Beta 7

A quick reminder: If you haven't taken the poll yet, please take a moment to do that. It's along the right-hand side of this page, and it will only take a moment or two. Thanks!

Solitaire Till Dawn BETA 7 is now available for download from our Beta Program page.

Here's what ISN'T fixed:
I'm sorry, but there are still a couple of nasty, difficult bugs that I haven't figured out yet. I am aware of them, they have a high priority, and I'm working on them.

Some (maybe all) users on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) are seeing tiny suit pips on the cards. This is not correct; the pips should be the same size as the digits and the J, Q, K. We thought we had this fixed in b6, but for at least some users, it's still a problem.

Many users report that when they install a new beta and open it for the first time, it doesn't open a game window. For most users, quitting and trying again works fine, and the problem doesn't recur until they download and install another new beta. One user reports that the problem happens every time.

Here's what IS fixed:
We've received a lot of complaints about the text in the status bar being too small to read. In b7 we've increased the default size of that text a bit, and we've added a control to make the text even bigger for those who want it so.

We fixed a passel of bugs that were mostly reported for Grandma's Game, but many of which affected other games as well. These included false-stuck indications, cards that can't be moved by clicking but can be moved by dragging, autoplay misbehaviors, and the oft-reported problem that you can't drag the second-to-bottom card into the bottom position in the workspace fan in Grandma's Game.

Many users also reported that the Game Info panel never lists anything for a game's Family, Categories, or Variants. That's also been fixed. You'll find that in each of these, the entries are links that you can click to find other games in the same category or family, or to see the rules for a variant.

Have It Your Way

I've just finished adding a new feature to Solitaire Till Dawn, one I've wanted since forever ago. I have a compulsive nature, and when I play cards to the foundations (the goal piles), I like to assign the suits to piles in this order: Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, Clubs. If it's a two-deck game then I like to double them, two by two: Hearts, Hearts, Spades, Spades, and so on. I want this enough that if an Ace is auto-played to the "wrong" pile, I will undo and then drag the offending card to the "right" pile before continuing. Of course it's easy enough to just do the dragging; but it would be even easier to just click the card and see it go straight to the right place!

I could have just hard-coded this behavior, but I never did that because I am sure that some of you have your own preferences in this, and they may differ from mine. I don't want to force my own baseless prejudices on any of you. Over the years I occasionally considered inventing a set of options for the Preference panel to give you some control over suit placement, but this always seemed like huge and confusing overkill, so I never did anything about it.

But I think I've finally got it sussed out, and my solution will be included in the new release. It is simply this: for each kind of solitaire that you play, Solitaire Till Dawn will remember which suit you put in each goal pile. After that, any automatically-moved cards of each suit will go to the same piles where you put them in prior games.

If you later decide you don't like that placement, all you have to do is place the cards by hand in whatever other piles you like, and Solitaire Till Dawn will remember your new choices from then on.

Very simple, and no need for any new controls or options in the Preferences window or anywhere else.  There's nothing you need to learn; it will just happen automagically. (And of course, if you just don't care where the Aces fall, you can ignore the whole business.)

I got this working today. Yay!