Vincent Brévart

Vincent Brévart

Troubleshooting - Interface Français

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Interface Troubleshooting

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General preferences Button to open the general preferences (shortcut Ctrl+G).

A malfunction

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A difficulty with the interface

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A more serious problem

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A malfunction

My Belote meld is never counted (Bel Atout)

  • To declare Belote and Rebelote, you must click on the   B   next to the player's name to turn it green. Once the   B   is green, play your card (King or Queen of trumps).

    Melding Belote

    How to meld Belote or Rebelote

  • If the automatic Belote and Rebelote options are enabled, the   B   is highlighted in green by default each time the meld is valid. Click on it to put it in white only if you do not want to declare your belote (in case you are sure to go down, for example).

  • The automatic Belote and Rebelote options are set in the general preferences on the Automatism page. Please note that they are checked by default when the program is installed on a new machine.
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My melds (tierce, quart, etc.) are never counted (Bel Atout)

  • Melding a combination (tierce, quart, quint and set of four) is reserved for classic belote and modern belote. In Bel Atout, these melds are not allowed in contract belote. Note that the sets of four 7's and four 8's are not valid.

  • When the melding box is available, the possible melds - for example   Tierce   - are displayed in white. Put your meld in green - for example   Tierce   - by clicking on it, then play your card. You can green multiple melds before playing.

  • To avoid forgetting your melds, open the general preferences on the Automatism page, and check the Declare melds automatically (tierce, etc.) option. Valid melds will then automatically be highlighted in green.

  • Your melds are only counted if they are valid and only if your team has the strongest meld. The rules and variations are described in the program and accessible via the menu Help / The rules of the game / The melding, or Help / How to / Declare a meld.
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I would like my melds to be declared automatically (Bel Atout)

  • To have your melds declared automatically, open the general preferences on the Automatism page, and check the Declare melds automatically (tierce, etc.) option. Then you won't have to worry about your melds anymore.
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The program shows the 4 hands before the end of the deal

  • The button for ending a deal rapidly appears when one of the players can no longer lose the lead, regardless of the cards played by the other three players. All 4 hands are then shown face up, and all you have to do is click the Complete rapidly button to end the deal.

  • To enable or disable this button, open the general preferences on the Automatism page, and change the Button for ending a deal rapidly option.
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At the end of some deals (or all), the program plays by itself - How to disable the comparison?

  • If the comparison is enabled, the Compare deal button appears at the end of a deal. By clicking on this button, the program quickly replays the deal while controlling the 4 players.

  • To disable the comparison, open the Preferences menu and select Without comparison. You can also open the general preferences on the Play / Comparison page, and change the type of comparison.

  • In Bel Atout (contract belote) and SimiliBridge, even if the comparison is disabled, it can be imposed if in South you have chosen a bid likely to mislead your partner. To disable this feature, open the general preferences on the Play / Comparison page, and uncheck the Compare the deal if South has not respected the bidding system option. This checkbox is only visible if the comparison on the bidding and card play is not selected. For more information, see also the  Understanding the comparison  page.
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The calculation of the points scored seems wrong or unclear

Explain scoring Explain scoring button
  • At the end of a deal, click this button to display the detail of the calculation of the points scored. If the detail displayed is not enough for you to understand the calculation of points, the Help button in this window will give you access to more information.
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Can I modify a sound or delete some of them?

  • To change the choice of sounds heard according to the different events, open the general preferences on the Sound effects / Sounds page. Select an event and click either the Change button to choose another sound, or the Delete button so that there is no more sound attached to that event.

  • Note that clicking Delete only removes the sound attachment to an event. You can later select this sound again, or attach it to another event. Click the Reset button to restore all the default sounds.
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I don't have the sounds while they are enabled

  • Open the general preferences on the Sound effects page. Check that the option to enable sounds (or voices if present) is checked.

  • Check that your speakers are on, and that the sound system setting is correct (icon to the right of the taskbar on your desktop).

