! The tileset is resized perfectly !
•	[Great] Finally added, after so many requests, the Save Game feature !!! Currently implemented on three games : Solitaire, Slider and Rivers.
•	[Great] Added full multi-lingual support ! The languages can be changed on the fly... :-) The help files still have to be translated and implemented, however...
•	[Tileset] Added completely new tileset : Ivory, brought to you by John Nicholas. Thanks !
•	[Language] Fully Translated to French (by myself, of course, since I'm French ;-))
•	[Language] Fully Translated to German (by Michael Wingender)
•	[Language] Fully Translated to Dutch (by Joey Wisse)
•	[Language] Fully Translated to Czech (by Simek Petr)
•	[Language] Fully Translated to Traditional Chinese (by Tiberius Teng)
•	[Language] Fully Translated to Finnish (by Petteri Wirkkala)
•	[Cool] Finally added the Back function to the Slider game.... It allows to undo your last move.
•	[Cool] Added the ".kyo" saved games in the registry, so that you just need to double-click on a saved game to run Kyodai and play it !
•	[Cool] Added "Automatic Quicksave" option to save a game automatically when you leave Kyodai, and replay it the next time you launch Kyodai.
•	[Cool] Added "Stretch Background" option to adapt the size of the background to your screen, or tile it if disabled.
•	[Cool] Added "Maintain Tileset's aspect ratio" option to prevent the Tileset from being deformed when it's stretched.
•	[Cool] Optimized Slider and Hashira code. They should now be much faster than in the previous versions (especially Slider !).
•	[Cool] Completely rewrote the routine that shows shadows on the tilesets. They now are more realistic and based on the tiles' luminosity.
•	[Cool] Added support for JPG tilesets (since there's no more need of a mask, Kyodai can now handle more than 256 colors in the tilesets !)
•	[Cool] Added cool animation to the version number logo in the About Box :-)
•	[Cool] Updated the Menu help file (I hate having to make help files, you know !)
•	[Cool] Reduced the filesize even more by compressing the main EXE file :-)
•	[Cool] Now the currently selected tile in Slider is highlighted... (At last !)
•	[Cool] Split Slider in two different types of game : Easy (with jokers) and Hard (without jokers), for better (and fair) scoring handling.
•	[Cool] Press Ctrl+F1 (or "Move board" in the menu) to control the position of the Solitaire board... It's just a gadget, yep.
•	[Fix] Now the confirmation sound is played at the beginning of the animation when you remove a pair of tiles and have the "Animate Tiles" option enabled. Much better.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that would overestimate your final score in Hashira when entering the Hall of Fame.
•	[Fix] Corrected the date record in the Hall of Fame when you have your dates rendered as dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yy for example. It will not work if you have set it as yyyy/mm/dd... ;-)
•	[Fix] Fixed the Launch Button bug (in the Hall of Fame dialog box).
•	[Fix] Fixed the backgrounds' ".JPG" bug
•	[Fix] Removed a LOT of other little bugs !!

New features in version 7.77 (March 10, 1999)

•	[Cool] Improved the quality of the layout thumbnails by adding some colors to the small tiles...
•	[Cool] Added optional romanization of the tileset (shows a small letter or digit in the corner of every tile, meant to help you recognize the different tiles)
•	[Cool] Added "Launch" button to the Hall of Fame dialog box. It allows you to start a game directly from its high score list.
•	[Cool] Added optional animation when you click with the cool cursor... Well actually it only concerns the hand's forefinger ;-)
•	[Fix] Moved the MOD songs and ModPlug DLL from Kyodai to the website. It allows for a 250kb-smaller filesize and you can still install them if you want.
•	[Fix] Allowed the user to click the Cancel button in the "Select Background" and "Select Tileset" dialog boxes.
•	[Fix] Allowed enabling or disabling of the MOD music player... Since it seems to crash on certain configurations, it was strongly needed.
•	[Fix] I've forbidden the MOD file use when you enable the "Random Music" option, so that a MIDI file is always played.
•	[Fix] Corrected a few bugs in the "Show Current Tile" routines...
•	[Fix] Fixed a minor bug in the Gradient effect routines.

