Monday, April 21, 2014

Beta 15

Solitaire Till Dawn BETA 15 is now available from our Beta Program page.

This release fixes bugs 52, 65, 68, and 79. Not many bugs fixed, but they are important ones:

Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8)
At long last, we have restored compatibility with Snow Leopard. Beta 15 should work on Snow Leopard machines (along with all later versions of Mac OS X), and we're looking forward to hearing from those of you who have Snow Leopard to test on. Update: Some users are still having problems. We think this is due to old data from earlier versions, and we are looking into it.

Concurrency Issues
I've ranted about concurrent programming in the past, and more than once I've thought I had all those problems fixed; but they have kept coming back. Now, once again, I think I have them all fixed, and maybe I'll be right this time. This was bug 79 that caused problems with Accordion, but it could affect other games as well. We also fixed an un-numbered bug that caused crashes with rapid undo and redo (as opposed to Undo All and Redo All).

Empty Foundations
Another recurring bug (so often that I mistakenly gave this bug two numbers, 52 and 68) caused empty foundation piles to be slow in showing the ranks that could be played there. Again, I am hoping that this is finally fixed for good and all.

What's Next?
Oh, lots of things. I am hoping that I am now down to a list of relatively minor issues: worth fixing, but not as awful or urgent as the crashing bugs we've all been chasing for so long. Solitaire Till Dawn isn't done yet, but I hope that b15 will be a big step toward real stability.