This documentation is completely unofficial. It has no connection to
the Playroom staff at all, other than a link to the shortcuts reference,
and a FAQ page, written by the English Playroom staff.
However, an attempt was made to document all the available Playroom
features, and make it as comprehensive as possible, so that every option
has a clear description and explanation.
As the Playroom receives frequent updates, this documentation should be kept up to date as well. If you notice something that has changed, and is no longer accurate, contact me so I can correct it. My Playroom username is Nikola, and this documentation will hopefully help you know how to send me a private, or a permanent message.
Note: This documentation is still a work in progress. The incomplete sections I am already aware of, or just things to do in general are in a separate internal notes file. You can help expand or complete them.
Similarly, as I’m not a native speaker, if you notice a grammar/spelling error, feel free to reach out as well and let me know. If you find any section confusing or unclear, feel free to get in touch as well and suggest changes.
One of the possible frequent questions might be if this documentation will ever get the official status. Personally, I have no objections to this. However, you must keep in mind that the official and native language of the Playroom’s developer is French, so the priority would be to translate this documentation to French. This is a huge amount of work requiring quite a lot of time, so I do not expect this to be done in the near future. Note: Official status to be considered only after all the to do sections are completed. Not finished as of this time.
For translators to any other language, I will always keep a Documentation changelog, which will list any changes to the documentation and when they were made. This will make it easy for you to update your translations accordingly. Note: The changelog is in Markdown.
Welcome to the Playroom!
The Playroom is a free online gaming platform, especially made to be
accessible to visually impaired people.
On the Playroom, you will find some of the most popular card, board and dice games, such as Uno, Poker, Farkle, Yahtzee, Chess, but also some of the less popular ones. Hopefully you will discover a new game you didn’t know before and invite your friends to play it with you!
To begin playing, you will first need to create an account. This is a
very simple process. The Playroom doesn’t ask for any personal data. We
need only your username (this is a nickname that will help members of
the community to recognize you), your password, and your e-mail
address.
To create your account, visit The registration page.
There, fill all the data as required, and you will receive a
confirmation e-mail on the address you have specified during your
registration. Either enter the code on the page which just opened, or
just click the link in your e-mail, and the account will be activated.
From this point on, you can start playing!
Before you start playing, it is very important to read the rules of the
community.
The rules aren’t very long and contain some basic guidelines. Not
reading the rules is not an excuse. That being said, there is no need to
be afraid. You will not be permanently banned for your first offense, as
long as it is clear that you aren’t an intentional spammer. Moderators
are humans, just like you, and as long as you act decently and are
respectful, you won’t face any problems.
As a quick summary, insults or spamming is forbidden, do not cheat or attempt to use scripts and other types of automation, and use only one account per person. In the case of a family using multiple accounts, notify the staff about it, and keep in mind that checks will be performed and that unjustified accounts will be deleted.
The general usage document will focus on the experience you will get when playing from Windows, using the Playroom Windows client. Note that it is possible to play from other platforms as well using your web browser. This will be described in a separate document, but there are only some minor differences compared to the Windows client, so you should still be able to follow along. It is recommended to read this document, and then read the Web client documentation, which will only describe the special features of the web client and its main differences. The web client has a few additional shortcuts and gestures for mobile users. They are described in the separate web client documentation.
If you are using Windows, your best option is to download the Windows
client. This will allow you to access all the features of the Playroom,
and is the fastest, most stable way to play.
You will always find the latest version under the downloads heading of
the home page. You can also Directly download it
from here.
Note that the latest client version only supports 64-bit versions of Windows. An older, 32-bit client version can still be used on old systems, it is available from the downloads heading. You can also directly download the 32-bit version here.
The client follows a standard installation procedure. The Playroom does not install any additional software or toolbars, so you can feel safe proceeding. In case your anti-virus detects the Playroom as malicious, this is most likely due to the fact a new version of the client was recently released. It can take some time before that version gains the reputation of a safe program, but in the meantime, you can report the detection as a false positive/add the Playroom as an exclusion.
Once the installation is complete and you launch the client, the
first thing you will see is the connection dialog. This dialog will ask
you to enter your username and password. It also has a few controls we
will describe here, all of which can be accessed with the
tab key:
Once you enter your username and password, you should be logged in after about a second, and you should hear a connection sound informing you about this. You will also hear a welcome message. From this point, you are in the standard Playroom interface. This will be described in the next section and is fairly similar on the web client as well.
Everything on the Playroom uses standard Windows controls you should
already be familiar with. Most of those are lists, checkboxes, edit
boxes or buttons. They function just like they would in any other
program.
