A Shareware Life

Interesting Article about Solitaire

Why We Can't Stop Playing Computer Solitaire

And a related page: On the Profundity of Solitaire

Aftershock

10:15 am:

Another one.  The whole house suddenly just shrieked.  For about one second, this one felt stronger than the first one, but it was much, much shorter.

Earthquake

OK, this woke me up at 4:35 am:

Magnitude 5.4 Earthquake

2007 - Looking Back

2007 is almost over.  It's time to take a look at what was accomplished in 2007.

The first part of the year was dominated by the release of Microsoft Vista.  Vista forced me to make a number of product updates, most notably version 11.0.1 of Pretty Good Solitaire.  It became clear in the first few months of 2007 that Vista was a real dog, which set up the decision that dominated the rest of the year: the decision to develop for the Mac market.

Throughout the middle of year, Mac development was the focus, which meant that we did little in the way of product releases.  The one new product we had planned to release in the spring was delayed in favor of Mac development (that product will now be released early in 2008).  Also in the middle of the year I decided to make the next update to Pretty Good Solitaire a major one, so the summer was devoted to development of version 12.

The fall was marked by the two big releases of the year: version 12 of Pretty Good Solitaire and the first Mac version of Pretty Good Solitaire.

Pretty Good Solitaire version 12 contained 40 new games (bringing the total to 700) and two new larger card sizes.  As such, it was the largest new version release since 2003.  Since it's release in October, it has also become the most commercially successful new version release since 2002.  No new version of Pretty Good Solitaire had caused such a large sales increase in five years.

Why was it so successful?  First of all, there were a lot of upgrades because this version was the first version that was not a free upgrade for people who ordered in 2002, 2003, and 2004.  But beyond that, it also stimulated new sales as well.  I think there were two reasons for this.

Historically, new versions with an even hundred number of games have always done much better than other versions.  So the previous best releases were the 500 game version in 2002 and the 600 game version in 2004.  Versions with a less catchy number of new games just don't increase sales as much.

But also, the 2 new larger card sizes clearly made this release stand out.  The last time I added new card sizes (the 500 game version in 2002) was the last time a new version increased sales as much as what we saw with version 12.  From my email it was clear that the larger sizes were a big hit.

November saw the release of Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition.  This 30 game basic solitaire collection was our very first Apple Mac game ever.  We didn't really have any idea what to expect.  The results since November have been very encouraging.  The Mac market is clearly a viable market for the indie game developer.  As I'll write in 2008 when I discuss our plans for the new year, we are definitely going to be expanding the Mac game and probably adding more Mac products as well.

All in all, the late in the year releases made 2007 end on a very positive note.  The falling dollar throughout the year certainly didn't hurt either, making our games as cheap as they have ever been outside the USA.  The signs are that 2008 should be a very good year.

 

Just Say No to Automatic Updates

Here is why you should never allow applications (or the OS) to automatically update itself.   Always only do updates manually, and wait sufficient time to make sure that the guinea pigs (ie. those who do allow automatic updates) have determined that the update is safe.

CatFight!

The picture above is a rare picture of all 4 of our cats.  How did I get them all together at once?  There's catnip all over the floor, which is why they all have their noses in the carpet.

A few weeks ago we had a major catfight in our household.  We're still not entirely sure how it started.  Anne was trying to clip the kitten Random's claws. Random was kicking up a fuss about it.  For some reason, this set Pumpkin off.  She started attacking Anne, then she attacked Random and Inquisitor.  When I got involved, she attacked me.  At one point, Pumpkin literally scared the crap out of Random - that was a little mess to clean up.

In the end, Pumpkin spent a total of 6 days in isolation, in one of the bedrooms (she had her own food, water, and litter box in there).  She finally got back out to roam the entire house again after we took all of the cats in to the vet for a previously scheduled annual checkup.  When they returned from the vet, the collective experience of the traumatic trip to the vet made them forget about their differences and get along again.

   
Pumpkin, the attacker

Random, the victim (but don't let that fool you - he attacks Pumpkin with great vigor).

   
He's getting bigger.

Inquisitor, the innocent victim in the whole affair

Ace, pretty much completely uninvolved.  Hiding under the bed at the first sign of trouble has it's advantages.

Boom!

Last night, our power plant exploded.

CWLP Plant Damaged by Explosion

We live just across the lake from the power plant.  Many of the pictures in that news story were taken only a couple of blocks away from our house.

Disarranging Mine liveblogged the whole thing.  The explosion was heard miles away.  From all reports, people were panicking all over town.

We had no idea anything was going on.

Anne didn't hear it.  She was watching a DVD with headphones on.  I heard it.  There was a loud noise and the house shook.  At first I thought it was the cats running amok upstairs.  Then I remembered that Pumpkin is in solitairy confinement in one of the bedrooms (more about why that is in another post), so that couldn't be it.  Then I figured it must be a jet flying low, probably a National Guard fighter jet.  Those guys fly around here all the time.  It went on for awhile, but I didn't think anything of it.  Our power never went off and we didn't hear any sirens (not surprising, they would have come to the power plant from the other direction).

So, despite an explosion and fire going on just blocks away, we were able to have a typical Saturday night watching Torchwood in peace.

We found out about it this morning on the internet.  Oh, that's what that noise was!

It's Done

The Mac version of Pretty Good Solitaire is now released.

Download it here.

Download additional card sets for the Mac version here.

Order it here.

Discuss it here.

