The source code is not publicly available yet, but all since the beginning we've planned to make it open source.

This is great news!  But, what are you waiting for?  As a java developer I'd be very interested in contributing to this project.  


Edit after reading the article Peter linked:

As the whole team is a big fan of open-source software, we really decided to make this game run on multiple platforms right away. I personally still remember those early platform wars, and they seem to continue to this very day.

 
This quote confuses me.
You do know what open source means right?  It's got absolutely nothing to do with cross-platform capablilty.

People can not be kicked then by the one player to host a game, since no one is hosting anymore, but only if 3 players agree to kick a player.

What happens if 4 players start, 1 player lags so the other 3 kick him.  Then one of the remaining 3 human players begin to lag - we'll be stuck since it takes 3 to kick?

I am also interested.  Thanks!

2. Keep it like it is as it was like that in the original game, we can change it later

Except it wasn't like this in the original,  movement is MUCH too slow in the original so there is no way you can raise the price of land so high that others cannot bid on it - and still have time to get back down below the bid line.

We're improving the sound for the next version by moving everything to OpenAL.

Yay!  Has a date for the next release been announced yet?

Ha! Awesome,  this never occurred to me - didn't know it was possible.   I'm going to have to run one myself now.  I wonder how much deviation from your game I could expect.

If I remember right, I believe there is also a 'game mode' for Zone Alarm.   Not entirely sure what it does though (whether it's less secure or more secure than 'medium' mode)

[If a player abandons the game it will still be ranked]

It used to be the case where abandoned games were not counted in the win/total ratio.  The 1.2.3 update changed this:

    * The store starts with 8 smithore again.
    * A game must have two human players with different IP addresses to be ranked. This means that you can’t have two accounts and play against yourself to gain higher score. If a player abandons the game it will still be ranked if it started with two human players with different IP addresses.
    * The game displays a warning if two players have the same IP address.
    * The speed of trades in the auction increases faster and has a higher maximum speed.
    * Moving behind the buyer or seller line in the auction doesn’t slow down the timer.
    * A bug which sometimes made it impossible to sell to or buy from the store has been fixed.
    * Some issues with the Linux game client have been fixed.

For a short while, I had convinced myself that there was a bias towards Pirates coming back-to-back.  I had seen it in quite a few games in short succession.   But that eventually tapered off.   

I haven't played enough games in 1.2.3 (due to the lobby issues), to agree or disagree with you, but Pirates on first round does seem to be more common that an other given round, but of course you'd naturally notice it more on round 1 than any other round by itself.

A short while ago, I think it was just after the 1.2.1 update, there were some odd things going on with the lobby; lots of games were getting abandoned, game statuses weren't getting updated, etc...

At one time C64 had about 3 games listed as open.  One of those games seems to have 'merged' with a game I was running at the time.

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=15855  This page shows the stats for a game c64 hosted.  Neither of us ever even joined each others games.   If you look at the chat log, it's the chat log of my game - somehow connected to C64's game.    I was hoping this would get fixed with the other fixes at the time.  

There is an odd overlap, and it's listed as an abandoned game -which is wasn't, C64's game was abandonded.

It might be nice if the names listed under 'Playing' in the lobby get greyed out like the game titles do after they've started.

This would make a nice contrast to easily see how many players are waiting vs playing instead of searching the list for those rows.

I won this game http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=17031.  My total games played was incremented, but my "Win's" weren't.

I think this game also exhibits this 'bug' http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=17015.  Although I'm not entirely sure as I wasn't there, but Sniper had mentioned in the lobby that his win didn't count.

Just downloaded the 1.2.1 update and I'm sitting in the lobby.... It seems that none of the status' are getting updated, and games that finished 20 mins ago are still listed.

Also, I noticed an overwhelming number of abandoned games since the patch.

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game.  Game logs are empty http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=16203, but the chat log is there.   Something very odd is going on.