There are also many shortcuts to help you do things faster, but if at
any point you forget some of them, all actions are also available from a
context menu. Shortcuts can also easily be announced by pressing the
F1 key. F1 is context sensitive (while in a
game, it will announce the shortcuts for that game, on the main room, it
will announce some general shortcuts, and so on.
Once you connect, you will be in a menu list box. This list will
always contain the main menu you are interacting with. This is also the
list you should be focused on when pressing any other shortcuts. For
example, when we say that CTRL+F opens your friends list,
you should perform the shortcut while you are in the menu list. Note
that many shortcuts work outside of the list as well, but you will not
see their result. For instance, sticking to our friends list example, if
you are in the chat box and you press CTRL+F, the friends
list will open, but to avoid interrupting your chat, your focus won’t go
anywhere and will stay in the chat, so you may think that nothing
happened.
You can always quickly move to the menu list by pressing
Alt+M.
If you press Tab from here, you will reach the chat edit
box. Here you can type a message and press Enter. Keep in
mind that the chat box is not multiline. Pressing up or
down arrow keys will move through your history of the
previously written messages. The chat edit box also supports some
commands. You can see what they are in the chat
commands section.
You can focus the chat box quickly by using the Alt+C
shortcut.
Tabbing once more will focus you on the read-only history edit box.
This will contain every message automatically spoken by the Playroom,
such as a chat message, a private message, or game messages. You can
review any messages you missed here.
The history field can quickly be focused by using the Alt+H
shortcut.
These are all the interface elements you will encounter.
Once you connect, the menu list will contain some of the basic options.
They are as follows:
CTRL+S while in it. Only the table master can save a game.
The table master is the person who has created the table but can be
changed at any moment. This option will allow you to restore such a
saved game, provided that all the players are online and in the main
room. The main room is where we are located right now.In addition to this, the Playroom offers you two context menus:
F2
key. It contains some of the most useful options for managing a table,
such as adding bots, removing bots, inviting, kicking or banning
players.Applications key, Shift+F10 or
CTRL+F9. Typically, it offers useful options only when a
game is started. They will include the common actions that can be
performed using shortcuts, such as drawing or discarding a card, rolling
the dice, sorting your cards, and so on.Both of these menus do not have too many useful features while in the main room, so you should try them out when creating or joining a table.
On the Playroom, you can use first letter navigation to move to an
item starting with the letter you have pressed. It works exactly the
same as it does globally in Windows lists, meaning that you can also
press multiple letters in quick succession to move to an item with these
letters.
It is important to keep the following two items in mind:
In addition to first letter navigation, in games with standard cards,
you can use the Left and Right arrow keys to
navigate to the previous or next card suit in your hand. This will only
work in games where cards are sorted according to their suit.
Once you have configured everything, the first thing you will probably want to do is start a game. Here, some general resources and tips will be given to improve your experience.
To begin playing, you can either join a table already created by
somebody else or create a new table of your own and wait for other
people to join. Alternatively, if nobody is available to play with,
adding bots is also an option. To add a bot to your game, press
B once you have created the table.
In addition to card, board and dice games, the Playroom also supports arcade games. They are audio games, different from the games traditionally available on the platform. Since they function differently, they are described in greater detail in the separate arcade games section.
Note: Not every game supports bots, and a few of them may require an additional engine download so the bot can play. In all these cases, the Playroom will notify you accordingly.
If you choose to join a table, you may see something like this:
1000 miles (1/4)
Here, 1000 miles of course is the game name, but (1/4) refers to the number of available tables. The first number, 1, means that only one table is waiting for players. The second number, 4, means that there are 4 tables in total. Those other 3 remaining tables are already playing a game in progress, and you can of course join to watch the game.
Note: You may not see all 4 tables. If the privacy settings of the table master do not allow you to join, or the table master blocked you, that table will not be visible in your list of tables.
If a table has too many people on it, they may not be displayed in
the list. Instead, you will be told about the first few people, and then
the remaining total number. If you still want to view the full list, you
can press the Right arrow on that table to expand it and
see the complete list.
Once you focus a table in the list, you can also press the
Applications key on it. This will do one of the
following:
If a game has multiple rounds, once a round ends, you have to wait 15
seconds for a new one. If you are the table master, during this waiting
period, you can press Shift+P to pause the game. The new
round won’t start until you press the same shortcut again to resume the
game.
Once you have created a table, some common tips that apply for every
game will be listed here.
You will be told several things you can do, such as pressing
Enter to start the game, B to add bots,
Shift+B to remove bots, or Alt+O to configure
game options. For more information about configuring game options,
please see the configuring game
options section.
