Major update
A major update to the Wingspan implementation has been deployed, which features the Automa mode, the Swift Start cards, several other major improvements, and fixes to all known bugs. To answer what I know will be everybody's first question, the publisher still has no plans to license or develop Wingspan expansion content on BGA.
Automa
You can start a solo game of Wingspan in the New Lobby by setting the number of players to Solo. In the original table setup screen under "Play Now", you will first need to set the game mode to "Friendly mode" and reduce the number of players to 1. The Solo Difficulty and Automubon Society options are available to calibrate difficulty.
Swift Start
There is also a new game option allowing the Swift Start cards to be shuffled into the deck in all game modes.
Bug fixes
in decreasing order of criticality
If there is an official translation in your language's rulebook or other materials, please do not replace the translation of this string on BGA if your game's text has a different meaning than the English string. Publishers localizing Wingspan to other languages than English were given some discretion to make minor rules changes, and this results in some card effects being different. For example, in French and German versions of the game, Loggerhead Shrike caches 1 rodent for **each** rodent rolled outside of the feeder instead of only one rodent if any are rodent. Sometimes, players will change translations to match their localized version, which leads to bug reports because the tooltips do not match the actual effect of the card. All players must be playing the same game, which on BGA is based on the rules as written in English.
Thank you all for your patience over the very long period of time I've talked about this update coming. It has been a significant effort from which I've had to step away a few times over the past year. Despite extensive testing, there is always the potential for new edge cases and bugs to be introduced. I will be closing out most of the hundreds of reports addressed by this update over the next few hours, and will be keeping a close eye on new issues.
Enjoy!
A major update to the Wingspan implementation has been deployed, which features the Automa mode, the Swift Start cards, several other major improvements, and fixes to all known bugs. To answer what I know will be everybody's first question, the publisher still has no plans to license or develop Wingspan expansion content on BGA.
Automa
You can start a solo game of Wingspan in the New Lobby by setting the number of players to Solo. In the original table setup screen under "Play Now", you will first need to set the game mode to "Friendly mode" and reduce the number of players to 1. The Solo Difficulty and Automubon Society options are available to calibrate difficulty.
Swift Start
There is also a new game option allowing the Swift Start cards to be shuffled into the deck in all game modes.
Bug fixes
in decreasing order of criticality
- An important server-side check was missing when playing bird cards that would make it possible to circumvent the interface (this is a violation of BGA terms of service) and play birds that weren't actually in your hand. I am not aware of any instances where this was used to cheat, but if it was, it would be readily apparent in the replay. I am not going to review past replays to comment on accusations of cheating.
- All players lay 1 egg (Pileated Woodpecker, Lazuli Bunting, Western Meadowlark) powers would cause an infinite loop if the power is activated and none of the players have space for eggs of the specified nest type. When this happens, all players are unable to access the game until the server eventually throws an exception. This power is now skipped if no players can lay eggs with this power.
- When using a "play another bird" power, after selecting the bird to play and paying egg costs, clicking on a different bird in your hand would cause that bird to be played instead of the one selected, possibly to the wrong habitat. Clicking on a different bird in hand at this step now does nothing, just like the regular "play a bird" interface. A server side check for incompatible habitats has also been added (this was previously prevented only by the interface).
- The interface for some flocking birds would not be clear regarding which card was selected, and pressing "Do Not Draw" would still draw from the deck, preventing players from undoing.
- Hermit Thrush would not allow the player with the bird to choose which player takes food first.
- During the gain food step, if you take the last die out of the feeder, it should be rerolled before the player decides whether to discard a card for an extra food token.
- Clicking bird feeder on other player's turn, specifically a Gain Food action, would cause the player's interface to show them appearing to gain food tokens, which they weren't actually receiving. This would lead to errors when players would try to spend those tokens they didn't actually have. Clicking the dice on another player's Gain Food action now does nothing. This is the root cause of several reports of food disappearing from players' supplies. Each of these reports was during a real-time game, and the replay logs of these games track food tokens correctly based on events of the game, and the tokens players reported having gone missing had never actually been received from actions or bird powers. Examples:
- Undo was not possible after the "Gain Food" action when dice are taken after a reroll.
- Refill bird tray before discarding at end of round. This rule was indeed implemented incorrectly, though it has a very minor impact on the game. The bird tray is now refilled before discarding all cards in the bird tray at the end of the round.
- When laying eggs, sometimes the interface to lay eggs is skipped entirely and no eggs are laid. Despite several reports, I have not been able to reproduce this bug. The best guess I can make is that an earlier javascript error causes the interface to somehow leap ahead to a state that checks whether you have laid enough eggs *before* the number of eggs you're allowed to lay is defined. I have added a check to restart egg laying entirely if the number of eggs to lay has not been set.
- Goal standings in tooltips were not updated properly when migratory birds changed habitats. They were always updated when the goal was scored, but tooltips were sometimes inaccurate.
- Missing translations on bird cards and notification log due to words not being tagged properly in tooltips. Some new words and phrases have been added to the translation system with this update. These can be found in the Translation HQ It will take 24-48 hours for these translations to properly appear in your games. Please let me know in the reporting system if there are still missing translations.
