Friday, November 23, 2012

That Pesky "All Stats" Window

If you've been following closely, you'll know that lately I've been working on the "All Statistics" window, which displays every statistic that the program tracks for the game you are currently playing. This includes longest win and loss streaks, longest and shortest games by time and by move count, and more. It's a surprisingly complex window. It seems as if it should just display some numbers, which should be simple. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes: things like implementing the clock that keeps track of how much time you've spent, handling the special scoring that some games have (especially the game TriPeaks, which has quite unique scoring), and a good deal more. This work is now mostly done, but I am still finishing up the clock (which has to pause and resume when you switch away from your game to do something else, and then switch back again). As part of this work I will also be implementing the standard "You win!" window, which includes some shortcut controls for some preference settings, and which interacts a bit with the All Stats window.

8 comments:

  1. Just wanted to say thanks-so-much-for-continuing-your-work-on-STD! I've loved and over-used this game since you first released it decades ago, and I stubbornly refused to update our OS from Leopard because I couldn't face life without it. But alas, the hard drive failed, and I'm now sadly navigating through the barren, STD-free wasteland of Mountain Lion. Thanks for not abandoning all of us addicts! And get ready for a deafening cheer in the cyber world when the new version becomes available.

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    1. Me, too. No other version of Solitaire allows you to show what you have on the tableau by selecting command+'10' or 'Q', which makes a huge difference in the playing experience. I've requested we also be able to show suits with command+C (clubs) command+H (hearts) command+S (spades) command+D (diamonds). Maybe it would need to be 'control+' since the 'command+' shows the numbers. Anyhow, I hope you can do this, Rick.

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  2. Your efforts are appreciated.
    Looking forward to the final product!

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  3. Keep up the good work Rick. Can't wait for STDX. Good luck with the move.

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  4. In both the current (non-Lion-compatible) and the new version, you can just press a number (or j, q, or k) to see cards of that rank highlighted. You can follow that with a suit s, h, c, or d, to highlight only cards of that rank and suit—for example, press 5d to highlight just the five of diamonds (or both fives of diamonds, in a two-deck game). There's no need to use the command or control keys.

    I've never implemented a way to highlight all cards of one suit, since that usually means highlighting rather a lot of cards: it didn't seem useful, and it would conflict with the current (and very useful) mechanism that uses the suit keys to filter the highlighting to a single rank-and-suit.

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  5. Will the new version be compatible with Mavericks?

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