New features in version 7.42 (February 27, 1999)

•	[Music] Added support for MOD (digital music) files (thanks to the ModPlug DLL). Advantage : more realistic sounds. Drawbacks : doesn't work with "Random Music", and you can't hear the sound effects when you play a MOD file...
•	[Music] Added MOD files "Folk'n'Storm" and "Revenge Of", composed by Miguel Samiez... Some great early Amiga works ! "Revenge Of" is taken from the level 2 (aquatic level) of the popular shoot'em-up of the same name.
•	[Great] Simplified the Background and Tileset menus... Now, you can put your files in the Backgrounds and Tilesets directory to have them shown directly in the menus, as for the Music menus !
•	[Cool] Modified the structure of the Welcome screen, and added thumbnails to the existing games. Looks better, isn't it ? Please note that when you click on a thumbnail on Rivers, Memory and Clicks, you access my favorite version of each game (Hard Rivers, Easy Memory and Normal Clicks). Maybe in a future version I'll allow you to set your preference for each game...
•	[Cool] Added (optional) tile-removal animation.
•	[Cool] Made the falling Scores in Hashira look better...
•	[Cool] Added, in the View menu, an optional gradient effect to the None (Solid) Background option.
•	[Cool] Added choice of starting level to Hashira game -- Just click on the Level button in the Welcome screen.
•	[Cool] Added menu item "Show Games Panel during Pause", which enables you to show the Games panel (the one that appears when you start Kyodai) during the Pause. It is provided as an easy way (for me ;-)) to stop a game and start another one without having to use the menus.
•	[Cool] Splitted the Configuration menu in two menus : Configuration and Animations. It was way too large...
•	[Cool] Added Statistics page... Simply reports how many times you launched Kyodai... ;-)
•	[Fix] Changed the last game's name to "Hashira" (means "pillars" in Japanese), for personal reasons.
•	[Fix] Made a few internal changes... I didn't report them because most of them can't be seen directly in Kyodai...
•	[Fix] Fixed a strange bug in Columns introduced in v7.21 (sometimes it was running too fast).
•	[Fix] Removed the music "Dawn" from Kyodai... It turned out the so-called author was just a kid who stole it from a Website...
•	[Fix] Fixed a stupid bug in the "Time Tracking" option... Oops ! ;-)
•	[Fix] Added a license agreement... (Should have been there since v1.0 !)

New features in version 7.21 (February 12, 1999)
A lot of cool additions in my opinion... It's what Kyodai 7.0 should have been in the first place (but I released it two weeks too early ! ;-))

•	[Background] New backgrounds : Nebula (Eagle Nebula / M16), Mori (by Takashi Yonemura) and Hashi (by James Hoagland).
•	[Music] New music : Shinden, by Tamura. Actually it's a very old tune he sent me in April 1998 and that sleeped in my hard drive unnoticed for a whole year... ^^;
•	[Layout] Added Labyrinth, Cat and Mouse (by Lynnette Layton) and Cupola (author unknown).
•	[Graphics] New manga girl from Zahara Medina ! She hosts the Columns game... As I couldn't figure out when she would be smiling or not, I told her to do however she likes... ;-)
•	[Cool] Kyodai now installs by default in the "Program Files\Kyodai Mahjongg" directory. The directory name doesn't include the version number anymore. I had added it before because I didn't want a previously generated "Kyodai.ini" file to make a new version crash. But on the other hand, it forced people to copy their "Kyodai.ini" and "Hallfame.ini" files from their previous versions every time they installed a new one... Now, you can install it always in the same directory. The version conflicts in the future will be taken care of with a new value in the "Kyodai.ini" file, called "CurrentVersion".
•	[Cool] Added "Animate New Tiles in Slider" option, to enable or disable the small delay when adding new tiles in the Slider game. It was added after some people complained that they appeared too slowly.
•	[Cool] Added a Netscape look to the Splash screen by specifying what modules are being loaded.
•	[Cool] Added a cool moving "Pause" logo when you click on Pause... (Enable it in the Configuration menu)
•	[Cool] Added a moving "Kyodai" logo during the Start screen... (Enable it in the Configuration menu)
•	[Cool] "Animate Pause and Start screens" enables or disables the forementioned animations...
•	[Cool] Added "Allow joker in Slider game" to the Configuration menu. This enables or disables the use of jokers (question mark-shaped tiles) in the Slider game. Enable them to make the game easier. However, it could also make it longer (and boring) to play...
•	[Fix] Fixed the hand-shaped cursor on the Tile-matching game when "Highlight" is set to "None".
•	[Fix] Removed a small bug related to the 0-score entries in the Clicks game.

