Author Archives: Gregg

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.44

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Play 440 different Solitaire games on Mac OS X.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac EditionPretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.44, an upgrade to the largest (and growing) collection of solitaire games for Mac systems, has been published by Goodsol Development.

This version of Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition has 20 more new games, for a total of 440 different kinds of solitaire (or 504, if you include the 64 bonus games in the full version).  This version is a free upgrade for all previous PGSME customers.

The 20 new games in version 2.44 include the very latest games added to the Windows version (Candike, Single Spark, and Lancaster), as well as 17 more games of various types.  This upgrade also includes two more card sets in the main bundle: the Traditional Card Set and the Large Suit Card Set.  PGSME 2.44 was featured in Goodsol Newsletter #174; anybody may subscribe to the Goodsol Newsletter (for free) to receive updates, information on featured games, and occasional deals on game software (but don’t tell them I told you 🙂 ).

The new games (in alphabetical order) are:

  • Alexandria
  • Applegate
  • Breakwater
  • Brown Recluse
  • Candike
  • Cleopatra
  • Crossroads
  • Eight On
  • Eighty Thieves
  • Forty Bandits
  • Lancaster
  • Linus
  • Microbe
  • San Juan Hill
  • Scorpion Tail
  • Single Interchange
  • Single Spark
  • Suits in Line
  • Swiss Patience
  • Three Blind Mice

This was actually our quickest significant update yet, as there were fewer “oddballs” than usual.  However, Microbe was the recipient of our Oddball of the Group Award for this upgrade, accounting for 3 extensions to the Goodsol Solitaire Engine (plus two fixes to the rules in the PGS help file).

Our next Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition update (PGSME 2.46) is scheduled for mid-March; as always, it will be a free upgrade to those who buy version 2.44 now.

Lack of Ideas? Really?

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Ideas are easy.  Execution really matters.

I somewhat regularly read about “game designers” who are lacking ideas, usually via posts from the individuals themselves seeking good ideas for a game (from others).  Mind you, I cannot lay claim to being the best game designer on the planet, but I can certainly tell you that anyone who says that they have no game ideas is definitely not a game designer.

The truth of the matter is that any real game designer always has too many ideas to be able to execute all of them, or even a significant percentage.  If you do not have this problem, you best not fancy yourself a designer at all; instead, take a job with a game company where you can develop the ideas of somebody else, and maybe add a little design input every once in a while.

Here are a few characteristics of pseudo-designers that I have encountered over the many years I have been in this business:

  • they think that “Quake, only with bigger guns” is an interesting idea;
  • they focus on a single design idea to the exclusion of other approaches;
  • they believe that their one idea is so valuable that others are just waiting to “steal” it;
  • they think that an idea is somehow the same as a game design; and
  • they have no idea how much effort is actually involved in building a game.

Whenever I hear one of these stories now, I just have to shake my head and sigh.  Granted, early in my professional career, I was more likely to be swayed by somebody with a grand idea and (at least) a partial game design but, of course, the conversation usually ended with “you create my game and I will split the profits with you, 50/50.”  Even when groups are formed to pursue a particular game design, unless they are properly funded, it almost always ends in failure.

I can hardly believe that people will claim they are a “good game designer”, but they cannot come up with a good idea to turn into a game design.  When I worked at Quest Software, and we were wrapping up The Legend of Blacksilver (Apple II version, circa 1989), our entire development staff (of 4!) sat down at a local Burger King and brainstormed at least four game ideas to consider before the end of a fast food lunch; I still remember one of the ideas that was not chosen to pursue.  Given that, I am astonished when somebody thinks that my company would bother to take their basic game idea, when we have a backlog of our own designs yet to be done, and could easily devise more when/if necessary.

When I first heard about the One Game A Month challenge, I was intrigued at the idea of trying to start clearing out the backlog of those designs (full and partial) we have wanted to create.  Although I am not officially participating, primarily because after 30+ years, my game development goals are not congruent with the bulk of the “indie scene”, I realized that the way to get this done was to actually think less about game design, and focus on execution: actually getting the projects completed.

Execution is always the most important part of game development, because “wouldn’t it be cool if…” is always much easier to say than to do.  Somebody has to program, somebody has to create artwork (likewise, sounds, music, levels, documentation, etc.), and it all needs to be put together and, most of all, finished.  It is not an exaggeration to say that almost all (i.e., more than 90% of) games are never actually completed.