- Errors in card animation effects would sometimes cause floating cards to get stuck. The card animation effects would also cause fast replay and in-game replays to not work.
- Automatic actions Great news for turn-based players! Many cards now feature a gear at the bottom right of the card, which shows a green "play" arrow if the power will automatically take place, and a yellow "pause" icon to stop and give the player a choice. Bird powers for which there is no legitimate reason to refuse a benefit in the base game are set to automatically activate by default. Enabling automatic activation for some birds requires choosing a target, such as for laying egg powers.
- The gear icons can be hidden under the "Auto-Activation buttons" user preference for players who do not wish to see them.
- Automatic activations (and their targets, when applicable) are visible to all players and thus avoid invalidating undo save points.
- Bird powers which involve gaining food from the bird feeder intentionally do not have automatic activation options, as this introduces greater complexity and potentially changes the game in light of the previous point.
- Icons for Language-dependent bonus cards Icons were provided by the publisher and were used in the Spanish language version of the game. When the option to include Language-dependent bonus cards is set to "Include", these icons are added to all bird cards that count toward these bonuses, and to the bonus cards themselves.
- Improve visibility of goals and progress toward goals I have been given permission to increase the size and contrast of the numbers on the green goal board to improve visibility in a web environment. There is also a user preference, enabled by default, to show the standings of all players toward the current round's goal.
- During setup, select food tokens you want to *keep* instead of food tokens you want to *discard*. I recognize that this setting would be preferred by a very large number of players, especially those used to the official app. However, there are also a very large number of players used to playing the way it is now, so changing it suddenly would lead to a lot of disruption and complaints of ruined games. Therefore, this has been implemented as an opt-in user preference. During this step of initial discard phase, there will be a button with an option to easily change to selecting food you want to *keep* instead. This setting will persist across all future tables, as with all user preferences.
- Added animation for rolling dice outside of bird feeder
- Improvements to visibility of eggs, especially on bird cards.
- When hovering over a bonus card, all birds in your tableau, hand, and the bird tray that qualify are highlighted.
- Tooltip mode for mobile users. When playing on mobile devices, a "tooltip mode" button appears, which will allow you to click on a card to see tooltip information without triggering any game effects.
- There is now an option for a larger display of cards in the bird tray by clicking on the magnifying glass in the corner.
- The action bar will now more consistently identify bird powers when they allow other players to take an action, such as Hummingbirds.
- Larger buttons will now stick to the top of the page to improve the experience for mobile users.
- Simplifying confirm steps The confirm step user preferences have been simplified. Confirmation of dice selection from the bird feeder is now always on, so the "bird feeder only" option has been removed (those with the setting will default back to "always")
- Confirm step reminder and optional timer During the final confirm step, the "Confirm" button will blink and play the "your turn" sound if it has not been pressed after 8 seconds. I have been convinced that there is value in providing an auto-click countdown timer for players who wish to *opt in* to this feature. (Most of the recent suggestion reports requesting this feature indicated it was something they would prefer for themselves, not other players.) I will not under any circumstances make an auto-click countdown timer enabled by default, and have given my reasons for this position here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=71648
- Rearranging bird cards in hand On other players' turns or any context in which you are not expected to select a card, you now have the ability to rearrange bird and bonus cards in your hand in any order. This order will automatically update and persist between devices.
- When given a choice of Bonus Cards from a when-played bird power or Bird Cards from American Oystercatcher, the choice of cards will be shown in a more prominent position on top of your player board.
- Visual cues and explanations have been added to clarify commonly misunderstood rules, which have accounted for hundreds of false bug reports.
- House Wren: The official ruling is to follow what is written in the appendix. The second bird must be played in the same habitat as House Wren
- Sets of Eggs in Habitats goal: 1 set of eggs is 1 egg in the Forest row, 1 egg in the Grasslands row, and 1 egg in the Wetlands row.
- Handling of ties on the green goal board: Scoring notification logs and tooltips on the goal board standings for the current round now show how scores are calculated.
- As a general request: please confirm your understanding of a rule is correct before making a bug report.
If there is an official translation in your language's rulebook or other materials, please do not replace the translation of this string on BGA if your game's text has a different meaning than the English string. Publishers localizing Wingspan to other languages than English were given some discretion to make minor rules changes, and this results in some card effects being different. For example, in French and German versions of the game, Loggerhead Shrike caches 1 rodent for **each** rodent rolled outside of the feeder instead of only one rodent if any are rodent. Sometimes, players will change translations to match their localized version, which leads to bug reports because the tooltips do not match the actual effect of the card. All players must be playing the same game, which on BGA is based on the rules as written in English.
Thank you all for your patience over the very long period of time I've talked about this update coming. It has been a significant effort from which I've had to step away a few times over the past year. Despite extensive testing, there is always the potential for new edge cases and bugs to be introduced. I will be closing out most of the hundreds of reports addressed by this update over the next few hours, and will be keeping a close eye on new issues.
Enjoy!