If you don’t know how to play a particular game, while at the table
of that game, you can press CTRL+F1. This will open a page
on our website displaying the detailed rules of that game. It will open
either inside the client, in a web view, or inside your web browser,
depending on your configuration.
Note: Some games do not have any rules written at this time. Either
because it is difficult to explain and learn them exclusively on the
Playroom (games like chess), they are quite popular and simple (such as
Battleship), or they are simply easter egg games, meant for you to
discover on your own.
As we mentioned earlier, F1 will give you a list of
shortcuts specific to that game. For example, maybe you know how to play
Chess, but you don’t know what the shortcut is the Playroom uses for
navigating between different pieces. F1 will tell you this,
and all the other shortcuts used.
To invite somebody to your table, press CTRL+I while
focused on their username. This can either be from the online users list
(opened with CTRL+U), or from your friends list (opened
with CTRL+F). Both of these lists will be discussed
later.
In case someone is not behaving appropriately, and you would not like
them to stay at your table, press ctrl+k. This will open a menu allowing
you to choose who to kick from the table.
Ctrl+B will open a menu allowing you to choose who to ban from the
table. Banning is different from kicking, in the sense that a banned
person can no longer join the table at all unless they are unbanned,
while a kicked person can join the table again.
Ctrl+Shift+X will allow you to change the table master. Only the table master can kick, ban, invite people, or configure game options and start the game.
If you would like your table to be hidden from the list of available public tables, press ctrl+H. This will make the table private. You can then invite the people you want to your table. The same shortcut will turn the table public again.
In case somebody leaves a table in the middle of a game, a bot will
step in to replace them, or you can use the bot as a stand-by option
until you find another human player to replace the leaving player.
If you do not want this bot and would rather continue the game with less
players, you can kick the bot from the table to remove it from the game.
Keep in mind that this is possible only in games which do not depend on
the exact number of players. In other words, this is not possible in
games which support teams, or games which deal a certain number of cards
depending on the number of players, for example.
In case you forget any of these shortcuts, every function listed here is also accessible from the table menu.
Almost every game has a set of optional rules you can enable or
disable. For example, in Monopoly, these can be some common extra rules
such as additional money on free parking, double salary when landing on
start, and so on.
If you press alt+O after creating your table, you can configure the
game. If you do this in advance, when a player presses the applications
key on your table in the list of available tables, they will see those
configured rules. This can encourage more players who like your rules to
join. The options menu for a game will also always open the first time
you press enter to start the game. Once the game is configured (either
via Alt+O or on first start), this menu won’t show up when trying to
start the game and your configured rules will be remembered. If you want
to change your options, press Alt+O to show the menu again.
When the options menu of a given game opens, you will have a list of options. The following shortcuts can be used:
Keep in mind that some options depend on another setting. For example, it’s impossible to enable super interceptions if interceptions aren’t enabled. In such a case, if you attempt to enable an option that depends on a previous setting which is currently disabled, that setting will automatically become enabled and you will be notified.
You will often be asked to choose whether you want a score limit or not. In many cases, the options menu will also offer you a choice to enter a rounds limit. If you configure both a score and a rounds limit, the game will finish as soon as one of the limits is reached. If you don’t want a score limit, for example, make sure to enter 0 in the score limit dialog. The same procedure applies for the rounds limit.
As mentioned before, the Playroom also lets you watch games between other people, as long as they are public, you have the right to join, or you have been invited.
You can watch a game by simply joining the table of a game in progress. In addition to this, the Playroom has a feature called spectator mode.
To enable or disable spectator mode, press F3.
When this mode is enabled, even if you join a table, and a game is not
in progress, once the game starts, you will not be included in the game.
This mode lets you only watch a game, but not play it. Other people will
also be notified if you join a table, and your spectator mode is
enabled.
This mode can also be toggled from the table menu.
To access the list of users currently online, press CTRL+U or CTRL+W.
This will show all the users currently online and using the same
language as you.
To see the list of users regardless of their language, use CTRL+shift+U
or CTRL+shift+W. You can of course play with someone using a completely
different language, however, the two of you need to have one common
language, as the game language is always the language of the table
master. So, if you join someone in a different language, keep in mind
that the game will no longer use your language.
Each user in this list will have a presence status, which is automatic and cannot be changed. The following statuses exist:
Each person will also have a two-letter code, which denotes the language they are using. En for English, FR for French, and so on…
As mentioned earlier, the Playroom offers a chat box where you can type messages. Messages will be sent to the current table, so anybody currently on it will be able to see and read them. However, the chat box offers many more useful functions and features, and all of them will be described here.
