Thursday, October 24, 2013

You've Gotta Have Art...

I sent off a couple of requests for artwork quotes today. I can't release Solitaire Till Dawn without at least a new icon, simply because the old one is too small for the App Store: they insist on big, high-resolution icons. I am hoping that it won't take more than two or three weeks for that to be done, as it's a pretty simple job.

We've also requested a quote for some new card art. That will take longer I'm sure, and I have no idea how much it might cost: maybe more than I can afford at this point. But even if we commission new card art, we won't let it delay the release significantly. We can always add it as an update later, if it's not ready for the initial release.

Other progress: the Help pages are essentially done now, although I still need to add a couple of the "special" pages, like "What's New" and "Frequently Asked Questions".

Also I have completed the reveal-overlapped-cards feature. Veterans of Solitaire Till Dawn know that, in some games, a fan of cards can get way too long to fit normally in the window. When that happens, the fan will automatically compress, that is, squeeze the cards more closely together until they fit. But if they squeeze too much, then you can't read what the squeezed cards are any more, and that's not fair.

The old Solitaire Till Dawn had a feature that let you ⌘-click on cards to let you peek at them when they're tightly-squeezed like that. I've now added this feature into the new version, too. It looks a little different than it used to. Here's a small screen shot:

⌘-clicking this black 2 reveals that it is a 2♣.

14 comments:

  1. Rick, thanks so much for the updates. Looks like we are really close to having our dream of the new STD come true! Thank you so much for all your hard work! Hope you and your family are also enjoying our wonderful Fall weather here in the Portland Metro Area!

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  2. you are pretty close to the finish line, great!!! Congratulations.

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  3. Getting excited for the release. Thank you for keeping us updated on progress and the work you've put into this.

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  4. Any news? I really don't like the available games I've tried.... Thanks for your efforts.

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  5. If push comes to shove, I'd be willing to pay ahead for the new version to help with funding the new art work.

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  6. Great idea, Emanuele! Is there a Kickstarter type place for software development? Love the updates, Rick! And looking forward to the new version.

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  7. Definitely not for Christmas. We would have loved to do that, but among other issues, the necessary artwork will not be ready for some time yet. (Remember, Apple won't accept anything for the App Store without a huge, fancy icon. Some art is optional, but this isn't.)

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  8. thank you and can't wait - hope everyone will buy en masse so you can recoup your money (and then some) quickly

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  9. I'm so delighted to check in and find you really *are* going to update! I just had to order a new battery for my old MacBook Pro, which I only keep because of Solitaire Till Dawn!

    I don't know if you remembered this request, or what, but I'd sure love it if one could press a key for each suit to see where they are, how many of each there are, etc.

    Meanwhile, I can't wait and am glad things evolved for you such that you could do this update. It was rough there for awhile.

    Best.

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  10. The reveal is useful, but I have to wonder why you would not just use a card style that has the suit below the rank for a horizontal fan? At least then you can see all the suits without taxing my (increasingly failing ;-) short term memory.

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  11. Hi, Marlin! Mostly it's because in extreme cases, fans can get so tight that almost nothing can be seen no matter what the cards look like. So even if I did as you suggest, you'd still want a way to "peek" when the fans get real tight. (Another reason is that you can drag cards from horizontal to vertical fans, and I don't like the idea of a card's contents having to rearrange itself on the fly when you do that.)

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  12. I'm really missing your game. It was the best solitaire ever on my old OS9 machine. I really hope you can get everything done for the new OSX stuff.

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