poz!rk

i'm feeling luky

23 Mar'21

Cromwell Solitaire and Demons & Thieves Solitaire

Cromwell Solitaire Demons and Thieves Solitaire
I have added 2 more games to All-in-One Solitaire: Cromwell Solitaire and Demons & Thieves Solitaire.
While working on the game I have made some modifications to other games and it caused major problem for website users.
The problem with HTML5 version is when browser caches .js files, but doesn’t cache resources like .jpg and .xml.
Whenever I update the game users’ browsers keeps loading old code, but new graphics which completely breaks the game.
Never had this problem with Flash, but they say HTML5 is better anyway…
I need to figure out some simple way to fix that, so if I update something users always load new version.
Telling everyone to clear the cache is not really helpful. 🙁

26 Feb'21

What was wrong with Flash?

I have never had any problems with Flash Player myself.
But I’ve heard lots of complaints about 0-day vulnerabilities, etc. Of course, no support for mobile browser. Flash Player is not open source.
Maybe, maybe…

Anyway, I’m keeping Flash version of my games on the website as they are still working for me and some diehard players don’t want to switch to HTML5 version.
Moreover I still play some of the games from time to time, like Space Age, Resistance Is Useless and Mad Tanks.

12 Dec'20

iCrap

Did you know, that after around 5 years your iPad/iPhone will start to work slowly, apps will start freezing or crashing.
The same might happen to Android devices.

It happened to my iPad Mini, that I only used for testing.
It has iOS 9.3.6, it is still working, but veeeeeery slow.
Most apps stopped working, my own games just crash.
Battery is still fine, but Apple needs more sales, thus the results:
Apple fined for slowing down old iPhones.
The same happened to my test Samsung tablet, so it’s not just Apple.

The reason I’m writing about this is an email from one of the players:

If you can choose your next device, choose laptop. It small enough, it can work without battery, you can always delete ugly Windows 10 and install whatever you want.
It won’t die in 5 years or sooner, unless you drop it. 🙂
Online version of All-in-One Solitaire is always available to play in any modern web browser.

If you still want a tablet, try to not download and install system updates, stay with original version as long as possible.
Usually every new update has more “features” thus consuming more resources and making your device slower.

26 Oct'20

Picture Gallery Solitaire, Eight Off Solitaire, Babette Solitaire and Diavolo Solitaire, plus 1 new review

I have released new version of All-in-One Solitaire game with 4 new games:
Picture Gallery Solitaire
Eight Off Solitaire
Babette Solitaire
Diavolo Solitaire
Picture Gallery Solitaire Eight Off Solitaire Babette Solitaire Diavolo Solitaire
Babette was one of the hardest to make, because of non-standard dealing of cards.

Also iOS version of All-in-One Solitaire has been reviewed by PlayingCardDecks website.
Although my game was lost somewhere between many other solitaire games, it’s always nice to be noticed anyway.
You can check all the reviewed games, including mine, here: The Best iPad and iPhone Apps for Playing Solitaire

30 Jun'20

Keep calm and play Solitaire

Some random thoughts/events that happened to me last year or something. 😀

1. I’ve removed games for Mac and Windows 10, mostly because it was quite annoying to update them and not really profitable. You need Mac to build Mac games and you need Windows 10 to build Windows 10 games. (thanks cap!) Both OSes suck, one is overpriced (I can buy 2-3 regular laptops for the price of 1 macbook), another is soooooo buggy and annoying and always downloading some stupid updates. I haven’t seen BSOD since XP, but Windows 10 reintroduced it again!

2. I have added dark mode to all my game websites, was easy and fun to do it.
For example, All-in-One Mahjong website. Don’t know, if many players will appreciate that, but I like dark mode in everything more and more.
Now need to do something with Pozirk Games website design and this blog…

3. Google Adwords keeps telling me that my paused Solitaire ads are gambling ads and violate their policy. First time I’ve contacted them and they have fixed the problem, but second time I had enough and just stopped using Adwords. Bing is cheaper and no stupid emails about violations.
Same problems caused by Artificial Stupidy Intelligence with Admob and Google Play.
Admob was telling me that another developer’s game is violating their policies and I have to fix it. Seriously?
Google Play sent me an email that my games are not 64-bit compatible, but when I login to check I see “This release is compliant with the Google Play 64-bit requirement.”
In general, all the services from Google are getting worse and worse, and support is getting more and more useless.
As a client I’ve abandoned Google some time ago, switched to another email service and DuckDuckGo search.
As a developer… well, it will take more time.

