Overview of development to version 6:
As in the previous years, more than half of the efforts has gone into
improvements of bidding and play, resulting in an increased overall strength.
A few features have been added, and some existing features have been arranged
in a clearer way. Specifically, the general configuration dialog
has been split into a separate player and scoring configuration,
and saving of deals has been made more straightforward.
The total development time (since its start in 1990) is now approximately
9000 hours.
- Context sensitive help texts are available with all screens.
- The product is shipped in a box with a printed manual.
- Own hands can be entered; they can be managed (saved and restored) within the program.
- Hands can be pretty-printed and exported to
an HTML format which includes the graphical
representation of the cards. Such hands in HTML format can be,
for example, loaded into
an editor, or used for web sites.
- Deals can be taken from deal files, both from self created files and
from shipped deals
from tournaments.
- It is possible to enter remarks to the hands.
- The PBN-format (public bridge notation)
is supported, both for importing and
for exporting deals, making an exchange with deals from other
sources easy.
- A deal filter can be used to select only interesting hands (e.g. strong
South hands).
- Help features during bidding:
- Explanation and evaluation of the meaning of done bids.
- Bidding list: Displays the meaning of the possible bids in a given situation.
- Bidding warning: Warns the user if he is about to make a bid which is probably very wrong.
- Bidding hint: Shows the bid which the program would select.
- Choices between several popular lead and signalling conventions are possible
- Help features during playing:
- Display of the estimated probabilities of hidden cards.
- Play warning: Warns the user if he is about to play a probably very weak card.
- Playing hint: Shows the card which the program would select.
- The program does normally not cheat (i.e. does not look into the cards
of the other players),
but can be instructed to do so.
- its play can be reviewed trick by trick
- it can be repeated by the program to compare its behaviour
against that of the user.
The repetition can cover both bidding
and playing, or only playing.
- Scoring can be done either according the Rubber method, or IMPs, or Matchpoints.
- In conjunction with the shipped pair tournament data, a percentage
score is calculated,
which is a very interesting feedback for the performance of
the user.
- Scoring results can be saved and restored for
a later continuation.
- A tournament mode is available, where the program knows only one hand.
- The CD contains Q-plus Bridge in three languages (English, French,
German),
which the user can switch.
- Q-plus Bridge can be played by two persons over a TCP/IP net or directly
over a modem.