New features in version 7.0 (January 31, 1999)

•	[Great] An all-new game added to Kyodai : MahJongg Slider. As always, the goal is to remove as many tiles as possible, and it's a very addictive game. Enjoy !
•	[Great] Finally re-introduced the MahJongg Columns game into Kyodai ! 100% Windows API, which means it doesn't need DirectX anymore, while keeping the same animation quality ! (At least with a small Pentium II and a recent video card...)
•	[Music] A new music from Miguel ! It's called "Timeless" and it's fantastic !! I can feel the influence of Nobuo Uematsu and some minimalist composers :-)
•	[Layout] New layouts from users : Space Shuttle, Quad and Stairs by MinderTech, Leo and SunMoon by Lynnette Layton, and Step Pyramid (a very simple one) by Christian Pedersen. Oh, and two quick ones by me (Joker / 144 tiles and Orbital / 84 tiles). There are now a total of 40 layouts in Kyodai...
•	[Cool] Clarified the hall of fame. Now, when you haven't played a layout yet, its high score list is empty. It will show you only your own scores.
•	[Cool] Added "date" field to the hall of fame. Now, everytime you'll make a high score, the current date will be recorded as well. The good news is that this modification is compatible with previous Hallfame.ini files !
•	[Cool] Replaced the "futuristic" cursor with a hand-shaped cursor. I like it better. If you prefered the other one, please contact me, if several users ask for it, I'll add the choice for both cursors in a future version. But I'm sure you'll agree with me...
•	[Cool] The hand cursor appears only when you are over a tile.
•	[Cool] Added contextual menu with icons : right-click anyway on the board and you will get a popup menu with several features from the toolbar (for those of you who don't want it on your screen), plus the usual "Redraw" feature.
•	[Cool] The Layout Selector now shows, for each layout, the number of tiles it contains, and the number of maximum potential free moves when you start a game. The higher this number, the easier the game should be. This number doesn't concern the Vertical variation.
•	[Cool] You can choose, in the Layout Selector, to use the current background or a purple background in the Preview panel. The purple background doesn't look as good, but is more readable.
•	[Cool] Still in the Layout Selector, when you click on a Favorite Layout, it will be previewed as well.
•	[Cool] Now enabling or disabling toolbar buttons & menu items (Back, Hint, Shuffle) depending on whether or not they can be used in the current game.
•	[Cool] Added two new indicators to the Layout Editor's toolbar. Please refer to the main help file for more information.
•	[Cool] The Hard Memory game being definitely too hard, I reduced its tile number from 84 to 60.
•	[Cool] Added button "Play Same Game Again" to the Game Selector... Basically it just does the same thing as clicking on the "New" icon in the toolbar... I'm not sure whether or not it's useful... I'll see in the future...
•	[Cool] Added a surprising Easter Egg... :-) Thanks to Zahara for her complicity ! ;-)) It's not so hard to find... And no, I won't tell you what it is... Except maybe if you register ;-)
•	[Fix] I finally figured out how to solve the font problem in Kyodai when you use Windows' Large Fonts. Once and for all !
•	[Fix] Fixed several bugs in the Layout Editor. Introduced as well the "Temporary Layout", used to avoid erasing other layouts by mistake.
•	[Fix] Added some code to forbid creating "impossible" layouts with only one free tile.
•	[Fix] Kyodai now accepts up to 999 different layouts in the Layouts directory. Before this, it only accepted up to 99 layouts.
•	[Fix] Blasted an evil bug that could freeze your PC when launching a classic layout after playing a different game.
•	[Fix] Kyodai used to stop a game when you changed the background or tileset while being in Pause. Now it's fixed.
•	[Fix] Fixed the "Hint" bug in Rivers, which cause the function to show wrong hints.
•	[Fix] Fixed the "Moves Left" bug in Rivers, related to the Hint problem.
•	[Fix] A few other minor bugs removed as well...

New features in version 6.42 (November 20, 1998)

•	[Great] Finally enabled layouts with less than 144 tiles. The tile number has to be a multiple of 4.
•	[Cool] Added "View Favorites Only" menu item in the View menu. It allows you to choose whether you want the Layout menu to show all the layouts or only your favorites. It was added to help newbies understand the concept.
•	[Cool] The "Begin game at startup" feature now launches the last game played (Solitaire, Clicks, ...), and not the last layout played. Actually this fix was made in v6.28, but I'd forgotten to add it to the new features list.
•	[Cool] New button in the Random Seed window : "New seed (limit to 0-9999)". It limits the random seed generation to a 4-digit number, making it easier to remember if you want to send it to your friends...
•	[Cool] Added a "Print" button to the Help window. Now you can print the currently viewed RTF file (or the Tileset picture) directly from inside Kyodai, in color.
•	[Cool] Splitted the help file in several smaller help files, to make it much easier to find a specific information.
•	[Layout] Added "Crown" (144 tiles) , "River Bridge" (116 tiles) and "Japan" (96 tiles). Also added for the first time a few layouts from Kyodai users, all with 144 tiles. "Hourglass" by Vincent Krebs, and a lot of layouts by Alexis Bonvin : "Bizarre", "Boat", "Castle", Five Pyramids", "H for Haga" (hey this guy does like me ;-)), "Teotihucan", "Seven Pyramids" and "Pantheon". A total of 32 layouts are now included in Kyodai.
•	[Fix] Fixed a small bug where pressing "New" didn't start the correct game in some cases.
•	[Fix] Now the shadows are shown correctly for the left-most tiles in a layout (the problem wasn't very obvious).
•	[Fix] Corrected various problems in the Stop, Select Layout, Game Over and Two Player Game routines.
•	[Fix] Removed the "No more moves" mention when you press the <Back> button...
•	[Fix] Added the "Colored Tile" highlight method for the Memory game.

