So after months and months of putting off development work on my Monopoly Simulator (what can I say…board games just don’t pay the bills), I finally have some extra time on my hands to make significant changes!

In fact, I have already made a cosmetic adjustment to each player’s owned properties display:  a color-coded table has replaced the previous, ugly list of property names.  Now, when a property is selected (or purchased) by a player, the corresponding entry in that player’s property table is highlighted with the appropriate color.

I intend this simple change to be the first in a long line of updates geared toward making the simulator more user friendly, more intuitive, and — ultimately — a more effective analysis tool.  That said, I would be a fool not to consider your suggestions as I take these next steps.

Don’t be shy!  Let me know what could use work, what you like, and (especially) what flat out sucks.  Let’s work together to get this right.  🙂

That all said, here are some of the exciting changes that I plan to roll out within the next few days / weeks:

• UNDO
  There’s nothing more frustrating than having minutes of time (spent meticulously setting up a position) wasted by accidentally clicking “Boardwalk” instead of “Park Place”…or assigning Reading Railroad to player 3 instead of player 4…and then having to start all over again!

  No more, I say!  Very soon, every action (and sample game action) will be “recorded” and stored into memory, giving you the ability to undo (and redo) anything.

• Save Position
  Do you really like a certain game scenario but hate having to re-enter it every time you want to see a new sample game?  Or maybe — like me — you like playing with specific factors (ie. starting positions or cash holdings) while keeping the majority of settings fixed to see how each player’s odds of winning changes?

  Well, with the new save function, you will be able to save and load any game scenario at will.  And for registered users (see the next bullet point), these games can be saved between sessions and shared with other users.

• Account Management / Collaboration
  One of the upgrades that I’m most excited about is giving visitors the option to register for an Online Monopoly Simulator account.  In exchange for some simple contact information, you can instantly become a registered user.

  Some of the benefits of being a registered user are as follows:  inter-session position saving / loading, collaborating / sharing game specifics with me or your friends, downloading sample games for review (this one is great for finding bugs in my code), saving simulator results, and (optionally) being among the first to find out about ongoing changes to the simulator via email.

• The O.M.S. Forum
  In an effort to maximize developer-user collaboration (as well as user-to-user collaboration), I will be creating the Online Monopoly Simulator (OMS) forum.

  All visitors will be able to browse and read threads, and registered users will be able to comment and generate their own threads.

I’m really looking forward to working with you all!