Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Mouseless

I've been silent for a while; this was due to "life intervening." The holidays, the circus of trying to sell and buy and move house, and some other issues have been claiming my time and attention. I'm still pretty busy in ways that preclude daily work on Solitaire Till Dawn, but things are starting to calm down and I have gotten a bit done in the last few days.

I've been working on a new feature: "mostly mouseless" play. You can already hold down the Shift key to highlight all movable cards, to see what your options are. With the new feature, you can use the arrow keys to select any one of the movable cards; then just pressing the Return key acts as if you had clicked the card, sending it to a default legal destination. If you haven't made a selection yet, pressing Return will act on the first movable card, which is a handy shortcut when there's only one movable card or you're sure the one you want to move would be the first one.

That bit about "a default legal destination": that's what makes this only mostly mouseless. There's no keyboard-driven way to choose among multiple destinations, so you may still have to reach for the mouse once in a while if the card you want to move doesn't go where you want it to go. I might address this some day, but perhaps not right away.

I need to spend a bit more time on the screen display (showing which card is currently selected), but the feature itself is in and working just fine.

15 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Wow, now I understand why this act of love for us Solitaire Till Dawn addicts is taking so long. Thanks for your persistence, Rick. Can't wait until it's all done and available for purchase. I miss it so.

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  3. Sounds great, Rick. I love keyboard commands. Hope the move went well and you're happy in the new location.

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  4. Three huge cheers from the carpal tunnel-ly inclined amongst us!

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  5. It's hard to know what to say, except that I am sad that you are having so much fun, while I feel the separation pains...still after all these years of not having access to your game. Is there any way you could release what you have? I would most gladly pay for the neat upgrades you are making. Yours is the only solitaire game I enjoy. And am beginning to be fearful that I will never again be able to play it. Thanks so much for keeping us informed!

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  6. Oh man, get it up on line. Finish the pretty bits later. We poor addicts are suffering from inferior offerings and advancing age. It's not merely a matter of entertainment, a man needs to be able to play it with one part of the mind while working out knotty problems with the other part.
    Solitaire till Dawn is not only a pastime but a mental tool.

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  7. I totally agree with John - the addicts are suffering! I also think that the level of expectation has (unfortunately) dropped in a big way - so releasing an almost-perfect program? Will still be better than anything in the all store.
    Also, I truly believe you are going to be amazed at the reception - and your (well-deserved) earnings. I'm one of those who has current mac hardware for working, but hangs on to an old iBook - just for your program. These days there are so many more mac users. They will be amazed.

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  8. I'm frustrated. With all the intricate tinkering you're doing, I still don't see any attempt to add the one statistic that I find most important in a game like this, and one I found on World of Solitaire, not as good a game but one that I've gotten used to in the months (years?) I've waited for you. That is a calculation of the average of wins and losses for each game and overall. Yes, I can use the Mac calculator, but it's clunky and why should I have to with all the other sophisticated calculations? Will you ever do this? Even as a later fix?

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  9. This question is off-topic, so if you want to remove this comment from this place and address this question separately in another entry, please do so. My STD has been in use for many years. On Thanksgiving of 2011, the motherboard in my computer died and I had to get a new one. The new one had system Lion. Everything migrated, but as you know I can't use STD and haven't been able to now for 15 months. Will your new release capture all the statistics and my history from the earlier version that sits unused on my hard drive when it installs?

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  10. Rick, Rick, Rick.
    All these things you are tweaking sound worthwhile, but depending on the while. The current while is while your many fans from the increasingly distant past remain without a great solitaire game on our Macs. (not an insanely-great-like-Rick's-vision-of-what STD-could-someday-be one, just the great game we used to have, or even one a bit less-great to get it out.) I have in the past and will in the future pay for STD and updates, but it is pretty frustrating to see your "how cool is this new feature you never would have thought to need" posts. I just want to play a selection of games with a convenient interface, the way it used to be.

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  11. My Macbook with 10.6 was stolen. So after I got a new Air, I tried some freeby solitaire programs, and they made me miss my old STD horribly. I finally decided to quit being cheap and buy it, already. Now I find I have to wait some more! I'm a 70+ grandma. Time is precious. How will I know when it's ready? Like some others, I don't need all the fancy stuff. It was good the way it was.

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  12. Mike: Yes, I intend that the new version will import your old scores and settings. That code is already written, tested, and working.

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