New features in version 6.28 (November 12, 1998)

•	[Fix] Fixed a bug that messed up the resolution-switching routine. Now, you get the correct colors in the game board, and the taskbar shouldn't cause any more problem under Windows 98.
•	[Fix] Fixed a minor glitch in the Shadow routines (I discovered it with the Screw Up layout).
•	[Layout] New layouts : Screw Up and The Great Wall. Now there are exactly twenty (20) layouts in Kyodai. Cool !
•	[Great] Added a "Favorite Layouts" listbox in the Layout Selector with full drag & drop support. Now, the Layouts menu only shows the layouts found in this box.

New features in version 6.21 (November 4, 1998)

From now on, I'll try to indicate in this text file which features are really important in my opinion ("Great"), or noticeable ("Cool"), or simple fixes ("Fix"). Oh, by the way, if you're still wondering how I choose my version sub-numbers (mostly 21, 28, 34, 36, 75...), well, there's nothing particular. Nothing scientific. Just don't bother.

•	[Fix] Fixed a bug where you couldn't finish a Hard Rivers game when you shuffled the game.
•	[Fix] Fixed a bug where you couldn't finish with a score of zero (empty board) in the Clicks game.
•	[Fix] A second release of Kyodai 6.21 (Kyodai 6.21a, uploaded a few hours after the first one) was simply aimed at correcting a few things in the Help file that were supposed to have been removed earlier.
•	[Cool] New menu item : "Pause game when losing focus". See the help file for more information.
•	[Cool] Added the ability to select a color for the "None" background feature, instead of being stuck with the Teal background. Warning : you might experience some bugs by calling this function several times in a row. It happens to me only when Delphi is running. I think it's a bug inside the Windows' Color picker routines.
•	[Cool] Implemented the Pause feature in the Two-Player game.
•	[Cool] Assigned two difficulty levels to Mahjongg Clicks : Easy (4 tile colors) and Hard (6 tile colors). For your information, v6.0 only had a 5 tile colors game.
•	[Cool] Simplified the "Specific Game" feature. I've removed the "New Random Specific Game" and replaced it with a button in the Random Seed dialog box ("New random seed game"). Now pressing "New Specific Game" directly calls the Random Seed dialog box : no more need to go to the Options dialog box.
•	[Cool] Added the "Congratulations" dialog box, shown at the end of a game. It tells you whether or not you are to enter the Hall of Fame, what is your final score, and it is a final chance for you to see the Manga Girls if you disabled the Hall of Fame panel ;-)
•	[Great] Finally implemented the "Moves left" indicator and the "Hint" feature in the Rivers game ! Now you can know if you're stuck and have no more moves left ! I hope you like this because I've spent a few hours tracking a heavy bug related to this. Enjoy !
•	[Great] Added an "Expand" button to the Layout Selector. It allows you to choose a new layout directly from a list of thumbnails.
•	[Great] Greatly improved the Hall of Fame dialog box. Now it shows your latest high score in inverted video, has a nice background and allows you to change the Player Name directly from within that dialog box.

New features in version 6.0 (October 25, 1998)

•	New game : Clicks. I'm sure you'll enjoy this one. It's rather different from my Tile-Matching games, but the purpose is still to empty the board ;-)
•	New music : Kawaii, by Miguel Samiez. Listen to it once and cry.
•	New graphics : welcome to my really cute "Manga Girls" drawn especially for Kyodai by the extremely talented Zahara Medina ! I'm really, really excited to work with people as fantastic as Miguel and Zahara. Thank you, my friends !
•	New button in the toolbar : Layout. It calls directly the Layout Selector.
•	New layout : Modern Art. As for "Kujaku", it is "physically impossible".
•	Many, many, many improvements as always... I really can't write them all down in this file because sometimes I receive a mail with a bug report or improvement suggestion, I apply the changes immediately and I answer the mail right after ;-)

New features in version 5.36 (October 16, 1998)