  • Checking the speakers can be done in the general preferences on the Sound effects / Sounds page. Select a sound then click the Listen button. If no sound is produced, see the question  The program cannot play sounds .
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A difficulty with the interface

How to review the bids or the 4 hands?

First bid    Last bid   Opening lead
First and last bid   Opening lead
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The game is too fast for me
  • If you don't have time to see the bidding after the final contract is established, open the general preferences on the Timing page, and check the Click before ending the bidding option.

  • If you don't have time to see the cards in a trick, open the general preferences on the Timing page, and check the Click before clearing away the cards option.

  • If you don't have time to cancel your bid or your card in case of error, open the general preferences on the Timing page, and check the Click after each play option. When you make a bid or play a card, you will have to left-click on the table to give the lead to the next player, which will leave you plenty of time to cancel your choice by right-clicking (pressing the right mouse button).

  • If you don't want to have to click to continue the game, you can also increase the delays observed before ending the bidding or clearing away the cards, as well as those observed after a bid or a card. To do this, open the general preferences on the Timing / Delays page, and enter new values for the different delays. These are expressed in tenths of a second. Value 10 corresponds to 1 second, value 20 to 2 seconds, etc.

    Note that you are not allowed to cancel an opponent's choice, because it would be cheating. But when it's your turn to play, you can, by clicking on the right mouse button, see the bidding if you have not yet played, or see the last trick in other cases.

  • The comparison (if it is enabled by the Preferences menu) is always carried out at high speed to quickly give you the result that the computer would have obtained when playing South's hand in your place. To learn how to study the compared deal step by step, read the  Understanding the comparison  page.
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I am now forced to click between each play

Stop before playing Stop before playing Normal play Play at normal speed
  • If during a game, you are forced to click on the table to go to the next play, check the status of the two buttons above. The one on the right - Play at normal speed - must be pressed so that there is no longer a stop between plays.

  • If these two buttons are grayed out, open the general preferences on the Timing page, and uncheck the Click after each play option.
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There is a slowdown between each play

  • Open the general preferences on the Timing / Delays page, and check the value of the delays according to the different situations.

  • The slowdown can also be due to sounds that are enabled, but not heard due to muted speakers. If so, open the general preferences on the Sound effects page, and uncheck the option to enable sounds (or voices if present).

  • Finally, the slowdown may be due to a program running in the background, or to a maintenance operation on your system that is heavily demanding disk access and slowing down the work of the playing engine. If so, wait until the end of the task in the background (and read below the question about the abnormal slowdown of your device).

  • Note that if you are used to putting your laptop to sleep, it is also in your interest to restart it periodically to reset its memory and maintain its full capabilities.
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There is a slowdown after each end of deal

  • If the slowdown occurs just before the end of the deal, open the general preferences on the Files page, and uncheck the Save the game deals option. Test again to find out if the problem was there.

  • If the slowdown occurs just when dealing cards, go through the Preferences / Set the advantage for North-South menu (if the menu exists), and check that the slowdown is not related to the search for a deal with an advantage.

  • Finally, the slowdown may be due to a program running in the background, or to a maintenance operation on your system that is heavily demanding disk access and slowing down the work of the playing engine. If so, wait until the end of the task in the background (and read below the question about the abnormal slowdown of your device).

  • Note that if you are used to putting your laptop to sleep, it is also in your interest to restart it periodically to reset its memory and maintain its full capabilities.
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There is an abnormal slowdown of my device

  • If the slowdown of your device is due to a maintenance operation, it is most often the automatic defragmentation of your hard drive. Since Windows 8, this is scheduled by default every week and can last several minutes. To deactivate this operation, which is not essential at such a frequency, follow these steps:

    • Right-click the Start button on the taskbar, and select the Search menu
    • Enter Defragment in the search bar
    • Click on Defragment and Optimize Drives which appears just below the search bar
    • In the window that opens, click the Change settings button
    • Uncheck the Run on a schedule box
    • Finish with OK then Close

  • You can reactivate this maintenance operation at any time in the same way.
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Are there shortcuts to use the keyboard primarily?