4. Bing is cheaper, but generates fake clicks, they are aware about that, but decided to do nothing.
When I’ve contacted them with the following problem, 2 clicks per 1 view:

They told me it happens and offered me some promo codes.
The problem is, those double clicks happen everyday and while I can catch “2 clicks, 1 view”, what should I do with “3 clicks, 36 views”? How many of these clicks are unique and actually real?
Here is the answer from Bing support:

I believe Bing don’t have these fake clicks in US unlike in Canada, Australia and Europe.

5. Lots of clowns are still trying to “hack” my website. Everyday. I don’t know what their problem is, cause trying “admin/123456” as login/password didn’t work before and will never work, but so far almost 7k blocked IPs. Cool number, but this blocking is not really helping as every day I get another “admin/123456” attempt from new IP.
I mean, it is not always “admin/123456”, sometimes it’s “admin/password”, “admin/pozirk”, “pozirk/password”, etc. But result is always the same.
More fun details here: https://inside.pozirk.com/2018/09/28/cool-hackerz/

6. I’m planning to add 14 more games to All-in-One Solitaire, but waiting for a stable port of Feathers UI to Haxe/OpenFL.
One big flaw in my games is menu scrolling, it’s painful for players (I think so :)), cause I made it myself and it works really bad.
Feathers UI has nice scrolling component and should save me.

7. Suddenly I’ve changed theme for this blog to something simple, my old theme had some Flash elements.

8. Google is sending emails and calling me asking to advertise with them. No, thank you!

16 Oct'19

All-in-One Solitaire, now all-in-one for real

One of the players gave me a good idea to put all the games both from Solitaire and Solitaire 2 in one game.
After some thoughts and hesitation, mainly because two games has different databases for records, I have finally combined them in one real All-in-One Solitaire that has more than 38 games now and more games are coming!
I have also fixed lots of bugs and made some optimizations, so gameplay is much more smooth now.
All-in-One Solitaire 2 was also updated with some improvements, but I will not add new games to it anymore and will release updates only to fix bugs.

Here is a list of all the games available at the moment:

31 May'19

All-in-One Mahjong, HTML5 version

After moving All-in-One Solitaire, I have finally finished with HTML5 version of All-in-One Mahjong game as well.
Even though, Flash performs better on dekstop and has more features than HTML5, at least if I use OpenFL, I have no choice here.
Google is forcing everyone to move to ARM64 as well now. Unless Adobe does something, Adobe Air will be dead very soon too.
The painful part is(will be) to explain players, why they need to move to new version… 🙂

Instead of adding new games, most of the 2018, and now part of 2019, I’ve spent upgrading games to “new” technologies, modifying them to comply with new policies and fixing bugs (eah, my code is horrible :D).

21 Dec'18

Last post in 2018 :)

So, I was able to switch both Solitaire games to HTML5, and they look and function much worse then Flash versions, but have no choice anyway.
Putting updated version to Google Play caused lots of complaints, as usual…
OpenFL still has some nasty bugs, like it crashes a lot on Android 4.4 specifically, and I don’t know why.
Next year I should move all of Mahjong games to OpenFL/HTML5 and finally start developing something new.

Amazon is shrinking.
They have closed Underground program.
Also they stopped distributing PC/Mac games, without any notification. Sounds like a big corp, that doesn’t care.

Google Ads getting worse as well. Their Video Ads often freeze and don’t allow users to play, causing lots of problems to me, as I have to block these ads manually.

Cool-hazckers still trying to brute-force my website, more then 600 IPs blocked and counting! 😎
Someone also trying to break SSH and mail server. Fail2Ban helps a lot here.
On a positive side, finally I have properly setup my mail server and it now cuts 95% of spam!
Also an email from Apple was rejected, cause they can’t properly setup they mail server… or is it me?

Did I mention every Big Tech company here?
Ah yes, Facebook… well I don’t like it. 😀

Anyway, hope everything will change for the best next year! Right??? 🙂
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

28 Sep'18

cool hackerz

Реально задолбали идиоты, которые брутфорсят мой сайт.
Эти доморощенные хакеры пытаются подобрать логин и пароль типа “admin” и “qwerty123”. Серьёзно?
Лезут с туевой хучи адресов, уже задолбался блокировать, только сервак нагружают в пустую.
Что вы там пытаетесь подобрать? Я сам свой пароль не знаю, даже сколько символом не знаю.
Если вы уже так хотите залогиниться на моём сайте, всего $9.99 в год на правах Subscriber, пожалуйста: https://www.pozirk.com/membership-account/membership-levels/

Картинка для прливечения внимания.