Keep the Score 1.6 Submitted to the Windows Phone Store

It is that time of the year again. Time for a new update to Keep the Score. The single most important new feature in this release has nothing to do with board games. As explained in more detail here, this new version of Keep the Score uses SkyDrive instead of Dropbox for data backup.

Nothing else changed for now, with one exceptions that only users in Italy will be able to tell

For those of you paying attention to version numbers, the full version of Keep the Score skipped version 1.5 as that update only affected the FREE version which will be posted to the Store in the next few days.

Happy board gaming!

Switching from Dropbox to SkyDrive for Data Backup

Due to changes in the Dropbox API I faced a decision: rewrite the login procedure using the new Dropbox API or use the opportunity to migrate to SkyDrive.

I opted for the second for a number of reasons: supportability of my code, ease of use and better integration with the ecosystem.

As users of the app, things will keep working pretty much the same. Your data will be stored on SkyDrive instead of Dropbox. You, as the owner of a Microsoft Account, already have at least 7GB of online cloud storage in SkyDrive.

When you sign in the new service use the same credentials you used for your Windows Phone:

The application needs authorization to change your SkyDrive in order to upload the backup data.

In three simple taps you’re all set to go and your backup is configured.

You can access the data online at http://SkyDrive.com using the same credentials used to log in into Keep the Score.

In accordance with the SkyDrive guidelines, Keep the Score saves your data online under the “ApplicationData” folder in the root of your SkyDrive. You will find a folder there for Keep the Score.

As usual with backup, it’s better not to mess with the files you find in that folder.

The FREE version of Keep the Score will save in a different folder. You can check the difference here.

Upgrading from the FREE to the Paid Version of Keep the Score

Just recently I have released a FREE version of Keep the Score on the Windows Phone Marketplace to help increase the visibility of the app.

Because of the way Windows Phone is built to preserve security between apps, all the data entered in Keep the Score FREE (players, games and sessions) will be invisible to the full version of the application which Windows Phone considers totally separate.

I have thought about helping users migrate their data before releasing the free app, but several scenarios led to an increased chance of user error potentially leading to loss of data. Based on user feedback I have decided to provide a way to do it.

The procedure is pretty straightforward:

• Backup data: open Keep the Score FREE on your phone, configure your Dropbox account and backup your data. If you do not have a Dropbox account you can get one here. It’s free.
• Rename Dropbox folder: now that you have your data safely stored in the cloud, go to your Dropbox page and rename the folder called KeepTheScoreApp-free to KeepTheScoreApp by right-clicking on it like in the following picture:

• Restore data: Now that the files are in the correct folder, open Keep the Score on the Windows Phone, configure the Dropbox account using the same credentials and hit restore and all your data will now be available

A few notes:

• Restore is only available in the paid version of Keep the Score
• Restoring your data will overwrite whatever data you have entered in Keep the Score. If you have already entered data in Keep the Score you will have to use God Mode to enter past sessions manually.

Hopefully this makes it a little easier for you to upgrade. If you have yet to enter any data and want to give Keep the Score a spin, I strongly suggest using the trial of the paid app which provide a seamless upgrade to the paid version that you can get here.

This feature is available in version 1.5 of the app that has just been submitted (May 7th 2012) to the marketplace, once you get it you can migrate your data.

Keep the Score 1.4 Submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace

Wow, this has been a long time coming  

Last few months have been pretty intense with a big job change and a plethora of great Xbox 360 games (er… ehm… Skyrim), but now the wait is over and a brand new shiny version of Keep the Score is ready for the masses.

This update brings several new features:

• Support for Mango, so if you have not updated your phone, DO IT NOW! or you won’t be able to get the upgrade.
• Ability to share a session results to the social networks configured in the phone. For the U.S. it’s Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live and yes, if you want LinkedIn. Your list of social networks might be different, depending on your region and which ones you have configured
• Stats! Stats! Stats! In addition to all the previous stats, you can now also track: longest/shortest session by game and player, list of session by game and player, highest and lowest score by game. It’s also now much easier to identify when you last played a specific game.
• Add or remove players to a session via God Mode (only available in the full version)
• More intuitive layout, but still super-fast, and several little UI improvements

I also published a new version of Keep the Score that is FREE and functionally equivalent to the trial version of the full app. If you decide to upgrade from the FREE to the PAID version, you’ll have to re-enter the data (a number of reasons for this, believe me).

As usual, back up your data before the upgrade, just in case.

Keep the Score 1.3 Submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace!