If you want to message a particular player on the Playroom privately,
start your message with the at sign, then their username, a space, and
your message. For example:
@Nikola Hello, want to
play a game?
This will send a message to the user Nikola.
Private messaging works no matter whether the person you are trying to message is on your table or not. The only important thing is that they are online, and that their privacy settings allow you to message them. You will be notified if any of this is not the case.
Let’s imagine that the user MichaelLikesChocolate1111 just sent you a private message. In order to reply, you do not have to write their username all the time at all. Simply start your message with the at sign, and a space, followed by your message. This will send the message to the last person who wrote to you.
Stay careful! If you receive a message from a different person while typing, your message will still go to that person just messaging you once you press enter to send it.
To avoid this mistake, an additional feature was developed. If you
start your message by a double at sign, this message will go to the
person you sent the last message to.
Sticking to the original private message example, if you wrote:
@Nikola Hi, want to
play a game? And after that, you simply wrote:
@@ You can choose which game you like.
This second message will also go to Nikola, since this is the last
person you messaged. Even if you receive a message from Michael later,
this has no impact at all, since double at sends the message to the
person you wrote to last.
You can thus use this method to lock your private messages to a
particular user.
In addition to private messaging, the chat box also offers you several commands you can enter. Each command starts with a slash sign /, and it may have an optional argument, which is always followed by a space.
Here are all currently available commands:
There are a few more commands, but those work only on free tables:
As already explained in the Playroom interface section, the next item after the chat edit field is the history edit box. Here, you can review every message spoken by the Playroom. This section will explain how to manage your history, easier ways to filter and read only certain types of messages, as well as how to customize it to your liking.
As a screen reader user, in addition to the edit box, you have a quick way to read your history no matter where you are in the Playroom interface. This can be used to read the history even while chatting or playing a game. The following shortcuts should be used:
You may not always be interested to read every message in your
history. For example, maybe you are playing a game, but you have
received a private message. It might be difficult to find that message
due to all the game messages arriving.
To help with this, every message you receive on the Playroom belongs to
a certain channel. For example, messages about who played what in a game
belong to the game messages channel, private messages belong to the
private messages channel, and so on…
By default, the channels are grouped together into several history views. History views can be used to filter history only to focus a certain type of messages. Once you switch to a different view, using the page up and down shortcuts will focus only on the history messages belonging to that view, and not go through the entire history.
To navigate between the history views, use the following shortcuts:
Here are all the available views by default, as well as which messages they contain:
Views can be fully customized from the reading and appearance settings. From there, you can check or uncheck any channel from a given view, as well as add your own views. More information is available in the reading and appearance section of the Playroom options chapter.
If you want to clear your entire history, you can access that option
by opening the context menu (applications key or shift+f10) on the
history edit box.
You have the option to copy your entire history, select all, or clear
the history, leaving the edit field empty.
In addition to card, board and dice games, since version 3 of the Playroom client, the Playroom offers a new kind of games, arcade games. Arcade games are audio games. Unfortunately, due to their nature, they currently do not offer any text on screen for sighted people.
Since they work a little differently compared to the traditional games, they will separately be described here.
Just like in traditional games, pressing ctrl+F1 while at a table will still open the game rules, so here we will instead just focus on the interface, and some important things to keep in mind while playing.
Note: This part of the Playroom is still very early work in progress. Things are probably going to change, and the documentation will be updated when they do.
To play an arcade game, you must be using the Windows client (preferably always its latest version).
Once you create a new table, if you meet this requirement, you will
have an option below the cancel item called arcade games. This menu can
always be accessed quickly by pressing the right arrow.
This will present a list of all the currently available arcade games.
The left arrow will return you to the traditional, classic games.
Pressing enter on one will create its table. At the moment, all arcade games are created as private tables by default, since there are no multiplayer features. Thus, you can currently only compete with other players on a global scoreboard for each game, but not play directly against them.
Once you press enter while at an arcade table to start the game, the
game first has to be downloaded. This should take a short amount of
time, depending on your connection.
Once that is completed, you will hear a short chime, notifying you that
you have entered the arcade mode.
In arcade mode, most standard Playroom shortcuts do not work. You can
use only the game shortcuts. Typically, while you are in the main menu
of an arcade game and you haven’t started playing yet, the
Tab key will still let you move to the chat and the history
areas, so you can continue communicating with other players. The
Tab key won’t move the focus to these areas once the game
starts.
The game will always instruct you what to do, this should be typical of an audio game, for example using the arrow keys to navigate a menu.
