Solid Air

Solid Air

Look no further. You have found the perfect Solitaire.

A remake of the classic single-player puzzle, one of the games that came bundled with Microsoft Windows 3.0. Programmed entirely from memory, without looking anything up, all artwork like card designs and backgrounds made from scratch.

More than 20 years after I last played it, I might have properly misremembered some stuff, so playing this should be something between very weird and very funny.

What's special about it (apart from the artwork):

(1) Games can be saved to disk and resumed later from a save file. You can create as many save files as you like. While preferences like background color and card backside design can be set for the game as a whole, the settings that were in place while a game has been saved, are restored for that particular game when it is loaded later.

(2) Unlimited, fine-grained undo/redo function

(3) There is background music, and there is commentary from the perspective of the court cards from time to time (all noisy options off until switched on).

(4) No internet connection needed at all. No ads.

(5) Gameplay has been optimized for keyboard control in a way that it can be played competitively (speedrunning), with configurable fingerings, for example:

• Left little alternating between shift and ctrl, left thumb on left alt
• left ring on 1, left middle on 2, left index on 3
• right index on 4, middle on 5, ring on 6, little on 7

Then,

• to uncover the waste pile, hit CTRL
• to cycle through the waste, repeatedly press CTRL
• to uncover a pile, press its number
• to select an uncovered source pile, press its number
• to move the previously selected partial pile, press the number of the destination pile
• to move the previously selected partial pile, and set the destination pile as the new selection, press ALT+number
• to place the top waste pile card, press STRG+number
• to place the top waste pile card and set the destination pile as the new selection, press STRG+ALT+number
• To take a card home, press SHIFT+number, where 1..4 are identifying the target piles

Written in C++ 20 on Windows 10 but still using GDI for nostalgia.

For retro-computing enthusiasts: this game contains a remake of the famous cards.dll (with my designs, so as not to infringe the original manufacturer's copyright) with a similar API. It can be used as a drop-in replacement for 64-bit games as long as the copyright notice is not removed or altered.