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!