Your Rules Solitaire

[neville]

A while ago I was looking for a project to occupy my brain and I thought it would be fun to write a framework for playing Solitaire (Patience) games.

There are a surprising number of (some very good) online sites and apps which offer many Solitaire games, but

a) they all have annoying ads, or cost money (and then still have ads)
b) while many offer different decks of cards they are really just eye-candy, and crucially
c) none of them play my favourite game with the rules I like.

Hence Your Rules Solitaire. The objective is to be able to play any of the standard games described in the online sites, the Wikipedia entry for Solitaire, and the standard books such as Hoyle. Plus any user should be able to make their own variations and even make up their own games and rules - and the rules are written in plain English, ie the xTalk of LiveCode. And that was my hidden agenda: introducing new people to our community! Because while it is possible to write new rules entirely within the app, you really need the IDE to get the syntax right and for debugging.

Version 1.0.0 is now ready. More than 75 games are built in for those who just want to play. But for those who want to experiment, players can mix and match lots of variations and rules to create new games (how about playing your favourite game with an added Joker, or using the French Tarot deck, or Mahjong tiles, or Japanese Hanafuda cards - or your own card images!) or create new games either within the app or using an IDE .

I have designated it v1.0 but I have really only extensively tested the Mac IDE version so it has rough edges and certainly bugs. I'd be grateful for anyone interested to beta-test, or to pass on to card-playing friends for their comments.

It is too large to upload here, mainly because of the images of decks of cards, so I am making it available on a Google Drive site. There are free desktop standalone versions for Mac and Windows and Linux (not mobile). Also the source stacks are downloadable for anyone wanting to use YRS in the IDE, use the framework themselves, or even to collaborate for further development if anyone is interested. The link for downloading is

https://dub.sh/YourRulesSolitaire

[stam]

That's pretty impressive and a phenomenal amount of work - well done!
Not sure I have time to beta test sadly - if releasing as opensource you could also consider sharing via GitHub...

[neville]

I have uploaded version 1.0.1 with a few bug fixes. Notably Check for updates now works in standalones; details are in the Read Me.

Thanks stam for your comments. Yes I intend it to remain free and opensource. GitHub for the source code would be a good idea when and if anyone wants to contribute. For now the update check looks at the Google Drive site so it's easier to just have it there. Google Drive is clunky but it is a lot easier for non IT types than GitHub.