This Changelog is designed to reflect the changes to Track King over the history of the game. As the changelog wasn't commenced until April '08, changes from the first 6 months of TK are not depicted here.
- April 2012
- Added HOOF top 50 performers from the past week
- Finetuned the prediction of Place Odds
- Reduced cost of HOOF
- Increased Experience gain for horses in Cup Finals
- February 2012
- Added a real-time Chat Room feature
- Chat Room - Track Steward feature announces all Cups and races at Regional Tracks every 10 minutes
- Reduced waiting period between yearlings to 6 days instead of 7
- January 2012
- Added list of 'Top 10 Betting Pools' to the Personal Finances page
- Maximum Manager wage increased by $25,000 per week
- Sun now dries the track with equal speed to rain dampening - should result in very slightly drier tracks, and overall a slightly drier surface average, allowing equally as many fast tracks as heavy
- September 2011
- Jockey page and Jockey Bookmarks now report a little more information about estimated holiday return time
- Introduced Several new Race Eligibility Criteria for all Race Type
- Amended '25+ wins' to '5+ wins'
- Cost for creating a HOOF race dropped to $15,000
- July 2011
- Introduced 'Continent Only' restriction for Invitationals
- Prevented Gelding horses while listed on the Auctions
- Introduced the new Stable Spy feature
- Increased Apprentice Experience and Training
- Apprentices can now 'Go to the Races' once a week for fun and profit
- May 2011
- Added new Horse, Jockey and Track pictures
- March 2011
- Added 'Publish to Race' function for Owners Club
- Connected to Facebook! Go to your personal details
- Added messages to race page to explain why entry not possible
- February 2011
- Revamped the New Player Tour, and the Tutorial. Both are now advised to new players in their opening emails
- Bug fixed on Personal Details page where sometimes stable would be charged incorrectly
- Apprentice jockeys now have 20 training points when hired, and slightly higher starting XP
- Added Local News and Regional News to the Track page, and also to the League Table
- January 2011
- Stablehand Charlie now informs about a range of events regarding ex-apprentice Jockeys and contracts
- Subtle style changes for top & right menu's
- Introduced bulk-Game Credit purchase options
- December 2010
- Improved navigation for browsing various Cup events
- Local Cup Day events introduced, and 20+ Cups created
- Track Page now displays Special Cup Days and links
- Bots in C1-3 now perform at improved levels (with horses having a higher OR), and wear black/blue/green caps and hoods to help players recognise them
- Trophy Shelf for Stables introduced
- Changing Tracks now results in a prestige gain or loss based on comparing Track Prestige. No other penalties exist
- 7-Day Forecast now uses icons
- November 2010
- Display bug for Facilities & Training / Vet times during Daylight Savings has been corrected. It is possible that more bugs will be encountered over coming days, however in all cases the best fix is to leave unusual hours alone, or alternatively, cancel all vet hours and re-assign.
- October 2010
- Added the Google-Translate feature
- Updated Personal Details page to turn off Google-Translate feature
- Training Track XP bonus is now scaled, with a horse in mid-poor condition receiving no bonus and a horse in peak condition receiving full bonus.
- Slight changes to rules for listing aged horses. See Auctions help page for details
- September 2010
- Introduced "occasional" XP bonuses for HOOF races, and aligned HOOF more closely with current Race Engine. XP bonuses will show as per normal Race XP bonuses IF they are awarded.
- Created 20 new RSS feeds to tap into information from Track King
- Introduced "make instructions default" button for horse and/or jockey when setting Race Instructions for a particular race
- Competitive League bonus introduced - players in C1-C3 Leagues of 8 or more human opponents will receive a bonus in Week 0 of between $32,000 and $900,000 - scaled depending on class and numbers of human opponents
- Top 50 lists no longer show retired horses or stables
- Top 50's now includes 50 most competitive tracks
- August 2010
- Made the display of Vet Assessment more transparent
- Introduced internal mail from the Stable Hand where injuries occur during training
- Tweak to ensure that more of the HOOF races are using stricter criteria rather than excessive winnings-limits
- July 2010
- Improved Injury Profiling introduced. In-race performance will be more greatly affected by a higher Injury Profile, and recovery from Injury Profiling is now improved by a spell of greater than 2 weeks - this includes training!