Note: Arcade game tables cannot be saved. It is also impossible to watch an arcade game in progress.
The options menu lets you customize various Playroom settings. It can be accessed from the main room, or from anywhere using the F10 key.
This option lets you change the Playroom language. Note that the game
language is always the language of the table master. So, if you are the
table master, stay careful not to switch the language of a game in
progress suddenly, or you could confuse other players.
The language can also be changed directly from anywhere using the
shortcut shift+F3.
This menu allows you to configure several settings related to the general behavior of the client.
If this setting is enabled, before you press alt+F4 or close the Playroom from the system tray, you will be asked to confirm that you are really sure you want to do this. This setting is enabled by default.
If this setting is enabled, the Playroom client’s window will always
be maximized when it is launched. The window will also be maximized as
soon as you enable this setting.
This option is disabled by default. You may consider enabling it if you
notice strange issues with your screen reader not reading the history
box, for example, or if you simply prefer the window to always be
maximized.
If this option is enabled, the Playroom client’s window will always
be in the full screen view.
This option is disabled by default.
If this setting is enabled, when pressing Alt+F4 to close the Playroom, the Playroom will stay open in the background and will remain in your system tray. The system tray can be accessed with Insert+F11 if using Jaws, or Windows+B if using NVDA. If you find the Playroom icon there, you can press enter to maximize it again, or open the context menu with the applications key to close it completely. Note: It might be necessary to first show all the hidden icons in the system tray, depending on your Windows settings.
This option is disabled by default.
If this option is enabled, when you open the Playroom client, you will no longer be asked to enter your login details. As long as you did it once and the remember password option was enabled, you will login directly without the connection dialog being displayed at all.
Note: In case of an error, such as incorrect credentials due to a nickname change, this option will disable itself so that you can fix the error the next time you open the client.
This option is disabled by default.
If this option is enabled, everything displayed in your history will automatically be saved to a text file. The text files are named according to the current date, so each day will have its own history.
Below this option, you can also choose a folder for automatic history saving.
This option is disabled by default.
In this menu, you can customize various audio settings.
This option will display your sound volume. You can press left or right arrows to change the volume here.
To quickly adjust the volume from anywhere on the Playroom, first press F6 to change the volume type you want to adjust, and then use F7 to decrease that volume, or F8 to increase it.
This will let you change the output device for general Playroom sounds. By default, it follows your default Windows output device.
Note: Below this option, there are exactly the same settings for the notification sounds, as well as music and streams. Streams are explained below in the audio streams section.
When playing an arcade game, each notification you receive can be
quite disturbing, since you need to focus on the game audio. To help
with this, each notification sound can have its volume lowered.
This option is enabled by default.
While moving across the menus, closing or opening a menu, as well as encountering checked checkboxes, you will hear small clicks. This option will let you disable those clicks, if you don’t like them.
This option is disabled by default, meaning that you will hear the interface sounds.
Windows applications can use two different standards, or APIs for
audio playback. They are direct sound and WASAPI.
By default, the Playroom uses WASAPI, which is a more modern API, and
provides less latency, and overall better performance. This is the
recommended option for most users.
However, some sound devices may experience distortion, or poor sound
playback. If this is the case for you, try enabling this option and
switching back to the old Direct sound to attempt to improve the
situation.
Unless you are experiencing problems with sound playback, you do not need to change this option.
This menu will let you customize everything regarding your channels and views. Channels and views have been explained earlier, so this concept won’t be explained again, rather all the options available to you will be described. To check out what are channels and views, read the Channels and views section.
This option will let you choose the currently active profile, or
reading and appearance preset.
All options explained below are, by default, saved to the default
profile. However, if you often change your channel and view settings,
for example, you may want to have multiple profiles available.
Using this menu item, you can create, rename or delete profiles. If a profile is active, all your reading and appearance setting changes will apply only to that profile.
This menu will open a list of all the channels available for the Playroom messages. This list is not customizable, but how a certain channel is displayed is. Pressing enter on a channel will open the options menu for that channel.
The following is a list of all the channels currently available, and which messages they contain:
Once you choose a channel to customize, you have the following options:
This will open a list containing all your history views. This list is
customizable. Pressing shift+Up or down arrow keys lets you move that
view up or down, and pressing delete lets you delete it.
Opening a view will open its options menu.
At the bottom of the menu, you also have the “add view…” option, which lets you add a custom history view.
Upon opening a specific view to customize, you will first have the
option to change its name.
Below that, you will have a list of checkboxes. These are all the
different Playroom message channels. This will let you choose which
channels to display in that view.
For example, the discussion view has private messages, public chat, table messages and friends channels selected.