To give you some numbers on the extent of the Digital Gamecraft backlog, I spent an hour or so simply writing down the names of projects for which some design work had been done, including games that had been partially designed and researched, games which had fully documented designs, and several products in various stages of development.  I stopped when I reached 32 projects, though there are certainly more.

The reason that 32 was a good place to stop was that I wanted to prioritize them using a simple binary selection process (a bracket system, if you will), knowing that all of the higher priority projects would spring immediately to mind.  I went through the pairs of projects to generate a rough priority list, and then I manually tweaked the development and release order to create some variety in our lineup (i.e., not producing two games within the same genre back-to-back).  Now I have a list of projects that, even if we could finish one per month, would take us almost until 2016, and that does not even include any of the four AAA games we pitched at E3 (and CGDC) back in 1997.

Our current project list, as it currently stands, contains 30 games, in 6 different genres, spanning approximately one dozen platforms, plus a productivity application and an information web site.  If we can accomplish even half of that in the next 5 years, I will probably be extremely pleased (or, possibly, cloned 😉 ).

However, if your problem is with finding ideas, rather than actual execution of game designs, then it may be time to give up the concept of being a game designer.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.42

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Solitaire for Mac OS X with 420 different games

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.42This week, Goodsol Development published Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.42, an upgrade to our largest collection of solitaire games for Mac systems.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition now has 20 new games, bringing the total to 420 kinds of solitaire, plus another 62 bonus variants in the full version.  This version is a free upgrade for all previous PGSME customers.

The interesting thing about the 20 new solitaire games in version 2.42 is that several of these games were selected by customers via the Pretty Good Solitaire page on Facebook, as well as in the Goodsol forum.  That’s right!  We not only take requests for a game, but sometimes even design original solitaire games for particularly active forum participants (e.g., Richard’s Patience).

The new games (in alphabetical order) are:

  • Acme
  • Block Ten
  • Cadran
  • Capricieuse
  • Demon
  • Double Easthaven
  • Double Golf
  • Double Trigon
  • Harp Rush
  • Huge Spider
  • Kingdom
  • Nine by Five
  • Open Doublets
  • Opus
  • Quadruple Trigon
  • Richard’s Patience
  • Right and Left
  • Seven by Four
  • Six by Four
  • Trigon Left

This is our first product release of 2013, finalized on our first business day of the year, but I can assure you that many more are yet to come.

2013: Year in Preview

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Happy New Year!

Digital GamecraftWe at Digital Gamecraft have emerged from our two-week “break” into a new year with a fresh sense of optimism, renewed productivity, and an almost overwhelming prognosis of much greater success in 2013.

There are three major factors that play into the very positive outlook for this year:

  1. We had a strong finish to last year, with a large number of product updates shipped and a significant stabilization of our development platforms and processes.
  2. Despite officially being “out of the office” during the break, I actually fell back to my love of game programming, hence Demolish! Pairs made fantastic progress.
  3. The first day back in the office saw us ship another major update to Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition, adding another 20 games (to be published very soon).

After a certain amount of adjustment during 2012, we are not making any changes to priorities for the new year.  However, we did map out our course of development for the foreseeable future, and just seeing the project list is fairly exciting itself.  We have four brand new game products to launch within the next six months, as well as a new web site project and a productivity application.  Of course, success begets success, so new clients are also contending for SophSoft, Incorporated game development resources.

Personally, I am resolved to both read and write more; my desire to spend more time programming games is handled nicely by the facts in the above paragraph. 🙂

So, here’s wishing all of you a great deal of success (however you choose to define it) for the coming year, and a nice recovery for the game industry in general.

2012: Year in Review

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Overall Performance Grade: B

Digital Gamecraft / SophSoft, IncorporatedDespite being in the middle of our two-week break, I decided to take a short hiatus from the warm tropical sunshine (actually, the snowfall outdoors and a space heater in the office) to do a performance review of this past year at Digital Gamecraft and SophSoft, Incorporated.

Major Events

#10: FreeCell Plus 4.10

We released a maintenance update to this popular collection of 8 FreeCell Solitaire games (plus 4 bonus games) on October 16, for both Windows and Mac OS X.