- Withdrawing more than twice from any single race (regardless of horse/jockey) will incur a prestige penalty. Penalty starts at approximately half a prestige level, and increases by approximately double each subsequent withdrawal
- Drop-down Menu system/option introduced
- February 2010
- Added Race data to the XML stream, created 'help file' visible at sendxml.php
- NEW - Linked races to specific forum threads, so when looking at a race you can jump to a forum thread dedicated to that race!
- January 2010
- Increased clarity in the display of Injury Profile within Vet Assessment
- Improved Race Instructions - includes capacity for instructions every eighth distance, instructions for jockeys, instructions for individual races, and Owners Club members can see historical race instructions in the horse/jockey history
- Reduced margin for error when jockeys advise of their return from Holidays
- December 2009
- If no HOOF races have been created in the past 10 minutes, a random bot stable will step forwards and create a race.
- Jockey contract extensions no longer allow a jockey to be contracted past retirement age
- Added a new 'badge' element to the top banner
- Patches to Forums to allow more flexibility for GMs with player penalties
- October 2009
- 'Charlie' added to the new player tour
- Any horse with earnings less than $1m may now be renamed
- Small graphic enhancements to the site - menu icons, improved shadows/roundings, silks background
- Display bug fix to Summary pages
- Facebook link added to front page
- August 2009
- 3rd European Region opened
- Improvements to Sponsored Cup payment system
- July 2009
- Invitations will be given out for all bot-created stakes races, with bots able to effectively enter any that they are invited to. Exception is that bots will not get invitations to top-end stakes such as 50-60 OR's and >10 >25 wins
- Improved bot logic for entering stakes races
- Introduced 'most important' ordering on apprentice training page
- Fixed personal bank balance calculation on personal details page
- Fixed a small bug when inviting a player to a stakes race, where stable name was not being displayed
- Reminder for race instructions and jockey schedule issues on the 'auto-travel booking' page
- Streamlined jockey schedule/transport checking to allow more flexibility for advanced players
- BETTING - Trifecta minimum odds are now $1.66, Exacta minimum odds are now $1.33
- Added some subtle background images
- Jockeys can now return from holidays at any time of the day, not just 'on the hour'.
- Spruced the menu's a little with some small graphic stylings
- FINALLY! I've fixed the Internet Explorer bug on the jockey/horse summary pages. No more overlaps!
- June 2009
- Season 8 Race Engine - focus on condensing the field while still retaining previous order and allowing room for obvious signs of horse/jockey improvement over time/training.
- Auto promotion introduced for following season for all 1st placed stables
- 'Official' Cup purses increased, and all Cup finals now pay 5% of race purse to all finishers in the top half of the field
- Increased scale of payments for ex-apprentices
- Training hours leased out will now be paid directly at training time to reduce confusion
- Stakes races now only pay the amount for place achieved, rather than paying total purse to small fields
- Race entry process improved to give more feedback about travel times, spotting possible conflicts, and assist with fixing conflicts
- Admin tools for managing GM reports, saving GM's from doubling up their efforts
- Introduction of the 'Share' function on the front page - over 200 uses by you guys in the first week!
- May 2009
- Season Calendar function, and assorted changes to the Stable homepage
- Improved calculations for prestige loss when donating personal cash to your stable. Prestige loss is now relative to the wealth of your stable and wealth of the player. Less prestige loss when player is wealthy compared to stable. More prestige loss when stable is wealthy compared to player - this allows donations to help a stable more easily than to make a stable exceedingly rich.
- Your own Stable Net Worth now available to all Owner Club members during the off-season. Updated live!
