Bug ID 3: No Game Window

As reported earlier, some users find that when Solitaire Till Dawn launches, no game window appears. This is Bug ID 3 in our Bug List, and it is our highest priority.

In yesterday's post that announced the Beta 2 release, we also posted a procedure for working around the problem. We now know that that procedure does not work, so we've removed the link to that page.

We think that this is a symptom of your Mac not trusting an application that didn't come from the App Store, but as of this writing we're not even certain of that. We will continue to research the problem, and we will post a fix or a real workaround as soon as we can.

Beta 2: Lion and Snow Leopard Compatibility

Solitaire Till Dawn BETA 2 is now available for download.

This release should fix the serious compatibility problems with OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion) that were seen in the b1 release. These were bugs ID 1 and 2 in our Bug List.

We also know more now about bug ID 3, where some users never see a game window, and instead only get a menu bar with nearly all of its menu items disabled. This is a conflict between Apple's "Gatekeeper" feature and software downloaded from the Internet instead of from the App Store. Update: The workaround that we originally suggested for this problem is not helping. Currently we have no solution, but it's our highest priority and we're working on it.

To get the b2 release, visit our Beta Page.

Happy New Year—and Beta!

We still can't tell you when you'll be able to buy Solitaire Till Dawn, but we are kicking off the new year by launching our beta program!

Beta means that Solitaire Till Dawn is nearly done (all the features are in, and everything works nearly all the time) but there may still be some bugs left to find and fix. By participating in the beta program, you can help us shake out the last bugs and get Solitaire Till Dawn ready for release as soon as possible.

If you've been itching to get hold of the new Solitaire Till Dawn, and you're willing to try a pre-release version, then we invite you to visit our Beta page by clicking that link or the one in the sidebar to the right.

Be aware that the beta version is time-limited and will expire in a few weeks. If significant bugs are found, we may issue further beta versions with later expiration dates.

When will it really be done and available for purchase? As always, we don't know. It depends on how well the beta goes, for one thing. For another, we are still awaiting some important artwork; and we cannot predict how long Apple will take to approve Solitaire Till Dawn for the App Store even when we think it's 100% ready. So please continue to be patient; and in the meantime, enjoy the beta. (We can't promise that you'll always have a non-expired beta until you can buy the finished version, but we are trying to get the finished version out as soon as possible, and we want to keep you happy in the meantime.)

Update: There's a bug in some builds of OS X 10.7.5 that can cause Solitaire Till Dawn to crash, and may cause other issues. Apple has issued a fix, in the form of a minor update to 10.7.5. If you have 10.7.5, please use Software Update to see if there's an update to 10.7.5 that you can install.

Update: We've added a Bug List page where you can see all of the bugs that have been reported to us, and monitor our progress in fixing them.

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♣.

Snow Leopard It Is

A quick update: In my last post, I asked whether anyone would be upset if the new release required Lion (Max OS X 10.7) or later. I received several responses from users on Snow Leopard (10.6) who were hoping to be able to use the new Solitaire Till Dawn. I hear you, and I am keeping as much backward compatibility as I can reasonably manage. The new release will be compatible with Snow Leopard (10.6.8) or later; and of course "later" includes Lion, Mountain Lion, and the soon-to-be-released Mavericks.

A Little Atmosphere

Just a quick progress report: Since my last post, I've finished up the animation bug fixes I was working on, and I'm now doing a little decorating: think of it as turning Solitaire Till Dawn into a place with "a little atmosphere."

Much of this work has actually been done for a long time: selecting cardbacks, royalty images, and window backgrounds is all already working. But the user interface for the Decor window, where you can select these things, was clunky and hard to use. I spent some time on it, and I think it's better now.

By the way, there's one feature from old Solitaire Till Dawn that won't be in the next release: you won't be able to create cardbacks using your own photos. I'm sure people will want that, and it will appear in a later release. But right now I'm focussed on getting a usable release out the door and into your hands, and custom cardbacks would take too much time to implement. (You will be able to use your own photos for the window background; that's already working. Cardbacks are harder because they're small, so you'll want a nice user interface to scale and crop your image so that it fits nicely: that's the hard part.)

I am now adding the old sound effects to the new release. This is another feature I might have skipped if it would have taken very long to do, but Cocoa makes it dead simple. I've spent just part of today on it, and I'm nearly done already.

Update October 11 2013: I am retaining compatibility with Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8). Everybody who wants the new version but doesn't want to upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion, y'all can relax. And thanks for the feedback!

Here's a chance for you to make yourself heard: I am now inclined to make this new version require at least Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) or later. I was going to make it compatible with the older Snow Leopard (10.6) as well, but there are some niceties in Lion that I'd like to take advantage of. The old Solitaire Till Dawn will run in Snow Leopard if you hand-install Rosetta (which is free from Apple), and Lion is now nearly three years old, so I think requiring at-least-Lion is not unreasonable. If you are still running Snow Leopard and you desperately want the new release to work on your current system, please leave a comment here. No promises, but I'll be listening. (If you are not using Snow Leopard, please do not respond. I assume that nearly everyone following this blog is using at-least-Lion, and I only need to hear from the exceptions. Thanks!)

Bloodied but Unbowed

Last post, I mentioned that after a difficult-but-necessary architecture change, I tested all 100 games and discovered some previously-unnoticed bugs. This little status update is to reassure you all, once again, that I'm still working on Solitaire Till Dawn, and to report that I have once again descended into the pit of monsters that is concurrent animation programming, and once again emerged victorious.

I really hate working on the animation stuff. It has to look good (and it has to just plain work), and I'm not an expert on this kind of coding. This latest bug fix took me several days of studying old code and trying to remember how it works, watching the animations fail in veeeerrrryyyy sssssslllooooowwww mmmmooootttiiiooonnn so that I could see exactly what was happening, and experimenting with fixes.

By the way: if it surprises you that I can't remember how my own code works, then you've simply never coded anything very complex yourself. Every experienced programmer knows that within three months, any code written today will become as unfamiliar as if it had been written by a Martian. That's why good programmers comment their code liberally, and write it for clarity even if they don't expect anyone else to ever see it. And I do that; but There Are Times when even that is not enough, and you wind up spending significant amounts of time trying to figure out just exactly what the hell you thought you were doing when you wrote some bit of code or other.

Anyway, I won this round. But there are still more bugs to fix, so I'm going to cut this short and get on with fixing them. Happy Autumn, everybody!