As discussed last week, a new version of Keep the Score is coming and it’s just been submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The major new features in this version are two new settings that you can activate on games:

• lowest score wins: the player with the lowest score wins rather than the highest
• turn-based scoring: allow the game to be scored in turns rather than one single session. The player with the most/least points is still the winner at the end of the game

To find these settings go to the game page and tap on the edit button. It’s that easy!

For a complete walk through, refer to the last post.

This version of Keep the Score also sports a slightly redesigned user interface for player, game and session details to allow for more room to grow as I add more new features.

The newly redesigned About page also makes it easier to see what’s changes in the app releases.

As a remainder, this version of the application makes changes to the way data for games and sessions is stored on your device, it is STRONGLY recommended that you backup your data before upgrading to the new version of Keep the Score.

It will take 2-3 business days for the application to be updated in the marketplace, now is the perfect time to upgrade to the full version and backup your data 🙂

Coming Soon to Keep the Score: Scoring Card Games

Based on feedback from one of my customers 🙂 (thanks @RealRellik), I have been working on exciting new features that will make Keep the Score compelling to the broad audience of card game players.

The new features specifically are turn-based scoring and the winning a game with the lowest score rather than the highest.

Let me walk you through some screenshots to illustrate the concept.

	In the game details page there are a couple of new settings that you can change: Lowest score wins: the player with the lowest score wins rather than the highest turn-based scoring: this allow the game to be scored in turns rather than one single session. The player with the most/least points is still the winner at the end of the game Changing these settings for games that have completed sessions will not change those sessions. Sessions in progress will inherit the new settings. Changing these settings will also not affect the stats for games and players
	The session details screen has been slightly redesigned to accommodate for more information and as you can see there are now three pivot items: the actual score, scores for each turn and the details of the session like start time and duration. They are all one tap away. In the main score pivot item we see the player, the score for the current turn, the cumulative score and the number of turns won. You’ll also notice a new icon in the application bar: Tapping this icon will close the current turn and start a new one. There is no tie breaker for the turn: if there are players with the same score, they tie and both win the turn.
	In the turns pivot item you’ll see a record for all the turns and the winner or winners for each turn. In God mode you can reopen the last turn in case a mistake was made in scoring, correct it and close the turn again. Past turns are not editable in God mode yet, but that is something I plan to do in the future. God mode is only available in the full version of Keep the Score.
	At the last turn you can close the game session. By closing the session the final scores are calculated and a winner is declared, in this case the one with the lowest points because of the setting for the game.
	The final scores for the session show the winner, the player, the final cumulative score and the number of turns won. In God mode you can re-open the session and doing so will reopen the last turn. You can also edit the score, but in this version you will only change the cumulative score, not the individual turn’s. Past turns are not editable in God mode yet, but that is something I plan to do in the future. The best way if you want to add a past session is just to start it normally, record all the scores and turns, then end it. Finally edit the start and end dates in God mode and you will be set. God mode is only available in the full version of Keep the Score.
	If you are interested you can check all the turns history as well, even after the session is closed.

I have a few more changes I need to make before the new version of Keep the Score is submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace, but I hope you enjoyed this sneak peek at the new upcoming features. Let me know if you have comments or feedback here on my blog or @robertoruggeri.

This version of the application makes changes to the way data for games and sessions is stored on your device, it is STRONGLY recommended that you backup your data before upgrading to the new version of Keep the Score. With the price of Keep the Score permanently reduced to 0.99USD there is really no better time!

New Version of Keep The Score Hitting the Marketplace Soon

Version 1.2 of Keep The Score has been submitted to the Windows Phone Marketplace.

New in version 1.2:

• (fix) Fixed an issue where players could not be deleted
• (fix) Fixed international date formats for folks outside of the U.S.
• (new) A warning is displayed when backing up data to Dropbox
• (new-full version) Allows you to jump directly to the game session in progress when restarting the app

The app is also receiving a permanent price drop setting the new price at $0.99.

In the paid version you get all the goodies of the ad-supported version plus:

• Backup your precious game data to Dropbox
• The awesome God Mode
• The ability to run under the lock screen
• The ability to jump directly to the session in progress when restarting the app
• No ads!

The app is in validation right now and should be published soon.

Full Description

Keep the Score is the one place where you can keep track of all of your game sessions and brag about it with your friends.

Use Keep the Score to track board games, soccer matches, chess tournaments, little league plays anything where you want to track scores and rub them in somebody’s face later.

Designed to be fast and easy to use, Keep the Score can be used while playing without upsetting the other players. Now you have a perfectly good excuse to keep looking at your phone while playing.

Available both in a free, ad-supported version and a full version with no ads, Keep the Score allows you to try the fun of bragging with no risk.

