Connecting…rev 4.0.0

Get a game going

— or join with a room code —

Two, three, or four people can play. Any seat nobody claims is played by the computer; with four people the computer just deals, enforces the plays, and keeps score. Whoever creates the room runs the game on their phone, so the creator should keep this page open while you play.

How multiplayer works
  • The room creator starts a room and shares the 4-letter code. Everyone else joins with the code and taps a seat. Two players sit across from each other by default (opposite teams); tap any open seat to change that.
  • Every phone draws the table from its own seat — you are always at the bottom, your partner across, opponents left and right.
  • No sign-in: your name and a player ID are remembered on this phone, so if you answer a call or the app closes mid-game, just reopen it — you come back to the same seat and the same dominoes. If your turn comes up while you're away, the table simply waits for you. The host can let the computer cover your seat while you're gone, and you take it back the moment you return.
  • Same rules as the solo game: bid 30–41 points or 1–2 marks to open (42 points is 1 mark). Once anyone bids a mark, later bidders can only pass or raise by 1 mark. The winner then chooses Nello, 7's, Follow Me, or a trump suit; Nello and 7's are available only after a mark bid. Doubles are highest in their suit, and the first team to 7 marks wins. In Nello, doubles are a suit of their own: they only follow a led double, the top of every number suit is its six (6-5, 6-1, …), and a sloughed double can never catch a number-led trick.
One-time v4 setup (its own Firebase project)
  1. In the Firebase console, create a new project for v4 — do not reuse the family game's project — and in it open Build → Realtime Database and create the database.
  2. In that database's Rules tab, replace everything with the rules below and click Publish.
  3. Then paste the new project's web config into this page where it says V4 SETUP. Until then, this copy shows “Setup needed” and won't connect. Authentication settings are not used by this version.

These rules open each v4 room to unsigned players who know its 4-character code — the same family-trust trade-off as the current game. Firebase cannot make hands or host controls private without an authenticated identity.

{
  "rules": {
    "v4rooms": {
      "$room": {
        ".read": true,
        ".write": true
      }
    }
  }
}