•	Added the Layout Selector. It features a real-time preview panel of the selected layout. And it allows you to have hundreds of layouts in your Layouts directory without having to worry !
•	Added a small panel at startup to enable you to choose very quickly what game you want to start.
•	Improved the "Switch to 800x600 at startup". Now it also switches the color depth to 16-bit, enabling you to see Kyodai's colors as they were created :-)
•	Fixed a really funny bug (When you pressed "Stop" and moved the mouse around the screen you could see the shadows of the previous game). I even thought of leaving that bug the way it was, but hey, it wasn't really professional ;-)
•	Fixed a bug that crashed the game when clicking "Exit" while Kyodai's window was not on focus.
•	Fixed a bug that wouldn't allow you to disable the "Begin music at startup" feature. Call me stupid ;-)
•	Fixed a few bugs that freezed the game in certain rare cases when getting stuck at the end of a game.
•	Speeded up the game a bit when removing tiles while having the "Shadows" feature disabled. (Someone told me it was too slow for his video card... ^^;) I think I've also managed to increase the speed with the "Shadows" feature enabled.
•	Fixed many minor bugs. I didn't take time to write down them all... ^^;

New features in version 5.28 (October 7, 1998)

•	New game : Mah-Jongg Memory (Concentration), with two difficulty levels. Good luck.
•	Fixed two Easy Rivers-related bugs. The most annoying one that you simply could not finish an Easy Rivers game...! Sorry again !
•	Fixed a bug that happened in Vertical mode when using the Only Possible Moves or Show Current Tile features.
•	Fixed the "Begin game at startup" bug.
•	Thanks to Vincent Krebs, by far my most efficient beta-tester, who found many of Kyodai's bugs by playing it extensively for weeks ;-)
•	Happy birthday to my Muse Hélène ^_^

New features in version 5.21 (October 6, 1998)

•	Fixed the small tile-animation bug.
•	Fixed two small bugs that prevented you from creating a layout... (Oops ^^;)
•	Added choice for showing or hiding the 3D shadows on the tileset. The performance loss when showing shadows isn't important, but the non-Pentium machines will probably be happy to have the choice...
•	Returned to that old, very old "physically-impossible" layout structure. It gives you much more freedom in creating layouts, but as a counterpart, you may also create layouts that are nearly impossible to solve because of... well, gravity problems. However I think most of the small problems I encountered in versions 4.* have been fixed by now.
•	Reintegrated the "switch to 800x600 at startup" function. Sorry, I'd forgotten it in v5.2...
•	Two new layouts, illustrating the new editor engine : Kujaku and Beatle. Yes, the return of the good old nightmare layout, Beatle ;-) And Kujaku is not bad as well when talking about difficulty... I needed over nine minutes to finish it the first time ! ;-)

New features in version 5.2 (October 5, 1998)

•	Back to the non-DirectX system. Although everything worked (nearly) perfectly for all of the beta-testers, a few people reported severe problems that caused their PC to crash. As I don't want to annoy my users, I've removed what I believe to be the source of these problems : the DirectX support. But my goal was to keep as many improvements as possible for this version. So, consider v5.0 as a "preview" of Chûdai, the stand-alone version of my Columns game.
•	The Open Dialog (used to select a new background or tileset) now shows a preview of the current file. Hey, that's a cool Delphi component I just discovered today...
•	Now there are two versions of Rivers : Easy and Hard. The easy version is the one-floor game seen in the first versions of Kyodai. The hard one is the two-floor game introduced in Kyodai 5.0.
•	Various minor modifications (too many to tell)

New features in version 5.0 (September 25, 1998)

Major features (in my opinion)

•	New game : Mah-Jongg Columns. Took me over a week to program. I think it's a hot feature and you'll really like it ! You can play with the keyboard or any DirectX-compatible joystick or joypad. Cool :)
•	Two fantastic new songs : Astral Dream and Night, by Miguel Samiez, a very talented friend who has a very nice future before him. I'll be the first to buy his first album ;-) You can contact him at esteban99@free.fr if you have some work for him to do :-)
•	Kyodai is now programmed with Delphi 3.0, not Delphi 2.0. It may bring some minor improvements that I'm not aware of... And some minor problems as well (but I don't think so).
•	Rewrote the graphic engine to use DirectX. It now should provide better performance in every domain. It is still running in a window and it uses the usual cursor. Unfortunately, this move caused many problems to Kyodai, and I had to spend a lot of time removing the bugs. Hopefully they have all been fixed, but you may experience problems with this first fully-DirectX version anyway. I've got many problems with the 256-color palette as well, but most of them have been fixed.
•	Rewrote the sound effects engine as well to use DirectSound.
•	Integrated the Help file & About windows into Kyodai's main window. It has two advantages : it pauses the game if you're playing, and it avoids minor problems if you're using the fullscreen mode.
•	New background : Catpats. If you're wondering, it's Helene's cat. Her name is a pun, it means "four legs" in French... :-)
•	Added JPEG support for the Background files (isn't that cool ? :))
•	Added cool 3D shadows to the tiles. Hey, I used to forget to add this feature to Kyodai. This time, I didn't forget it ! ;-)
•	Added the cool menu. You can disable the gradient title by clicking on "Cool Menu" in the View menu.
•	And the COOLEST thing of all : I've added a real 3D intro with a Kyodai logo moving around. It looks really nice, doesn't it ?