You can also change several options which control how the view will behave:
CTRL+Page down to move to the bottom of the history, when
you switch back to the discussion view, your cursor will stay where it
was last time when the discussion view was used.Customizing channels and views is an extremely flexible and powerful feature of the Playroom. We strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with these options, as they can allow you to configure, in great detail, how and when messages should be read or displayed. Below, we have outlined just a few possible scenarios, to demonstrate why this feature can be extremely helpful.
Lets you configure the different colors. In addition to customizing the appearance of each color, you can also change the text color, background color, text color of selected element, background color of selected element, grayed text color, use predefined colors for light/white background or use predefined colors for dark/black background. Using the item below, you can also change the font.
Using this option, you can choose your preferred theme between auto (uses your system settings to determine the right theme), light or dark.
Whenever you change your theme, you will get a warning dialog which
will ask you whether you want the colors to automatically change with
the theme. If you have customized your colors, answering yes in this
dialog will cause you to lose all your customizations.
However, with customized colors, you may experience combinations which
are hard to read, or which may cause discomfort (for example, a
completely dark Playroom interface, but a light history). It is
advisable to choose yes here, unless you know exactly what you have
customized, and prefer to keep colors as they are regardless of the
theme.
This option is only useful for sighted users. Blind people do not
need to change this setting.
When this option is enabled, if the text of a list item is too large to
fit on the screen, a tooltip will be shown once the mouse is hovered
over it, displaying the full item text. It is also possible to configure
the delay after which this tooltip will appear.
This option is disabled by default.
This option is the inverse of the tooltips option above, and it is
only useful for blind users.
If it is enabled, if you are focused on an item which has additional
descriptive information, this information will automatically be
announced after a delay. This delay is also configurable using the item
below.
Regardless of the status of this option, such descriptions can always be read manually as well by using the context menu (applications key). They are often descriptions of what different cards can do and their effects, or descriptions of different game options.
This option is enabled by default.
Normally, when you press CTRL+F1 inside a game to open its rules or
activate the context menu item to do this, the rules will open directly
inside the Playroom client. They will be shown in an embedded web view,
allowing you to read the rules without moving away from the
client.
However, if you prefer these pages to instead open in your default Web
browser, you should disable this option.
This option is enabled by default.
In addition to configuring this, once a page is opened inside the client web view, shift+N or shift+enter on a link will open that link inside your default web browser.
This section contains a few options to make the experience of the Playroom as secure as possible.
Normally, the connection to the Playroom server is encrypted, and
made using SSl. However, this secure connection may fail, because of an
expired certificate, or a problem on your side. In the worst case, your
connection may even be compromised.
To prevent this, if this option is enabled, the Playroom client will
never connect to the server if a secure connection cannot be
established.
If it is disabled, this will be ignored, and you will have the option to
connect to a non-secure server as well if a secure server fails.
This option is disabled by default.
This option is the same as in the connection dialog. As long as it is enabled, the Playroom will remember the password you entered to log in.
Note: When reinstalling the Playroom client completely, you may notice that your login data is still preserved. This is because the data is stored in the Windows credentials manager. If you want to delete your data completely, you need to delete it from there.
The security options also contain a copy of the auto login at startup option. For its description, check the Auto login at startup section.
The privacy options will let you customize who can reach you and get
in touch with you, as well as which global notifications you will
receive.
In all cases, you can choose the following:
Here are the different privacy options available to you:
Keep in mind that the private and permanent message privacy options apply to both sides. For example, if you choose to have only your friends messaging you, then you can similarly message only your friends.
This is the last option you will find in the options menu. It will restore all settings to their defaults, except the privacy related options. You will of course be warned before doing this.
This section contains the description of everything available in the functions and more menu. This menu can be opened from the main room, or quickly from anywhere by pressing the F9 key.
Your inbox will contain all your permanent messages. It can be opened
directly from anywhere on the Playroom by pressing CTRL+shift+M.
Permanent messages are messages exchanged between 2 to 7 users. They are
stored on the server, and remain available, even if the participants are
not online. They are thus a great way to notify people of something and
make sure that your message will be read.
By default, your inbox should be empty. When you open it, you will thus only have the option to start a new discussion, subscribe to it, open your inbox on our website so you can review the messages in your web browser, or go back to the previous menu.
Note: To prevent spam, new accounts are not allowed to start permanent message discussions right away. As long as you use the Playroom for a while, this restriction will be automatically removed.
You may also receive important global Playroom notifications in your inbox. The Playroom staff will never send you any kind of spam or advertisement here, this is useful only to notify of something such as a big period of downtime.
