Hosamatic Beta


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What is this?
Hosamatic is a web-based tool for managing games of Hosey between people who may or may not be in the same location. The tool draws a Hosey play area, showing the cards each player is allowed to see. It allows players to bid and play only in legal moves, and it keeps a score sheet. A chat window is provided for players to communicate, although the full Hosey experience is probably better achieved using an open Skype session so players can hear each other.

This whole thing was Deanna's idea.

What is Hosey?
Deanna or someone should probably write up a description of the game...
How do we connect players to the same game?
The first player creates the Hosey game using the New Table button. A six-character Table ID then appears in the lower right corner of the play area. The first player must communicate that Table ID to the other players to allow them to join. The other players join by entering that Table ID and clicking the Join or Watch buttons.
Are there known bugs and limitations?
Yes! Hosamatic has at least the following limitations:

  • Only four players are supported. To play with fewer, the person who creates the table can click Add Bot to fill in the empty seats with bots. If you have more than four players, the best you can do is have the extra players join as watchers.
  • The bots are really stupid! They always play legal moves but beyond that the moves are simply chosen at random. This is an area for future improvement.
  • Recovery from networking errors is still pretty rudimentary. This is one of the hardest things to get right. If you see problems, please report them to Andy (include the Table ID if you can). You can often recover from really bad network problems by leaving the game completely and joining back in with the same Nickname and Table ID.
  • Security -- there isn't any. Anyone can enter any Nickname and pretend to be you. If this becomes more popular than just a few of us fiddling around, we can add a mechanism for signing in with a password.
  • Game history is kept but not displayed anywhere yet, except for the short summary on this page. There needs to be a way to see what games have been played at your table so far.
  • There is currently no way to undo a move.
  • Seat assignments are currently permanent for each table. Once assigned, there's no way for someone else to take over a seat. For now, you have to just start a new table.
Where do I report bugs or request features?
Send them to andy@rudoff.com.