- Improved 'Enter Race Horse' to show whether a jockey is busy or not at the time of booking
- Added 'real-time' scoring to Rivalry Cups, and Cup tallies to Track page
- No longer lose any prestige for a poor Cup result
- Ability to search for jockey by age
- All Training Track bugs/problems should now be 100% resolved
- Ability to reset your private forum
- Admin tools to manage membership levels more easily
- April 2009
- Introduction of new race restrictions based on Overall rating and also based on Career Wins
- Forum 'ignore' feature added
- Genetic facility introduced! All horses retrospectively granted enhanced DNA and breeding rules changed accordingly
- Amendment to Vet Assessment - now shows med/phys condition coupled with an Injury Profile assessment
- March 2009
- Very slight increase to recovery speeds of Injury Profile
- Ability to hire your own ex-Apprentice jockeys no matter what class they are currently in
- Google translations added to Help
- Community Cups introduced
- Merchandising now handled by Cafepress.com
- Track page bugfixes, and added a trophy cabinet to each Track
- February 2009
- H.O.O.F - accessible from the 'xx online' section of the menu.
- Day One instant access for eligible new stables
- Brief tour of the site for new players
- Marketing drive for all ex-TK players
- Slight amendment to Conference Room facility - now enables slightly better rates for rehiring/firing jockeys
- January 2009
- Invitationals can now be restricted to "Owner/Breeder" entrants only
- commencing Friday Week 3, bot stables now have the option of creating "earnings restricted" races where entrants must have career prizemoney of less than $X million
- Bugfix - No longer able to give away horses that are scheduled to race - this was causing problems with Invitations not being returned correctly. These horses will need to be withdrawn from races before they can be given away.
- CHANGE/Bugfix - When entering a race in the next season, aging will be taken into consideration for all races. At the time of aging, 10yo horses will be scratched from any Stakes races in Week 1 or later. This means that 10yo Horses can have a "farewell" event in Week 0 of the new season even if the date falls after 1st of the month....however this will be the final opportunity for them to race. From Week 1 onwards, no 11yo's can race. Also, this means that 3yo's turning 4 will not be able to enter Week 1 of the Spring Guineas or other similar events.
- NEW - Added the ability to view previous seasons league tables
- Introduced "Stable of the Day" on Home page, and re-arranged the Home page slightly
- Bugfix - Viewing all records held by another stable now correctly shows all records, not just sprint records
- December 2008
- SEASON 6 RACE ENGINE, see Race Engine Changes
- Injury risk profiling - See Injury Profiling changes
- New - list of latest 200 new players to TK available from home page and continent/track pages.
- Total overhaul of the mail system. Too many improvements to list lol!
- Improvement to "you have been outbid" banner feature for Owners Club. Banner should now reset after you look at your Auction Records page until further bids are received
- Minor bugfix - should now be able to 'mark all as read' in Local/Regional forums
- Horse history now displays the name of the stable a horse left when sold
- Horse history now displays the sale of stud rights and the usage of stud rights as separate items (for future stud sales/usages)
- November 18 2008
- Bugfix - Hopefully when scratching from a Cup, the invitation will now remain valid rather than showing "Horse Not Found"?
- Interface improvement - Jockey search will no longer over-ride your first skill criteria with default prestige levels
- Interface improvement - When issuing invitations for stakes Races, page now recalls which race you last invited someone to
- Horse History now has an additional tab for all horses on Auction and for your own horses to see recent training
- When all 3 specialist facilities have been built, ability to see other facility descriptions added
- October 2008
- On promoting an apprentice jockey from your stable, you will be offered the chance to hire them for 28 days at a modest wage
- Further 'fairness rules' put in place in the Auctions to encourage fair, market-priced auctioning rather than pre-agreed deals (See Auctions rules page)
- NEW - list of online users by Nationality. Click the "xxx online" link in the main menu
- Forum ban mechanism implemented. All MODs now have the ability to ban a player from the Forums
- New horse photos....and a minor oops to replace the old horse pics for all current horses :-s
- Minor training adjustment (bugfix?). Cap on increases available in a particular training session. Still generous but no longer possible to add 4-5 levels!
- Race Engine Changes for Season5:
Horses- Starting speed boost for well suited horses
- Slightly more difficult for a horse to 'push through the pain barrier' when the going gets tough.