Choosing this option will allow you to start a permanent discussion.
Once you press enter on it, you will be asked to type a username.
When writing the username, you can separate multiple participants with
commas. A discussion can have 6 participants at most.
Note: For special cases, you can contact the administration so that more participants can be invited, such as when organizing a tournament.
The only other two fields that are required here are typing a subject (a short and concise summary of your message topic), and the message itself. After you did this, pressing send should send your message to the specified participants, if everything was done correctly. If not, you will be told what the problem is and will have the opportunity to correct it.
Once you have created your first discussion, it should already appear
in your inbox. Pressing enter on it will open the discussion and give
you a few more options:
- All the messages of the discussion will be in the list. If the
discussion is too long, you will also have the next page item to view
older messages. The list will show only a small part of the message,
press enter or the right arrow to have it read completely.
The subscribe option will, if accessed from your inbox, just like for individual discussions, cause an e-mail to arrive to your mailbox every time a new discussion is created, and you are a part of it.
The Playroom offers you the ability to add the users you often talk to to your list of friends. This will give you several benefits:
To access your list of friends from anywhere on the Playroom, press CTRL+F.
You can add up to 200 users to your friends list.
To add someone to your list of friends, use the “add a friend…”
option.
This will open the list of online users, where you can press enter on
one to add them. If the person you want is not in this list, activate
the “more…” item.
This will open a dialog where you can type a username to add to the list
instead.
Assuming it was successful, you will be told so, and all you have to do now is wait for them to accept your request.
You can also use the /add command as explained in the chat commands section.
To accept a pending request, activate the received requests option. Pressing enter on a request in the list (if any), will open the context menu for that user, which will now contain an option to accept them as a friend.
You can also use the /accept command as explained in the chat commands section.
The list of friends can be filtered even further. You may have a lot
of friends in the list, but only a few who you talk with all the
time.
Pressing enter on a person in your friends list will also contain an
option “add to favorites”.
If you choose this, the person will now be in your favorites. This will
give you the following:
If somebody is particularly annoying or spamming you, you have the
option to block them. This option will let you see your blocked users,
as well as allow you to block someone.
A blocked user can no longer send you private messages, permanent
messages or invitations. They also can’t join your table as long as you
are the master. Of course, a blocked user can’t send you a friend
request, and if you have previously been friends, blocking a user will
remove them from your friends list.
Note: At any time, you can unblock anybody you previously blocked.
Choosing the option “Change your status message” will allow you to
set your status message.
A status message can have 90 characters at most. This message is only
visible to your friends. It is a kind of mood message, and you can
express anything here, as long as it follows the Playroom rules.
This option will open the Playroom forum directly in your
client.
In fact, when we talked about the inbox earlier, the inbox is also a
forum type, though only accessible to you, and with every user having
their own inbox.
However, the Playroom forum will allow you to make suggestions, report
bugs, be informed about the Playroom news and updates, and discuss
various topics with the community.
Here, only the main differences between the forum and the inbox will be highlighted, as well as some additional features.
Note: Some more features are available when using the forum from the Playroom website. These are discussed in the website documentation.
To access the forum from anywhere on the Playroom, use CTRL+shift+F to open it directly via the client, or CTRL+F2 to open it on our website.
Once you open the forum, it will display a list of categories. These will be:
Note: You cannot post a new topic in any of the automatically generated categories, such as recent topics, popular topics, and so on. A topic can be posted only in a language specific forum.
Once you open a category, pressing ctrl+N or the start a new discussion option will let you start a new topic.
This is similar to your inbox as well, except that here you only need to type your subject, and the message.
Just like in your inbox, opening any category will show you a list of topics. Reading or replying to messages here works exactly the same. The forum offers you a few more features, and they will be discussed here.
Below the option to open the discussion on the web, you will see an
item displaying the current topic score. This score increases whenever a
community member votes the topic as useful or decreases if the topic is
voted as useless.
The options to vote are located below the topic score.
In addition to voting on a topic, you can vote on individual posts as well. To do so, open the context menu (applications key) on the post you want to vote on. This will show its current score, as well as allow you to upvote or downvote it.
The following shortcuts work on a focused post, and allow you to vote more quickly without having to open the context menu:
A topic can have a label. Only the creator of the topic can add a
label to it. You will find an item to do this when you open the
topic.
Labels are used to quickly add a tag to a topic. They can be used in
case of a bug report, to mark it as solved, or in case of a tournament,
to mark it as full, ongoing, cancelled, and so on.