Minor features (in my opinion)

•	New layouts : Lost in the layout, N for Namida, Siam and Yummy. Now there are exactly 15 layouts in Kyodai !
•	Added choice for flat or non-flat buttons in the toolbar.
•	Rewrote the Tilesets routine so that it doesn't need a mask anymore. On the other hand, most tilesets designed for Kyodai have to be modified a bit... (Please refer to the "How to change the tileset" chapter)
•	Now your current game will be paused until you come back if you ever happen to minimize the window or switch to another application.
•	During the 2-player game, switching to the other player is now indicated by a large cool flashing logo. Thanks to DirectX :-)
•	I've changed the Status bar to a more complex panel, allowing cool bevels around the texts.
•	Corrected the infamous "Congratulations" bug that happened if you pressed "Exit" while creating a layout...
•	New tileset variation : Low color (Pai256), without the "marble/wood" background, optimised for 256-color systems...
•	Now Kyodai correctly remembers the last Solitaire board played when you left, even if you played a Rivers or Columns game in the meantime.
•	Andromeda is now a Jpeg file instead of a Bmp file. Don't use it on your 256-color system... ;-)

New features in version 4.75 (July 16, 1998)

•	The Two-player game is back, as announced earlier. I didn't change the version number to v5.0 because I don't think there are enough changes to justify that. The 2-player game's ergonomy is not perfect. Sorry about that. I'll try to improve it later.
•	Slightly changed the graphic engine. I've removed the ScrollBox, forbidden the resizing process, and so on. It was done to fix a bug that appeared under Windows 98, but it seems like it didn't work. Who cares.
•	Slightly changed the sound section as well. For example, I've replaced the ugly Media Player with an icon which toggles the play/pause state.
•	My new best time on Traditional : 2:18... I guess I need a bit more training to reach my best on this famous layout...
•	Added cool orange and blue backgrounds in the Help and About boxes, and icons on the toolbar. I like that.
•	Some more minor bugs fixed, and more fine-tuning.
•	New layout : Tilepiles. Yes, it's a stupid name. And it's a stupid layout as well.
•	Merci les Bleus !!! :-)

New features in version 4.52 (June 4, 1998)

•	The good old sound effects are back. The reason why they had been replaced by dummy sounds in the previous 4.x versions is that I was on vacation and using another PC than as usual, and I had forgotten to take with me the wave files... ^^;
•	The "Only possible moves" feature enables you to highlight only the tiles that you can remove. It makes the game much easier, of course, if you are a beginner. It is recommended to use this feature only when you try your first layouts.
•	Due to a popular request, I've enabled you to load any music you want in Kyodai. You just have to copy it in your \Kyodai\Musics directory. Launch Kyodai and you'll see its name appear in the "Music" menu. Select it and you're done !
•	Added "Random Music", which chooses automatically a new random music from the Midi list when the current music is finished.
•	Moved the "kyodai.ini" file from the Windows directory to the current Kyodai directory. It doesn't look very interesting, but actually it allows you to use a former version of Kyodai without problems. If you want to use the settings from a previous version, just copy your Kyodai.ini from the Windows directory to the Kyodai directory.
•	Moved the Hall of Fame from the "kyodai.ini" file to "hallfame.ini". If you have any problem with your configuration and need to delete your "kyodai.ini" file, you won't lose your highscores anymore. These files are simple text files and you can copy the highscores manually from your "c:\Windows\kyodai.ini" file (previous version of Kyodai) to "hallfame.ini". For example, if you want to get back the high scores for the layout "Traditional", just look for the section [Traditional] in your "kyodai.ini" file and copy the following data into your "hallfame.ini" file.
•	Moved the Layouts, Backgrounds, Tilesets and Musics to subdirectories of the same name. I hope it makes the directory easier to "understand". It works, for me... ;-)
•	Well... I've switched from my personal Installation Module to Inno Setup. I like its professional look. I may happen to switch back to my personal module in the future, if I find some time to improve it.
•	New layout (as usual) : Victory Arrow. I love this one...
•	You won't believe me... This time, I think I had no "minor bug" to fix ! ;-)

New features in version 4.34 (May 20, 1998)