- Horse ability to stay the distance very slightly more dependant on experience
- When the jockey says "hold", the horse no longer has the ability to increase speed
- When told to ease, the horse has a larger chance of dropping speed
Jockeys- MASSIVE AI improvements
- Progressively better decision making for apprentices as they gain experience through their career
- Improved senses for horses just in front and current placing
- Increased desire for all jockeys to place in the top 5
- Increased sensitivity to horse speed, and better chance of 'feeling' the horses potential
- Increased ability for jockeys to push a horse beyond 100%, although this will rapidly tire the horse
Race Vision- Jockey whips will (from here on) only show when the jockey is pushing the horse hard, and always when pushing beyond 100%
- Streamlined menu system - introduced a faster method of maintaining the "Horse" menu, and removed Jockey menu from several pages. This should bring about noticeable performance increases for the site.
- After withdrawing a horse, a stable must wait 10 minutes until they can re-enter that particular race.
- September 2008
- New - Training Track
- New - Specialist Facilities
- Help updates for Specialist Facilities
- Bugfix on race entry for Season 5
- New - Introduced career progression for jockeys - if they've gotten enough career earnings then at the end of a season they are eligible for promotion to a higher class
- Bugfix on race entry for Class limitations on promoted stables qualified for a cup in progress
- Change to prevent new stables being assigned any horses older than 9yo
- Small improvement to bookmarks for unborn foals. Thanks Saracen!
- Added numerical values to horse skills and auction results page
- NEW Added ability for Owners Club memebrs to sort their horses using a drag&drop method
- Bug fix - You have been outbid message in banner hopefully functional now
- Bugfix on Auctions page - now remembers racing style.
- Bugfix on jockey search page - now remembers search criteria
- Many changes in preparation for new League season:
- Race Engine changes (as per announcement) prepared
- End of season tie-break implemented. Where points and results are equal at Week 11 of the season, results will be determined by the best placed stable of the longest races competed by those stables in the final week
- Specialist Facilities prepared for release in the off-season
- New secret feature prepared for release in the off season
- August 2008
- Minor changes to menu order
- NEW feature for geeks like me. RSS Feed available for TK, focussed around results and betting dividends. Feed also available on Facebook, so please subscribe to it :)
- Improvement on betting payout figures - particularly for placings. TK betting now should behave more like a true tote.
- Bugfix on Exacta/Trifecta payouts where a horse has been scratched. Correct payout will now go ahead
- Change to Hall of Fame as requested - default view is now 'most career winnings of all time'
- Small improvement to Search Results page - horses now ordered by age, and results capped to 'current' horses only.
- Proposed changes to relocation (and penalties for moving to a lower population league) introduced and active.
- Bugfix to the Race decline option - now appears regardless of eligibility for the race
- Improvement - Owners Club Race Vision will 'remember' the size of the window you last used in race vision, and also allows access to the Free version of the viewer
- NEW - Decline race invitations for Stakes and Invitationals
- NEW - Family Tree via each Horse
- NEW - Hall of Fame
- Refined Race Records - only one distance at a time available
- Friends online and next race added to header block.
- Race countdown (within 1 hour) added to header.
- July 2008
- Updates and improvements to Auction Records page.
- Prestige change - Releasing an apprentice jockey now gives prestige, to a greater or lesser extent based on apprenticeship served.
- Yearling pulls can be done on the 7th day now, regardless of time of day of the last yearling pull
- Added 'you have been outbid' to header
- Owners Club header receives updates to mail/auction status when in forums
- Added new Header, which provides 'announcement' facilities for OC members. Currently displays an unread mail alert, and will be expended in coming days.
- Delayed auto-graduation in Mentor Program, and viewing old messages.
- Experience 'pops' gained from racing will now be visible on the horse experience tables until the next race
- Minor changes to Page Menu (reorder, remove, tidy)
- Race Engine changes - Gate speed now has slightly more impact at the start, Horse less likely to lose large amounts of speed when conflicting with the jockey, Horse may drift slightly when conflicting with jockey
- Began implementation of Rules in Spanish thanks to maleconero
- Bugfix - forum adverts created by Invitationals corrected
- Race Engine changes - To take effect as of Monday 7th.
