Java Netpoker Notes

Welcome to Java Netpoker . The launchpad for the Java Netpoker client is a form that prompts you for a screen name and accountid before joining the game.

If your WWW browser does not support java, you can't play netpoker this way, but you can play via telnet or a compiled client. See the netpoker home page for more details.

The game is Texas Hold'em.

You may want to look at these notes before playing.

Please visit the netpoker home page if you need more background information before playing. Also see the release notes and the list of known bugs and projects for the java client.

Different versions available

You can now try out a couple of different versions of the client from the login page. Generally, you'll want one identfied as either:
Other versions may be available, but are not for general use. I'm either actively working on them or they are superseded.

Other available versions are:

Please note that it is trivially easy to start up multiple connections to the host and simultaneously play several hands at the same table. This is not clever. It's CHEATING. Don't do it.

Use <ARCHIVE> Tag as of Sept. 24

Netscape users may find downloading the classes a little faster due to use of the ARCHIVE tag. Others should see no difference.

New Look, as of Sept. 2

The game now runs in a separate "Frame" (i.e., window). If this causes you problems, please send email! It should be better for those with small monitors.

Hanging on startup

I have tried to add an informative "Netpoker Error" pop-up when I detect networking or other errors. Unfortunately, most errors still go undetected and there is no feedback to the user. I think it's a bug in netscape's java implementation, but it's hard to be sure. It looks as if you are just "waiting for next game to start", but you may, in fact, be completely hung up. If you don't see a game start within a minute or two of getting the "Waiting for next game" message, there was probably a connection failure. There are always robot shills employed to keep the game moving.

Missing Cards

The first time a you see each card, your computer has to create the image. This is supposed to happen dynamically, and in the background, but it seems that most Java implementations are broken in some way, and you may find that some cards just don't show up on occasion. Finding workarounds that work for everyone and don't cause even worse problems for anyone has been difficult.

Debugging

If you experience problems, and you want to be helpful, please try enabling the debugging option in the login form. This will dump some fairly verbose output to your "Java Console" (in Netscape, this is accessible from the Options pulldown menu). The output will probably be cryptic to you, but it may be poetry to me. Just cut-and-paste it into an email to bugs@hotpoker.com.

Reusing an ID created with another client

You may wish to continue to use an an account you previously established with one of the other netpoker clients. If you used the 'telnet' client, enter: Guest.YourOldAccountID in the space above. Note that it's case-sensitive - "Guest" is capitalized and you should follow whatever capitalization you used before for "YourOldAccountID". If you used the 'holdemplayer' client with NETPOKER_IDENTITY set, then just give your old Identity (no preceding Guest.).

Important note for Netscape3.0 + Linux users

Attempting to execute Java applets under Netscape3.0 will cause your netscape to crash with a Bus Error unless you are using a fairly old version of the standard libc library . You can work around this bug in netscape by obtaining a copy of libc.so5.0.9 or earlier, and creating a wrapper for your netscape, e.g., move the binary /usr/local/bin/netscape to /usr/local/bin/netscape.real and replace /usr/local/bin/netscape with the following script:
#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libc.so.5.0.9
export LD_PRELOAD
exec netscape.real "$*"

Ugly borders for X clients

If you have an X resource *borderWidth set, then all your windows (and sub-windows) acquire an ugly black border. There are lots of sub-windows in netpoker, and it looks awful. Remove the resource (or at least specialize it so it doesn't affect your www browser).

Credits

  • The card back came from the Hancock Timber Resource Group
  • The card fronts came from oxymoron@waste.org

    Other things to do

    I keep a list of bugs to fix, things to do and ideas to be implemented here. When I am working on the code, this gets updated pretty frequently.