Solitare Plugin.

[Pioneer4x4]

My wife or I will frequently fire up solitare. One thing I have noticed is that the shuffle routine doesn't seem thorough. I will frequently have as the last cards in the deck, 4-A of spades, once I had 8-A of spades, all in order. I was wondering what the shuffle logic was. I really like the interface, and I use GB-PVR almost exclusively via my MVP.
Sometimes, I use the net radio and solitare simutaniously works great.
One other thing, the 5s, and 6s, look too similar from across the room, even on my 36". Is that a font that is user selectable?

[jasonf]

I don't hang out in the Support forum often, so it's kind of a fluke that I saw your posting! But, I'll answer your questions:

Shuffling:

The deck is shuffled a random number of times (less than 250) using the following algorithm for each shuffling:

1. Split the card into 2 piles by:
a. Draw between 1-5 cards, place onto pile 1
b. Draw between 1-5 cards, place onto pile 2
c. Repeat until there's no more cards

2. Place stack 2 onto stack 1. This becomes the new deck.

When I wrote it, it seemed good enough, but if there's a problem with cards consistantly ending up on the top or bottom, then maybe I need to add a cut of the deck to each shuffle to help further randomize the behavior.

Font:

The cards themselves are separate images, not something that I'm drawing using fonts, etc. I was looking for something that looked like real playing cards, but were small at the same time (the screen resolution is 720x480, so screen real-estate is a precious commodity). I'll look into this, though, because I also want to change how the face-down cards are stacked--(there's no reason why they need to be overlapped as much as face-up cards in each column).

[Pioneer4x4]

Thanks for the reply. Back in high school, I wrote a draw poke game in basic. (TRS-80 basic..... guess what year)
I had problems with the shuffle. That was only a 2mhz computer.
What I ended up doing was start with an array of all 52 cards, pick a random number from 1-52, move that card to a new array.
Then, move the last card into its spot.
then pick a randum number from 1-51.....
You only have to make one pass, and it's shuffled.

I tried the pick 2 and swap, but unless you let it run many times, (like a minute on the trs-80) you would still have blocks of cards untouched.

If it doesn't make sense, I'll be glad to explain it better.

P.S. any chance on an undo button? I don't know how many times I dealt 3 new cards accidentaly.

[jasonf]

Trash-80.... hmm, you didn't mention the level/model, but it would put it around 1980, give or take. I cut my BASIC teeth on a Level II before moving to Commodores...

I agree that the randomization probably needs improved. I found a similar algorithm to what you described that would be easy to implement.

[Pioneer4x4]

1980/1981. Ah, my senior year.....

Mainly Model IIIs. I still have my Model III. It was 16K, cassette, I added 32K, dual disk drives, uLabs HiRes graphics. It has the 4 suit symbols in its extended character set, that is what gave me the idea for the poker game.

Like I said, I really like the plugin, I would like to see more of the same. It is neat having a TV with just the MVP sitting on it, and no cable box or VCR. I figured out I was using 36" JVC TV, MVP, about 50' of cat5 total, router, 2ghz P4 machine, just to simulate a $1 deck of cards...... Nothing like technology simplifying your life!

Once I get off of my arse, I will try to make a plugin. I have made some putzy apps for myself in VB, so I hope I can fight my way through it.

As for the cards, can you make it so the deck is "skinnable"? Or maybe a custom back on them? Like it looks for a "Deck.jpg" and if it is present, it uses that for the image?

[jasonf]

I got a few free hours and made some mods to the plugin:

http://www.bladerhq.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.../Solitaire

I implemented a better shuffling routine, made some display enhancements, and also offer a way to externalize the card image files.

[Pioneer4x4]

Great, I'll try it tonight. (Actually, I'll try it at work.)

[Pioneer4x4]

Looks good, I haven't tried it other than looking at it. Can the image for the card back be changed? I did't see that in the images.

[jasonf]

(reply repeated here for completeness)

It will look for a file named "back.gif" if you have external card images enabled. If it doesn't find "back.gif" (or any other card image that it's looking for), it will default to the embedded resource image file.