- Jockey ability to push horse 'very hard' for short bursts improved
- Jockeys now distinguish more clearly between horses 'just ahead' and horses 'just behind' using 'awareness of nearby horses' attribute
- Jockeys pay slightly more attention to instructions to hold/take a breather
- Racevision now slightly more accurate in tight finishes
- Experience at distance now very slightly more important
- Jockeys - Awareness of nearby runners now reported in racing styles
- June 2008
- Bugfix - promoting jockey date now recorded accurately
- Search for race now includes search for "any" races
- Bugfix - corrected discrepancy between manual and auto travel booking times
- Preparation for third European region
- New forum feature - private forum owners can now edit/delete postings
- Top 50 amendments to reduce server load, includes new jockey top50
- Pagination for horse history. Jockey history pagination coming soon
- Crash recovery! :-(
- Removed the ability for non OC members to resize Race Vision, as it was causing multiple loads of race data per person, which in turn caused increased CPU usage.
- Introduced framework for Invitationals (see Help text) and Cups where the stable must use only one horse (as per the Magic Mile).
- Cookies used in forums to return you to prior thread when using browser back button within 5 mins.
- Unborn foals on horse history, links to unborn foal.
- Introduced "Foetal Rating" when looking at unborn foals
- Renamed/created Suggestions forum and TK Bulletins forum, moved some threads
- Bugfix - minor display bug in Cup runners
- NEW - Ability to negotiate end contract with jockeys
- Updated jockey help with contract termination details
- Implemented restriction for Career/Season results tables for non-Owners
- Implemented 'nagware' banner in header for non members
- Added Owner Club logo's on stables and in shop
- Slightly increased the chances for good parent 'genes' to shine through to the foal
- Slightly larger drops in jockey morale when poor form or not racing often
- Main Menu updates/improvements for some pages which were 'dead ends'
- Introduced Google Ads for most pages for non-paying players.
- Introduced restrictions on Race Vision as per announcement - non paying players can only watch their own races within 3 days of the event
- Introduced restriction in Auctions - non-Owners Club players cannot use "overall rating" in Auctions.
- Amended Maidens setup by bots to be a 1/3 chance of appearing at a track, and to be held on Mondays.
- Number of stakes races at a track in a Friday/Monday will be changeable - between 8 and 12 races over two days instead of always 11
- Help text updates for OC
- NEW - All TK's with no OC in the past 110 days (or 3rd week+ new players) can earn a free week of OC by winning a race and logging in within 48 hours!. Offer is repeatable as long as no OC in 110 days.
- NEW - Added the ability to donate money to Track King
- Enhanced "Buy Owners Club" link for non-OC members
- May 2008
- RACE ENGINE - Slightly increased penalties for racing horses in poor condition
- 'Remove all' buttons added to vet/training facilities tabs
- Slight increase to physical penalties for very long training sessions
- NEW - Introduced new race entry restrictions - apprentices, $XX and maidens.
- Help text updates to reflect these changes
- Enhancement to attempt to force bots to enter across all Cup fields. This enhancement may be withdrawn if bots have trouble entering all events they are eligilbe for.
- Tidyup of Cups info page.
- AUCTIONS - Added search by Overall Rating, Stride, and Historical Auctions.
- NEW - Ability to rename 3yo's within 3 weeks of purchase.
- Introduced slight enhancement on jockey search - 'personality trait'.
- Bugfix for GM functions in Internet Explorer.
- Bugfix for Races homepage in Internet Explorer.
- Work to minimise 'overlap' problem in Horse summary. Problem lies largely with Internet Explorer incorrectly displaying the styles used, not 100% possible to fix without extensive work.
- 'Small recognition' on the user page for those Track Kings who donate time to a TK publication.
- Bugfix to 'upper' buttons in the Forums
- NEW - Owners can record a comment about their jockeys
- Amended horse overcrowding - instead of all in one hit on Sunday, instead it is gradual condition loss each night.
- Sneetches in the forums with a 'star upon thars'.