Full feature list:

• Keep record of players, games and game sessions
• Track key statistics for each player and game
• For each session record the start and end times, location, players, scores and winners
• Intuitive assisted scoring to simplify calculating scores during the game session
• Pick a winner in case of a tie breaker or pick multiple winners for games that allow that or when playing in teams
• Full version only
  • God mode allows you to freely edit a game session even after it’s closed
  • Backup to Dropbox to store your precious data in the cloud
  • Run under the lock screen for faster resume
  • Jump directly to the session in progress to quickly resume scoring

Keep the Score: How Does Dropbox Backup Work?

One of the cool new features in Keep the Score is the ability to backup and restore your game data to Dropbox. Easy access to your Dropbox and sync between devices, further allows you save these data somewhere else and even manage multiple versions if you’re up to it, like keeping a version for board games, one for little league, one for soccer. The application does not yet offer any native support for that, so you’ll have to manage it by yourself.

Configuration

To configure your backup simply provide your Dropbox user name and password to authenticate to the service. The password is never stored locally and it’s only used for initial authentication and to get a token to be used in future data exchanges. All the data exchanges with Dropbox happen over a secure connection.

Once you have configured your account, the Backup and Restore menu items are enabled. In the configuration page you’re also offered the option to clear the local credential cache, basically this makes the app “forget” your Dropbox account.

Time for the first backup

Once you tap on Backup, Keep the Score will connect to Dropbox and save your data. In Dropbox you’ll find a new folder called KeepTheScoreApp:

I this folder you’ll find three files:

• Players.json
• Games.json
• Sessions.json

They hold respectively the players’, games’ and sessions’ data. Pretty simple uh?

While these file can be opened with any text editor, my suggestion is not to mess with them and treat them as a single unit when moving them around. The files have dependencies across each other and if you break them, in the best scenario, you will not be able to read your data anymore.

Mind that if you chose to backup your data again from Keep the Score, these files will be overwritten.

Restoring your data

You should never ever have the need to restore your data, but in case you ever need to do it, I have tested it for you and it works

Restoring your data from Dropbox will delete all your local data, so be careful.

One occasion when restoring comes in handy is when for whatever reason you have to uninstall Keep the Score. As you probably figured out by now, uninstalling an app on Windows Phone 7 removes all the local data. So when moving phones, installing microsd cards , getting your significant other started with Keep the Score or messing around with your apps, restore is a handy way to quickly get you up and running with Keep the Score again.

The technical details

As my technical audience has figure out by now, the files are JSON files, a serialization of the objects used by the application to represent the data and its internal state. Nothing fancy as you’ll see when opening the files. As I said, there are pointers across the files to maintain the relations between players, games and sessions. If you decide to mess with the data, you do it at your own risk. If you DO do it, let me know what happens  @robertoruggeri

Announcing Keep the Score for WP7 v1.1 and Limited Time 35% Discount!

Keep The Score v1.1 is now ready to hit the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace sporting Dropbox integration for all your precious game data!

Also new in version 1.1:

• Run under the lock screen for faster resume (only available in paid version)
• Minor user interface tweaks

While you wait for application validation and to encourage upgrades I am also discounting the application for the next two weeks (offer ends May 5th, 2011) from $1.99 to $1.29, a whopping 35% discount!! So hurry up and get Keep The Score!

Note: be patient, it takes a day or so for the price to change. I will keep it for two weeks from when it changes.

Full Description

Keep the Score is the one place where you can keep track of all of your game sessions and brag about it with your friends.

Use Keep the Score to track board games, soccer matches, chess tournaments, little league plays anything where you want to track scores and rub them in somebody’s face later.

Designed to be fast and easy to use, Keep the Score can be used while playing without upsetting the other players. Now you have a perfectly good excuse to keep looking at your phone while playing.

Available both in a free, ad-supported version and a full version with no ads, Keep the Score allows you to try the fun of bragging with no risk. The paid version offers the awesome God Mode, the ability to run under the lock screen and backup to Dropbox in addition to all the goodies you get with the ad-supported version.

Full feature list:

• Keep record of players, games and game sessions
• Track key statistics for each player and game
• For each session record the start and end times, location, players, scores and winners
• Intuitive assisted scoring to simplify calculating scores during the game session
• Pick a winner in case of a tie breaker or pick multiple winners for games that allow that or when playing in teams
• God mode (full version only) allows you to freely edit a game session even after it’s closed
• Backup to Dropbox (full version only) to store your precious data in the cloud
• Run under the lock screen for faster resume (full version only)

Keep the Score Featured on WindowsPhoneGeek and 1800PocketPC!!

The release of Keep the Score for Windows Phone 7 was mentioned on two popular Windows Phone 7 web sites WindowsPhoneGeek.com and 1800PocketPC.com.

Thank you!