How messages work
- Every player's game looks for new messages once a day and puts them in the mailbox in the storage closet. A new player gets the last 30 days.
- Each device downloads a message once. Editing it afterwards doesn't change it for players who already have it, and deleting it doesn't take it back out of their mailbox. To correct something that's out, send a new message.
- Publish can't be in the past: devices only ask for messages newer than the newest one they have, so a back-dated one would be missed. Leave it on now, or pick a future time to schedule it.
- Expires stops it being handed out (and takes an alert out of the alert spot). Players who already have a normal message keep it.
- Send a push notification is on by default: players who have that kind of message switched on get it on their phone when it's published. Untick it to have it just arrive in the mailbox.
- Notify at raises a notification on the device at that time, for players who open the game between Publish and then and have that kind switched on. To announce something on Friday, publish early in the week with Notify at set to Friday.
- Notification switches: daily, tips → Daily Board · special, events → Events · features → New features · promotions → Offers (off unless the player turns it on) · service, alert → always.
- alert messages also show in the round alert spot on the home screen's top bar until the player taps Got it.
- Icon is an SF Symbol name (find them in Apple's SF Symbols app). Left empty, or a name iOS doesn't have, uses the category's icon.
- Envelope colour: tick it to pick the envelope's colour yourself; unticked, it is its category's. The present: a letter with a gift lets you pick its wrapping — paper, stripes, ribbon — or a ready-made one.
- Wax seal: pick its colour and what is pressed into it — an emoji (🎃 for Halloween) or an SF Symbol name; left empty, the Mop and bucket. A sealed letter is opened by slicing under the seal, then lifting the flap.
- Who gets it: everyone, or only players who fit every choice made — never bought anything or have, guests or signed in, started in the last 7 days or over 30 days ago. A letter for some players only gets no push notification (a push would reach everyone); it arrives with the daily mailbox check.
- Gift: credits, lives, Revives and/or unlimited lives attached to the letter. In the open letter it is a wrapped present: the player taps it and tears it open; each account can collect it once, ever (checked on the server), and only until the letter expires.
- Title and body can be written in every language the game has. Players get theirs, or English if it's missing, so English is required.
How What's New works
- Each entry is saved in Firestore as version_catalog/{version}. The version has to match the app's version number exactly (like 1.4 or 1.4.2).
- The first time a player opens that version, the game shows the card with the changes listed here, in their language (or English, where a piece hasn't been put into theirs).
- With nothing written here for a version, the game shows the App Store's "What's New" text instead.
- Published unticked keeps a version here unseen while you get it ready: players are shown nothing of it (the App Store's text, as if nothing were written) until you tick it and save.
- Icon is an SF Symbol name (find them in Apple's SF Symbols app); a name iOS doesn't have shows a star.
- Each change needs an English title. The detail line and the intro are optional.
- Sections are headings that group the changes under them (like New level types, Shop). Up to 40 rows in all, changes and sections together.
- Paste a list turns a bullet list (like the App Store notes) into the changes in one go: one change per bullet, a section per heading, the title split from the detail at a dash or colon, and an icon picked from what it's about.
Recently seen
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