- Created GM/Mod 'TK mailbox'.
- Allowed some 'special' characters in polls.
- Small changes to polls to try and enable iPhone
- Bugfix on 'back/first page' buttons in forum
- Added track condition to the results of Race Search.
- Added 'day of the week' to Search for a Race
- Added track condition to the Continent page.
- Database changes to forums to improve speed and performance
- Bugfix to forum and auctions page to enable for mobile/Mac
- Slight upwards adjustment to maximum reserve prices (overall approx 10-15% based on stats)
- Bugfix to sticky threads
- Short Email questionnaire is now sent to any users that leave the game.
- Implemented new forum including polls, streamlined message/thread retrieval, improved 'mark as read', and poll management for private forums
- Implemented horse image when data is being retrieved.
- Home page - horse image
- New users now sent TKMail with link to the Mentor thread
- Improvements to renaming process to allow more flexible puntuation/capitalisation of names.
- Various help/rules updates
- Change to weekly finances - first 4 stables have no weekly cost. Announcement to come soon.
- April 2008
- Various minor corrections/additions to Help pages.
- Added extra warning message about purchasing stud rights off the auction. Hopefully this prevents further mistaken bids?!
- Minor adjustments to the stable selection criteria for Track King Masters Cup, announcement coming soon
- Refinements/improvements to automatic GM cheat-report tools in Auctions
- NEW - Ability to automatically book travel when making a race booking.
- quick bugfix to make sure correct time/cost for travel! oops!
- Change to front page to show how many active users instead of logged in users
- Increases to income generated by agistment/training leased to public
- Bugfix - learned about 'stopwords' for searches and refined the search box
- Bugfix - Refined search for stakes invitees re: stopwords
- Bugfix - sort by 'epic' distance XP on Horse Summary now fixed
- Setup URL redirection from trackking.org -> www.trackking.org
- Added 'Moved' status to forum threads (not retrospective)
- Bugfix - completed cups on Stable page showing as not booked
- Implemented increased/scaled League payments based on number of named jockeys in a race. Should effectively double the participation payments received for Class League Races in the first 2 weeks of the season.
- Planning and testing some small forum upgrades
- Bugfix on bugfix for horse stride :-s
- Bugfix on jockey stats - not showing "maxed out" rails.
- Minor additions to 'Breeding' and 'League' rules in Help pages, spelling errors corrections throughout
- Auction "maximum" reserve price scale improved to reflect max stat, min stat, overall rating, and other factors
- New Racerecords available per stable and per horse - from stable/horse page, or race records advanced search for your own stable.
- Bugfix to stable page - invitations not displaying where Cups were booked
- Bugfix to entering races - allowed extra league runners in unusual circs
- Added another admin tool re new registrations
- Minor tweak - default jockey contracts extended by approx 10%
- Bugfix to training (two types) which allowed stride gain of 2m+ - now limited
- Bugfix to Users page, wasn't allowing stable name changes successfully
- Bugfix to Gelding page, incorrectly displayed horse spirit immediately after gelding.
- Small enhancement to Cups Homepage to allow highlighting of Cups for your home track
- Preparing Horse Summary page for addition of 'The Horse Computer'
- Bug-fix - some trainings now correctly allow weight loss. Previously no weight loss was ever possible!
- Updates to jockey page - all racing styles commented on
- Minor tweaks to Race Engine - jockeys have the ability to push a horse very hard for limited periods during a race
- Continuing testing/tweaking changes to the race engine (not introduced to live game yet)
- Spruced up the 'login' page of TK (will be released later today)
- Fixed a minor bug listing old horses for stud/sale
- Created another Admin tool
- Began testing potential tweaks to the race engine (testing only - no changes to game)
- Fixed problem with missed races on Home page - past/coming races
- Fix/improved 'current cup runner' on Stables page
- Amendments to Race engine as announced, so that race prestige and Class League 'automatic payments' are scaled proportionate to number of named jockeys
- Fix to jockey page to correctly show retired jockeys
- Fix to Auctions preventing listing retired horses
- Introduced Changelog
Thanks for playing Track King!