  • Most of the functions are accessible by keyboard keys. To select a card or a bid, you can use the arrows and the Enter key. Cancelling a card is done by pressing any arrow, but it is still less practical than the right click of the mouse.

  • Each keyboard shortcut is described on the help page for the function it triggers. You can also open the different menus and see that many submenus come with a shortcut key.
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I can't stop a game and return to it later

Stop this game Stop this game button (shortcut F8)
  • To stop a game, click this button, or simply close the program. In both cases, you will be asked for an interruption confirmation.

  • Once the game is interrupted, you have the choice between clicking the big New game button (the interrupted game will be permanently forgotten). Or click the red button just above which is called Return to the interrupted game.
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The message "A game is already running..." prevents me from playing

  • If you get the message "A game is already running in another instance of the application", this means that you have launched the program twice in a row, without interrupting the game you had already started.

  • When this happens, close the program that displays the error message. You cannot play two games at the same time.

  • Look at your taskbar at the bottom of your screen. An icon should indicate that the program is already running. If it's Bel Atout, your taskbar should look more or less like this:

    Game already running

    How to continue a game already running

  • Then click on the icon in the taskbar to continue your game normally.
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A more serious problem

I can no longer select a bid or a card

  • You may have enabled the accessibility selection and didn't know what it was. The accessibility options start the selection by the mouse wheel, or by a regular move of the selection, making the mouse cursor inoperative to select a bid or card.

  • To disable the accessibility selection, open the general preferences on the Automatism / Accessibility page and uncheck the Enable the accessibility selection option.
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The program does not save any of my preferences

  • The program saves your user preferences in text files with the extension .ini. It does not access the system registry and therefore is not prone to problems related to this type of saving. Your .ini files are located in your personal folder, which for example for Bel Atout is called Documents / CardGames / Bel Atout. In theory, there should be no problem saving your preferences.

  • But it is possible that when it was installed, the program was blocked by your antivirus, which prevents it from writing to your Documents folder.

  • A possible solution is to (1) uninstall the program and delete the Documents / CardGames / Bel Atout folder (if it is Bel Atout). Then (2) perform a new installation while changing the default installation folder (for example, add a 2 to the end of the default folder, to give ...\Bel Atout2). If necessary, you can also create an exception on your antivirus for the new installation folder.
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The program fails to play sounds

  • First, read the question  I don't have the sounds while they're enabled , which goes over simple solutions to search in priority, if the sounds are not heard.

  • If the sounds obviously cannot be listened to from the sound preferences window, it is probably because the program has been blocked by your antivirus, which prevents it from playing the sounds. See the previous question to know how to bypass this type of blocking.
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I would like to reset all my preferences

  • First, be aware that resetting your preferences will not restore your favorite settings. The various preferences will be set to their default values, possibly causing more losses than you think. Instead, learn how to change your preferences yourself without resorting to that drastic method of starting from scratch.

  • If, however, you have changed too many preferences without reading the associated help pages, and you are no longer able to manage, you can easily (1) open File Explorer to your Documents / CardGames / Bel Atout folder (if it is Bel Atout). Then (2) delete the .ini file that concerns you (if you are user 1, it is belatout1.ini).

  • You can also start from scratch by choosing a different user. Go through the File / Choose user menu (or Ctrl+U), and choose a user that has not yet been initialized.
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The program crashes from time to time

  • A program like Bel Atout works without crashing on thousands of computers. It is tested in continuous automatic play for tens of hours, with verification of the memory used and analysis of its performance. If you deplore recurring crashes about it, you must first think of a problem related to your hardware.

  • The rare crashes are reported during periods of high heat. Users are surprised because it is when they play with their favorite card game that these problems appear, and not when using other software. But you have to understand that games like Bel Atout or SimiliBridge put a lot of strain on the microprocessor. Even if playing a card only takes a few tenths of a second, the number of instructions executed by the microprocessor is gigantic. A small laptop without a good ventilation system will quickly be in trouble if the ambient temperature exceeds 28°C (82°F).

  • Note that if you are used to putting your laptop to sleep, it is also in your interest to restart it periodically to reset its memory and maintain its full capabilities.
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