All of the labels should be self-explanatory. The labels may differ
depending on the forum, for example it doesn’t make sense to have not a
bug as a label in the forums where we don’t report any bugs, such as the
tournaments forum.
A topic can have a poll you can vote on. They can also often be
surveys, posted by the developer of the Playroom to gather opinions
about a feature, or something upcoming.
If the topic has a poll, you will see it at the top of the menu once you
open it. You can check one answer, or multiple answers, depending on how
it is configured.
At the bottom of the menu, you will be told the rules of the current
poll: When does it close, whether you can select multiple answers, or
whether the answers are anonymous.
Note: To create a poll yourself, you must use the website. This process is described further in the website documentation
If you noticed that one of your messages has a mistake, you have the
option to edit it.
To do so, press the applications key or open the context menu on that
message. As long as this was a message you posted, the menu will contain
an option to edit it.
You can also use the shift+E shortcut on your message to access the edit
feature directly.
Keep in mind that you cannot post multiple messages in a row until a few hours pass. If you have something to add to your last message, you can edit it.
Note: All the functions mentioned above such as editing, voting, or labeling a topic require you to exit out of a topic and then come back to it to see the changes you have made. This is a limitation exclusive to the forum inside the Playroom client.
Unlike in your inbox, subscribing to a topic or a forum won’t send any e-mails. In this case, the topic or topics from a forum will be accessible in your subscriptions section. Use this to access any favorite or useful topics more quickly.
This option is the only recommended way to report something to the
Playroom staff. It is the easiest way for you to send us your history,
as well as for us to review it.
When you select this option, you will be asked what you want to send.
Both options are explained there. Send a discussion report to report
something that happened in a public chat or in private messages, or a
game report to report a bug.
Note: This option will only send your current history, since the time you have connected to the Playroom. You cannot use this option to report something that happened several days ago, since only the current history will be sent.
In the comment field, make sure to enter a clear comment, so that the
staff does not have to waste too much time reading the entire history,
which could be quite long. Mention what started the problem and what to
look for. Here are some examples:
Good comment:
Hello,
in this history, Bob insulted me and my family. We started a civil discussion talking about technology, but it devolved into personal attacks. The first message that began the argument was this one: Bob says: You are the most annoying person I have ever talked to. Mark then typed ZZZZR, which crashes my speech synthesizer, Eloquence.
Bad comment:
Bob insulted me, ban him.
Keep in mind that most problems with a particular individual can be resolved by simply blocking the person in question. In many cases, intervention from the staff is not necessary. However, we are of course here in case of repeating offenses, or if blocking the person becomes insufficient, for instance someone crashing your speech synthesizer or creating multiple accounts.
This option will open our website in your default browser. From the main room, this can also be done by pressing CTRL+F1.
This option will let you save your entire history to a TXT file. It will open the standard save as dialog, allowing you to choose the location and type the name.
This option will let you save only one view of the history to a file. The currently focused view will be saved. Very useful if you only want to save a discussion or game messages! For more information on what are the views and how to use them, check the Views section.
Below this option, you also have an option to copy the current view to the clipboard, in case you do not want to save it right away but still want to keep it.
The Playroom offers you an option to propose an audio stream while at a table. To do this, a few conditions must be fulfilled:
Some popular streaming options include streaming a radio station, or from a Cloud storage provider that lets you directly link to the audio, such as Dropbox, OneDrive or Google drive.
Note: This is not an advertisement or an endorsement of these cloud storage providers. Here we are giving just a few examples to help you get started.
Once you have prepared your stream, press CTRL+P or activate the “Start/stop an audio stream” option in the table menu and a dialog will open. Paste the URL and press enter.
Assuming everything worked correctly, you should hear the stream. Everybody else at your table will also be notified, and they can press CTRL+P. In this case, the stream will start playing.
Pressing the same shortcut will stop the stream. If you are the master, pressing it once more will let you propose a different one. If you do not want to propose a different stream but just want to hear the same one again, press enter without changing anything in this dialog, and the same stream will start playing again.
On a free table, pressing CTRL+T or activating the “View or change
table topic” option in the table menu will let you set a topic for your
free table.
This topic can have 50 characters at most. The topic can be anything
summarizing what the table is about, as long as it respects the Playroom
rules.
Here are some additional resources to help you learn more:
To conclude this documentation, I would like to thank the following people:
Hopefully this document helped you familiarize yourself with the Playroom, and don’t be afraid to reach out if you still have any questions!
If you would like to translate this documentation into your language, you can always view the raw Markdown version here. You can then translate this version and use something like Pandoc to convert it to HTML. If you need any help with this, feel free to contact me, and in case it is easier, I can do the conversion process.