I can see how that might be alarming.  You're playing Bookworm or Bejeweled 2, and you're scoring higher than you ever have before, and then the next time you glance over to see how you're doing, the score is doing something completely unexpected that seems just plain wrong!  Backwards?  It's counting my score down rather than up?  Inconceivable!

But there is a reason for this behavior, and here it is:

The complicated version is something to do with data storage structure and limitations on how many points of data can be stored in a single...um...

The simple version is that when the games were written, the amount of space allocated to handle the score was set so it would max out at 2.14 billion.  No one really expected there would be players out there capable of scoring high enough to hit that capacity, much less exceed it!  

Then we started hearing from people whose scores in Bookworm were counting backward all of a sudden.  Who knew such wordsmiths existed?  Turns out as the years go on, there are more and more of you!

Only a few people have reached this same level of Bejeweled 2 mastery, but when we first heard from a player whose score in Endless mode "was around 2.14 billion" right before the score field went blank, we instantly knew what had happened!

This score storage limitation isn't unique to Bejeweled 2 and Bookworm, though.  Might you be the first person to hit that flipover point in one of our other games?  Here at PopCap, we consider that an ultimate achievement!

• Français
• Deutsch
• Italiano
• Español