•	The long-awaited "Winnable Layouts" feature. It enables the layouts to have at least one way to be finished. Previously, there was no way to know if you could finish the board without shuffling. The feature can be disactivated, because it makes the game much easier for experienced users. Thanks to John Payson for the tip !
•	Implemented as well "Winnable Shuffles". This one took me even more time to write. It means that when you reshuffle the remaining tiles when you're stuck, the tiles will be rearranged to make sure that there's at least one way to finish the board again without reshuffling.
•	Implemented "Show Current Tile" feature in the Highlight menu.
•	Corrected visual problems for those of you who use the "large fonts" in Windows 95 (e.g. in 1024x768 mode).
•	Some more best times from Naoki : 2:07 on Arena, 2:26 on Big Hole, and 3:30 on Farandole. He he, I love all these winnable layouts :-)
•	As always, corrected a few bugs... :-)
•	New layout : Ceremonial

New features in version 4.28 (April 30, 1998)

•	Corrected various bugs from user feedback.
•	Added the perfect installation module : small, easy to use and "just the right amount of features", if you see what I mean. When you need something special.... Just program it by yourself :-)
•	Optimized the Hall of Fame entries in several ways. It may create problems with the layouts "Theater", "Arena", "Big Hole" and "Deep Well" (i.e. erase their highscores), but it was needed. Sorry.
•	Now you can move the layout around when you're editing it. It allows you to center it as you like on the board.
•	New layout : Tile Fighter. I like this one. It's quite easy but cool to play. If you're wondering about the name, just have a look :-) (Thanks Hélène :-))

New features in version 4.21 (April 21, 1998)
This version is packed with new features !

Additions

•	Many small improvements added, thanks to user feedback.
•	Many minor bugs were fixed, including the problem when playing (or not) music at startup.
•	A new music ! It's been a long time ! This one, Mayaku, is really great in my opinion. Still a fantastic work from my musician Tamura-san !
•	Random Seed games. You can now play a specific game (by specifying the game number) and send this number to your friends so that they can compare how good they did on a specific board configuration.
•	You can bypass the selection method for the default tileset and show the selected tiles in inverted video mode. It shall allow you, in the future versions, to convert more easily tilesets from other programs to Kyodai's format. (You don't need to draw alternative backgrounds for the tiles)
•	Vertical game. When selecting this option, the rules will be completely modified : the tiles have to be free on their top or bottom side, and no longer on their left or right side... Thanks to Russell Johnson (oops, Russell Wilson :)) for the idea ;-) He's the author of MahJongg Wall, check it out, it's a cool game !
•	Added a new background : Andromeda, based on the M31 galaxy (better known as Andromeda, of course)
•	Now you can create a new layout from scratch.
•	Changed the Kanji background color to blue
•	New Tileset : Mahjongg (blue). Still the same tiles, but with blue sides. Very adequate for the new backgrounds (Andromeda and new Kanji)
•	Added a few new layouts : Theater, Deep Well, Farandole, Pyramid.

Improvements

•	Graphic engine modified and improved in many ways. Now, for example, the whole board is included in a scrollable component. You can view it under any resolution, including 640x480 with both the toolbar and hall of fame panel enabled.
•	The window coordinates are now saved for the next time you'll launch Kyodai.
•	You can now record your times in the hall of fame for the Mahjongg Rivers game.
•	Actually you can record your times for ALL of the layouts you've played, even the external layouts. You just need to put your favorite layout file (*.lay) in the Kyodai directory and run the game.
•	The Layout Editor has been greatly improved. It now allows to create only "physically possible" layouts (bye bye Beatle !), but it makes them much easier to create. I've removed the Beatle layout for this reason, and because it was way too hard for a human being ;-)
•	In the Mahjongg Rivers game, you can now see the two selected tiles move to meet each other. Another love story with a happy end :-)
•	An "Animate" option lets you see the boards as they are being built. Totally useless but I like this :-)))
•	Cool Status : Now you can have the status text scroll when it appears. I find it cool. Not you ? ;-)
•	Now you can change the player's name before you enter the hall of fame. Just change the name in the small box at the bottom of the Hall of Fame dialog box when it appears. Click on Done and the name is changed.
•	Added Green and Blue variations of the Red highlight square...

Others

•	I've removed the Themes feature. As I managed to fix the palette problem (stupid me ! the bug was so obvious that I'm ashamed of it), Kyodai didn't really need this anymore...
•	I've also removed the 2-player game via the keyboard. Seems like nobody is interested in this function, and I really hated those stupid hands. If you want me to keep it in the future, you'll have to convince me ! Anyway, I'll put back the 2-player game in the next version but it will be played with the mouse only.
•	You no longer need Direct-X to replay the sound effects. They are played directly from WAV files in the Kyodai directory. You can change them if you want, but please do not distribute a modified version of Kyodai, thank you.
•	The Configuration and Highlight submenus are now real menus. Because I'd found out that I was using them too frequently to leave them like that.

