Gettin' Stuff Done

Nope, Solitaire Till Dawn is not done yet. But I have made a lot of progress in the last few weeks. Here's a rundown:

Buttons are now fully implemented and working. These are the buttons that actually appear in the play area. They implement some special functionality that can't be triggered by the usual click-and-drag stuff. Most games don't have or need buttons, but Accordion has a "Deal All" button, Pyramid has a "Discard Pair" button, and Puss in Corner has a "Redeal" button.

Partial decks are implemented, needed by games like The Wish that don't (ahem) play with a full deck.

Tight fans, for games like Thirteens and The Wish. Also "anchored" fans: never mind why I call them that, but these make Fortress and its variations playable.

The deck now shows correct numbers: usually the number of cards remaining in the deck, but for some games it shows the number of deals remaining.

The displays and messages in the status bar are more complete and correct.

Keyboard focus is better-behaved, so you don't have to click in the Games Drawer or in the play area in order to use keyboard shortcuts.

The behavior of the available-card-highlighting feature is much improved (still need some work on the graphics, though). The find-card feature (press '5' to highlight all the visible fives, or '5s' to highlight all the visible fives of Spades) is also working now.

And lots of little things I won't bother to list individually: stuff I've implemented and/or fixed in the solitaire engine itself.

I've completed an initial test of all 100 games now. 87 of them seem to be working, while the other 13 still have some issues to be worked out.

What am I doing now?
This week I'm working on supporting different card sizes. Up till now, I've only been using the "normal" size. The game needs to allow selecting card size from a menu, and changing card size to match the window when you change the window's size. This is perhaps half done.


What's Left?
Lots of stuff, I'm afraid. A partial list:

• Several important toolbar buttons, including the Autoplay features and Magnetic Mouse.
• The built-in Help and the game rules display.
• A number of the preference settings and their implementations.
• Sound effects.
• A number of graphics effects.
• Score and statistics keeping, and display.
• New artwork.
• Separate scores and preferences for different players on the same machine.

And there's more; those are just some of the highlights.

I will not be implementing every single feature for the first release. Some of the old version's features will have to wait. I'll get all the really important ones in, and then add the rest over time, in free upgrades.

There you go: that's the status. I'm working hard; I want this out the door as badly as some of you want it in your hands. We'll get there!