Mac Edition...Tick Tock

Busy, busy weekend.  All kinds of pre-release preparation.  Last minute bugs getting fixed.

And here we are.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition will be officially released in exactly one hour.

The Great Pumpkin

The Great and Powerful Pumpkin is looking down on you this Halloween.

From the Halloween Card Set.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition

We are about to release a major new product: Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition.  It is the first Mac product we have ever done. 

We didn't originally plan to make a Mac version.  I'm a Windows programmer and the other programmer who does a lot of our development is also a Windows programmer.  I have always come down hard on the Windows side of the Windows/Mac debate.  I always felt that there was a reason that Windows won out in the marketplace over the Mac.  It wasn't because of anything nefarious Microsoft did, it was because Windows was better.  Since starting Pretty Good Solitaire in 1995, I never had any plans for a Mac version.

So how did we get here?

It all began a few years ago.  Pretty Good Solitaire is written in Microsoft Visual Basic.  In the 90s, VB was a great development tool, one that allowed someone like me to develop a good Windows app.  I could never have written PGS if I had to write it in C.  VB was simple to use and you could create an application remarkably quickly (the original 1.0 version of PGS was written in less than a month, part time). 

But then along came .NET.  With .NET, Microsoft decided to break Visual Basic.  No longer could you upgrade to a new version of VB and expect your code to run.  They also added ridiculous runtime requirements.  There was no way I was going to update to VB .NET, so I was stuck with VB 6.0, which I still use. 

VB is great, but its big drawback is that it is Windows-centric.  You can't port to any other platform.  Now add to that the fact that it was likely that I would never be able upgrade to a newer version of VB, and you had a situation where essentially PGS is written in a dead programming language.  In order to keep updating PGS for years to come, I needed to do something.

The decision was made to rewrite PGS in C.  This would have a lot of advantages - there were some features I couldn't do in VB that could be done in C.  As a side benefit, the code could then be ported to other platforms.  This wasn't a major thing at the time, but it was there.

The rewrite was to be done in stages.  At that time, we had two new products written in C (Pretty Good MahJongg and Action Solitaire).  We took the code from Action Solitaire as a base and began building a new solitaire engine with all the requirements we wanted.  Stage 1 of the project would be a simple, 30 game solitaire product.  From a technical standpoint, the purpose of the product would be to have the start of a new solitaire engine in C.  From a marketing standpoint, there was a demand for a product with fewer solitaire games it, as some people were overwhelmed by the hundreds of games in PGS.

That 30 game product was released as Most Popular Solitaire.  We then began stage 2 of the project, which was to expand it to a 100 game product.  That stage was nearly completed when Microsoft released Windows Vista.

It was immediately clear that Windows Vista was a game changer.  Vista is bad.  Vista is total crap, a real bowser of an operating system.  Never before had any new version of Windows ever caused me any major problems with any of my products.  Vista, though, was just a total pain in the butt.  Early this year, it became very clear that Windows is in trouble.  At the same time, my email requests for a Mac version exploded.  I've always gotten a few requests for a Mac version, but now they were off the charts.  For the first time since 1995, there is actual possibility that the long term future of computers is not Windows.  Unless Microsoft fixes Vista (which they show no signs of doing), it's clear that the growth in the market would be elsewhere.

So we decided to try to see how hard it would be to port our code to the Mac, starting with the Most Popular Solitaire code.  It became clear that it actually wouldn't be that hard.  So over the course of this year we set aside stage 2 and started on a new stage 3, porting to the Mac.  That is now virtually completed.  There were a few issues along the way, which Gregg (the programmer) has alluded to on his blog.  He spent a lot of time making sure that the game didn't look like a Windows port, but rather a true Mac application.

We were originally going to release it on October 25th, the same day as version 12 of Pretty Good Solitaire.  But then Apple announced that they were releasing a new version of Mac OS X the very next day (called Leopard).  It's a really bad idea to release a product right before a major operating system upgrade, especially since we could not test on the new OS version beforehand.

Over the weekend, we determined that there appear to be no problems with our game on Leopard.  Therefore we will be setting a release date very soon.  We look forward to joining the ranks of Mac developers living the life.

Once the initial 30 game version is released and working, we will very quickly update it to a 101 game version.  Eventually, if all goes well its possible that all 700 games currently in the Windows version could make it into the Mac version.

Random Picture 3

Massive Backlog

As I posted yesterday, Friday was a busy day.   As it turns out, it looks like it was our biggest day ever for sales.  And many of those sales were upgrade orders.  We still process upgrade orders manually, so we are way behind.  Normally there aren't enough upgrade orders for this to be a big deal, but the huge volume all at once means its going to take awhile for us to get through them.  If anyone who made an upgrade order in the last 24 hours happens to be reading this, please be patient, we will get your code out to you this weekend.

In other news, our Mac game works in Mac OS X Leopard, which was released yesterday.  This means we'll be setting a release date very soon.

Friday CatBlogging 3

Busy Day

Our email newsletter is going out today announcing the new version.  It will be a busy day because newsletters always generate a lot of emails and orders.  In this case, it is generating a lot of upgrade orders because this version is the first version that is not a free upgrade for people who ordered in the 2002-2004 time period.  Upgrade orders more work than regular orders because we have to verify the previous order first.  It would be nice if there were a way to automate that, but there really isn't.

Over the weekend I hope to post about the upcoming Mac game.   We'll also be finding out whether it works on Leopard (Apple's new Mac OS X version) this weekend.