#9: Most Popular Solitaire 2.10

We released a maintenance update to this top-selling collection of 30 Solitaire games (plus 13 bonus games) on October 12, for both Windows and Mac OS X.

#8: Goodsol Solitaire 101 version 2.12

We released a maintenance update to this collection of 101 favorite Solitaire games (plus 34 bonus games) on September 25, for both Windows and Mac OS X (after the earlier release of GSCI 2.10 on July 3).

#7: Are you kidding me?

During August and September, we experienced major failures of systems running (in order) Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, while development continued (mostly) apace.  All systems were restored, development processes were optimized, and this Gamecraft blog was improved.

#6: Action Solitaire 1.50

We released a significant upgrade to this arcade Solitaire game on May 15, adding 5 more games for a total of 75 games, for Windows (only).

#5: Preparing for Mac App Store Submission

Starting in January (and extending into March), we published a 6 part article, plus introduction, giving a most detailed listing of guidelines and pitfalls associated with submitting a product to Apple for inclusion in the Mac App Store (for OS X).

#4: Pretty Good MahJongg 2.41 / ME 2.02

We released an update to this definitive collection of MahJongg Solitaire, tile matching, and puzzles, which contains 55 games and 300 layouts, on September 25, for Windows (PGMJ 2.41) and Mac OS X (PGMJME 2.02).

#3: ISVCon 2012: Success!

The company attended the inaugural ISVCon conference (renamed from Software Industry Conference) in Reno, Nevada, and I presented Quality Assurance for Small Software Publishers and also spoke on the How Games are Different panel.

#2: Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.40

We released another major update to this largest collection of Solitaire games for Mac, adding 25 new games for a total of 400 games (plus 60 bonus games), on November 27, for Mac OS X 10.4/Tiger through (current) 10.8/Mountain Lion (after the releases of PGSME 2.30/2.32/2.33/2.34/2.36/2.38 earlier in the year).

#1: 30 Years in Business!

In January, our company celebrated its 30th ANNIVERSARY, making us “The Most Venerable Independent Game Developer in the World.”  (It may be a bit of hyperbole, but we have been doing this since well before many “indie developers” were even born.)

What Went Right

Digital Gamecraft has remained a full-time independent game development company for the 18th consecutive full year (stretching back into 1994, as Sophisticated Software Systems). Some internal projects, including Demolish! Pairs, have made huge strides, and we have multiple iOS projects poised to release early in 2013, while maintaining our expertise in Windows and Mac OS X platforms and adding others (to be announced).

Product development was really solid for the entire year, and our strong association with Goodsol Development continued, as evidenced by the numbers: 18 SKUs published (plus two quiet updates), 16 closed beta versions, 6 internal (alpha) versions, and 3 more updates pending release.  That is a SKU/update shipped about every 8 calendar days, on average, not at all bad for a small company.  A new development/release schedule for Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition is more efficient and working well (so far).

What Went Wrong

The heavy release schedule of various Solitaire games on multiple platforms took a toll on the resources (mostly time) available for other projects, compounded by the several weeks of hardware and system failures and recovery, so Demolish! Pairs was delayed (again) until early 2013.  Marketing efforts are nascent as well.

Despite the improved release schedule, desktop sales have not lived up to expectations, based on results from previous years, so some rethinking and second-guessing has taken place.  In particular, the division of effort between (tried and true) desktop development and (less reliable) mobile development (for lower price points) is a matter of some risk.

Final Evaluation

On balance, I awarded a grade of B for overall performance in 2012.  Although specific tasks, especially the intention of shipping a new Digital Gamecraft product, were not fulfilled, the entire year was fully productive and reestablished forward momentum after a disappointing 2011.  This also takes into consideration progress on a number of projects that do not (yet) figure into the published release schedule.

We are capable of an A+ grade in 2013, so that is clearly the goal.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.40

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This is our biggest Mac OS X product yet.

PGSME 2.40Goodsol Development has now published Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition 2.40, a significant update to this largest collection of Solitaire games for Mac OS X systems.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition contains 400 different solitaire games in this update, including 25 brand new variations, every one of the games from any of our Mac products, and even Concertina, which is not available anywhere else, on any platform (not even the Windows version of PGS).

In Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition, you can play the widest variety of different kinds of solitaire available for Mac systems, whether you have a brand new system running Mountain Lion (10.8) or a older [PowerPC] system running Tiger (10.4).  Every game provides 2 billion deals and online high scores, as well as full support for climb mode, where deals are played in numerical order for a total score, a fair and direct comparison to other players.  Additionally, you can play game tours including several games for a different challenge.  There is truly something here for everybody.

Fun facts: If you could play one game per second, it would still take you more than 27219 years to exhaust the deals in this game, and that does not even count the 60 bonus games!  More realistically, if somebody played one game of FreeCell every minute, eight hours every day, it would still take 5.7 years to finish the first 1 million deals.

You can download a free 30-day trial version here for Mac OS X 10.4 or later (Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard, or Tiger [Intel/PPC]).  Buy a copy here for only $24.95 and you will receive the 60 bonus variants not available in the trial version.  Also, you will receive free upgrades for the foreseeable future, as we add even more new games.

Pretty Good Solitaire Mac Edition is our premier solitaire game for Mac OS X, not merely based on our proprietary Goodsol Solitaire Engine, but actually the driving force behind the development of that engine.  This version anchors a new release schedule for PGSME updates, where we plan to add 20 games per month (albeit with a slight holiday interruption next month) until this version contains every game in the Windows version of Pretty Good Solitaire (currently at 792, and counting), as well as Concertina and many more bonus games that are only available in this title.

Curmudgeon Day 2012

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I Stayed Home and Did What I Wanted.

Curmudgeon DayI have been writing about Curmudgeon Day for the last 8 years, which posts you can find in the Curmudgeon Day category.  The holiday itself is much older (predating the pretenders), but it has taken on additional significance this year.  This Thanksgiving was the first time one of our guests had to leave early to go into work at a retail outlet, for a midnight opening, under the implied threat of dismissal, making this particular practice a form of quasi-slavery, which must become unprofitable.

Now, I encourage you to join the cause by visiting and liking the Curmudgeon Day page on Facebook.  If you are so inclined, please also post there about your non-shopping activities; I have already done so.

“We now return to our regularly scheduled program.”

FreeCell Plus 4.10

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This is a collection with FreeCell and several related games.

FCPlus 4.10 for Windows/MacGoodsol Development has published FreeCell Plus 4.10, a maintenance update to this inexpensive collection of FreeCell and related games, available for both Windows and Mac OS X systems.

FreeCell Plus includes 8 FreeCell-type games, including FreeCell itself, as well as several variations such as Sea Towers, a very popular game, Baker’s Game, the original game of this type, and Penguin, a challenging twist on the genre.

In FreeCell Plus, you can play these most popular “open” games, where every card is visible from the initial deal, putting an emphasis more on strategy, rather than luck, in solving these card puzzles.  The first one million deals of FreeCell are identical to the version shipped with Windows, but our game extends this to 2 billion deals, and the other games with the same general layout, Baker’s Game, Spidercells, and Two Cells (as well as three of the bonus games) use compatible deals.  Playing in climb mode, you can challenge yourself sequentially to each deal of this game that is winnable in more than 99.99% of deals (and play 11981 before reaching the first unwinnable one).

You can download a free 30-day trial version here for either Windows 8/7/Vista/XP or Mac OS X 10.4 or later (Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard, or Tiger).  Buy a copy here for only $9.95, and receive 4 bonus games not available in the trial version.  Note that there is also a “special code” purchase available to allow FreeCell Plus to be played on all (Windows or Mac) computers in your household.

FreeCell Plus is actually a reboot/replacement of an older version for Windows 3.1 that sold well (unchanged) for more than a decade.  I recreated this version using our proprietary Goodsol Solitaire Engine (and none of the original code or resources), also adding the Quick Launch window.  This is currently the smallest GSE game, with only 12 games in the full version (although there is another game in the pipeline with even fewer, but a more diverse selection), and the iOS version is in active development.

Featured Tweet (#441)

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Details: I dropped the iOS Deployment Target to 3.2, and the project built (seemingly) properly for all iPads, but Xcode 4.4.1 refused to actually send the app to the device.  It ran the existing (older) version on the device the first time, and when that was deleted manually, it threw error messages about not being able to find the file. (!)  Cleaning the project did not seem to work, but erasing the intermediates folder did the trick.