Please note : there's no version 4.0... It's my game, I do whatever I want with it, nah :-))
And believe me or not, but it has nothing to do with the fact that v4.21 was released on April 21 (4.21.98)... ;-)

New features in version 3.01 (December 1, 1997)

•	Many small changes and some bugs fixed
•	Added the theme concept into the program
•	Reworked the help file (I'd forgotten to talk about the 2-player game...)
•	The Hall of Fame panel on the right side of the screen is back ! (And now it flickers no more)
•	Removed the reminders from the Editor and Two-Player game. Why ? Well, say, Merry Christmas !

New features in version 3.0 (November 26, 1997)

•	Improved this help file
•	Layout editor -- happy ? :)
•	Improved Hall of Fame feature
•	Two new stupid layouts (as *.lay files)
•	User-customizable BMP tiled backgrounds
•	Cool new "Internet Explorer" look for the toolbar...
•	Additional game : Mahjongg Rivers (I love this one !)
•	Two-player game on the same screen (hey, this one rocks too !!)
•	The tileset is now loaded from an external file, PAI.BMP, which means that you can modify it as you want !
•	You can choose to switch automatically to mode 800x600 at startup, to help play a comfortable game if your default resolution is 640x480...

New features in version 2.88 (August 28, 1997)

•	Modified documentation to reflect changes in the registration process (no more checks, please !)...
•	Now the games remembers what's your favorite layout.
•	Corrected palette problem. At least, that's all I can do... The rest is Delphi's fault :) (April '98 update : nope, it was the green button's fault... sigh...)

New features in version 2.8 (August 18, 1997)

•	Turbo Speed ! Now as fast as in the 16-bit version, but without the bugs ! Enjoy...
•	New background : Dragons
•	It's now possible to highlight the current tile. You have the choice between a rectangle (like in MJWIN), very fast, or a colored tile (a bit slower, mainly on older video cards).
•	Can now save options/configuration
•	Added sound effects support for Direct-X users - more will come.
•	A hall of fame -- Something that really lacked in Kyodai before !
•	There seems to be fewer palette bugs ! ;-)

New features in version 2.02 (June 6, 1997)

•	Finally, after many days of bug-blasting, I managed to speed up the game ! Yippie !! I never thought I'd manage to do it !
•	Kyodai is now shareware -- it's not that I want to make money with my program, but I'm extremely poor and I can't afford to continue programming Kyodai without getting anything in exchange... Thanks for understanding - and registering by sending me the modest fee.

New features in version 2.01 (May 27, 1997)

•	Improved the "about" box.
•	New layout: Beatle... The hardest one ! A real nightmare ! You'll learn to love the new shuffle function with this one !
•	I tried to remove the palette problems when starting the program. Apparently, it works better than before, but still not perfectly. If anyone has an idea to help me, feel free to write...
•	It also seems I could remove a nasty bug that caused problems when trying to select tiles in another game after the player had won the previous one.
•	Added a shuffle function. You will no more be frustrated with that terrible "Sorry, no more moves" message ! ;-)
•	Fixed some other little bugs.

New features in version 2.0 (May 22, 1997)

•	Entirely redesigned for Windows 95. It was tough for me, as I had to learn how to use Delphi 2.0 and all of this new 32-bit philosophy.
•	No more loading delay when you start the program.
•	New layout : Arena. A very easy one for the beginners.
•	Restart option, removable toolbar and other stuff.
•	You can put a custom picture in the background.
•	Two new songs : Gisors and Gokuraku.

New features in version 1.21 (April 11, 1997)

•	New layout : Big Hole. Looks easy to complete... But actually it's quite a tough one !
•	Default startup is now without music. You can still select it in the menu. I removed it because it didn't seem to work on some systems
•	Fixed a few bugs. There are still some minor bugs left (at least two in the hint routines), but I've got no time to fix them for now

New features in version 1.2 (April 1, 1997)

•	Optimized speed during the game
•	Optimized speed at startup
•	Three different colors for the tileset
•	Colors in the status bar
•	NO April Fool joke

New features in version 1.1 (March 24, 1997)

•	Larger tiles (40x50 instead of 30x40)
•	Music (stops after the end of the tune)
•	Replaced seasons & flowers
•	Colored texture in the tileset
•	256 colors

Features in version 1.0 (March 4, 1997)

•	30x40 tiles
•	16 colors
•	Functions : back (undo), hint, layout
•	Traditional layout
•	Programmed with Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows
•	Just for the record, the whole project was started on February 24th, 1997...

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