Freeverse

FREEVERSE ANNOUNCES SQUABBLE CHALLENGE, GRAND PRIZE OF AIRPORT EXPRESS.

New York - June 24, 2004 - Freeverse Software today announced the first online "Squabble Challenge" -- games and a grand prize of a new Airport Express to be given away.

To celebrate the recent release of the new and innovative game of frantic word-making known as Squabble, Freeverse will be hosting the first round of a Squabble tournament on the free online GameSmith service.

What: Squabble Challenge!
When: Wednesday, June 30th, at 8:30 p.m. est.
Where: GameSmith (online service built into Squabble)
Rules: Official Rules

A number of matches will be held, and the top players from each match will move onto the second round of the tournament and get the chance to win lots of games and a fabulous new Airport Express!

Entry to the Squabble Challenge is free, just download Squabble for Mac OS and show up on GameSmith at the appointed time. The GameSmith captains will point you where to go. Playing Squabble is a very competitive experience, and practice is strongly encouraged.

For further information contact:

Colin Lynch Smith
Vice President
Freeverse Software
Colin@freeverse.com
(212) 929 3549

Squabble, Freeverse's new and innovative game of fast and frantic word-making with solo and multi-player action, has been updated to version 1.02.

Squabble will run on Mac OS 8.6 or later, and is OS X native. It features free online play via the GameSmith game-matching service.

Squabble Home Page:
http://www.freeverse.com/squabble/

Changes from previous version:

• Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect ratings for network players,
  especially if the host decided to be an observer.
  
• Increased the maximum end time to 300 seconds.
  

Freeverse will be showing off their award winning web browser for kids, BumperCar at the National Education and Computing Conference in New Orleans this week. (NECC)

If you're in New Orleans, please stop by Booth 2552, say Hi and get a demo of BumperCar in action!

We're changing a large number of our servers to a new colocated host today, in the hopes of making our websites better, faster, and able to give you 100% of your daily vitamins and minerals just by looking at them.

Because of the changes involved, the DNS entries for our servers will be changing over the weekend. Service to websites may (but hopefully won't) be affected. Bear with us while we transition to an even better server set up!

GameSmith and Arcane Arena servers will not be affected.

Squabble, Freeverse's new and innovative game of fast and frantic word-making with solo and multi-player action, has been updated to version 1.01.

Squabble will run on Mac OS 8.6 or later, and is OS X native. It features free online play via the GameSmith game-matching service.

Squabble Home Page:
http://www.freeverse.com/squabble.mgi

Changes from previous version:

• If the bottom player box moves off the window Squabble switches from showing 2 words per line to as many words per line as will fit.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed human players to make illegal steals like
  AQUA from QUA or DREAD from READ.
  
• Bots are prevented from doing a make/take within 1 sec of a tile
  turning over.
  
• The Choose Players dialog no longer allows a human player's name
  to end with a digit (such names are reserved for bots).
  

Big Bang Chess has been updated again! Version 1.21, which remains free and has the following bug fixes:

• 1.2. Fixed bug which periodically caused a hang when opening the preferences after playing for 15 minutes
• Fixed visual bug when undoing a pawn's promotion
• Added modifiable skins for game pieces and board, inside application package.
• 1.21 Fixed bug when choosing initial piece set chose wrong onetheir computer

You can get the new Big Bang Chess from our downloads page.

FREEVERSE RELEASES SQUABBLE
ORIGINAL MAC GAME OF WORD MAKING AND WORD TAKING

New York - June 4, 2004 - Freeverse Software today announced the availability of a new and innovative game for all Mac wordsmiths. Squabble(tm) combines traditional word-making gameplay with fast and frantic solo and multi-player action. Easy to learn and easy to play, Squabble challenges up to ten players to form the best words they can from a shared pool of letters. But watch out - any player can steal another word in the blink of an eye if they can make it better!

Squabble rewards vocabulary, spelling, quick reflexes and quicker thinking. Its the most rigorous workout you can get without actually burning any calories.

Programmed by Australian Andrew Trevorrow, the creator of the popular X-Words and CrossCards games, Squabble is that rare game that is simple, novel, and incredibly fun.

Ian Lynch Smith, president of Freeverse has said "I don't know from what marsupial pocket Andrew pulled this game, but its brought our office to a halt. If we don't release any other games this year, you'll know its because we're too busy playing Squabble!"

Squabble will run on Mac OS 8.6 or later, and is OS X native. It features free online play via the GameSmith game-matching service.

Squabble is priced at $19.95 and is available exclusively from the Freeverse Store. A demo and more information is available at the Squabble home page

The updates just keep on coming for Big Bang Chess! We've updated to version 1.1, which remains free and has the following bug fixes:

• Fixed some issues with AppleScript integration
• Added unicode support in PBEM comments
• Computer can no longer castle while in check
• Added support for en passant
• Fixed a problem which occurred when the user doesn't have zip on their computer
• Raised the computer speech bubble so they don't cover the tops of the back row of pieces
• Fixed computer voices so they don't overlay when repeatedly clicking on the gods
• Increased the number of "draw" situations which are handled correctly
• Fixed bug for network games between two players with the same name would not connect
• Added visual indication for past captured pieces
• Fixed small bug when promoting a pawn, the buttons showed the wrong chess set pieces

If you tried to enter a survey response in the past few days and received a blank screen upon completion, we may not have received your response. We have fixed the problem, and apologize for the inconvenience.

We've extended the survey time to make up for the glitch in the system, so if you haven't filled out a survey yet, make sure you do!