Goodsol Solitaire Blog

Action Solitaire v1.12

We have just released version 1.12 of Action Solitaire.

This new version enhances compatibility with the new Microsoft Vista.  Action Solitaire is our "speed" solitaire game, where you play solitaire against a clock to score points.  It is somewhat similar to the kind of game machines that you see in bars. Action Solitaire contains 52 different games in this special speed format.

In addition to changes to make the game work better in Vista, we've changed the marketing screens in the game.  This is an example of what the new screens look like:

The screens are designed to look like the game's web site.  I'm hoping this will improve conversion of downloads.

Vista is Here

Tomorrow Microsoft officially releases Vista, the new upgrade of Windows.

Gregg Seelhoff has been blogging about the problems he encountered with Vista.  In Microsoft Plumbs the Depth of Bloatware, he details how hard it is to use Microsoft's tool that determines whether a system can run Vista.  But there is good news:

If you want to use this utility to let Microsoft sell you a new operating system, you have to download 40-60M of files, install three software packages, but only if you already have the latest operating systems. If you want to run this on Windows 2000 (as was previously on my test system), you have to first upgrade to Windows XP (SP2), to find out if you can then pay money to upgrade to Windows Vista, but be sure not to upgrade to a 64-bit version of XP, because that will not work, either. At least we can all rest peacefully knowing that we can easily test for Vista compatibility if Vista is already installed.

He eventually got Vista installed, only to discover more annoying problems with activation.

Meanwhile, it appears that Vista is causing lots of problems for game developers everywhere.  Tonight, one major casual game portal even released a press release about it: Microsoft Vista Failing 70 million Online Gamers and Developers:

As Microsoft's Windows Vista launches, the new operating system is breaking online games and disrupting gameplay, not only its own games on MSN but also at RealArcade, Yahoo Games, and AOL Games. ... Vista's incompatibility with most downloadable casual games, including those on Microsoft's own gaming portal demonstrates the enormous challenges facing many small game developers with getting their games to work with the new OS.

We've been pretty lucky, in that Vista didn't break any of our games.  This is largely because we made sure that the games worked under Windows XP limited accounts, which are much expanded in Vista.  Still, we had to make a number of changes to get the games to work better.  Mainly, we needed to create new icons for Vista and solve some issues with the new advanced Aero graphics interface.

Last week we released a new Vista-ized version of Pretty Good Solitaire, and over the weeks to come we will be updating our other games as well.

Wikipedia Update

Since my previous post about Pretty Good Solitaire's Wikipedia entry, the entry has been improved, but there are still issues.  For one thing, there's a very strange paragraph about cheat codes. 

Cheat codes: It is worth purchasing the game for the cheat codes alone (you'll have to search the net for them). There are at least six codes which give you access to bonus games within the game: Card Invaders, Carderoids, Cardipede, Donkey Card, Ms. Cardman and Shufflestein - a card related spoof of Wolfenstein 3D.

I have no idea who put that paragraph in there or why, but it certainly has nothing to do with Pretty Good Solitaire.  This kind of thing is why Wikipedia, although a good reference, has its flaws.

In other news about Wikipedia, Nick Bradbury has a post about Microsoft's efforts to fix problems in their entries.  It seems they have caused quite a stir by offering to pay people to edit their entries.

Pretty Good Solitaire Wikipedia Entry

Nick Bradbury recently posted on his blog about his products' Wikipedia entries.  There are entries for FeedDemon and a very good one for Homesite. 

This got me wondering whether there was an entry for Pretty Good Solitaire.  The last time I had checked, there wasn't one.

But I checked again and now there is one: Pretty Good Solitaire Wikipedia Entry.

Like Nick's FeedDemon entry, this is just a stub.  It's missing a lot of things - of course the latest version is not mentioned (only being a couple of days old), the new 2006 Shareware Industry Award is not listed in the Awards area, I'm never mentioned anywhere (boo! hiss!), it doesn't mention anything about all of the original games that I invented for the program, and there's no link to this blog.

Like Nick, I can't edit this entry (because of Wikipedia's policy that the person who knows the most about a subject can't contribute).  But hopefully over time some people will come along and edit it and make it better (hint, hint).

Pretty Good Solitaire v11.0.1

We have released a new version of Pretty Good Solitaire.

Version 11.0.1 contains no new features or games, but contains changes that enhance Pretty Good Solitaire's compatibility with the new Microsoft Vista.

The first big change was to switch the help file from the old reliable WinHelp to HTMLHelp.  I had to make this change because Microsoft made the stupid decision to drop support for WinHelp in Vista. 

And there were other issues.  As programmer/chief tester Gregg Seelhoff posted on his blog:

... this release adds full Windows Vista compatibility to the title, prior to the general release of Vista scheduled (this final time) for January 30. This means using a new look program icon, replacing WinHelp with HTML Help, and fixing bugs caused by the Aero glass look and by restricted access to folders (one of each).

Although my code ships with this product, in DLL form, my function for this update was as lead tester, first getting Vista installed and then identifying and researching various issues to work well within the new operating system. Originally, the conversion to HTML Help was thought to be the main issue, but at the end of the day (actually, weeks), that was the one aspect that went fairly smoothly. This process has given me tons of material for upcoming blog posts, amongst the various release announcements.

Nothing with Windows Vista was straightforward, but now that we have identified the issues with icons, help files, limited user accounts, the Aero appearance, and Game Explorer, the rest of the releases should flow like rain.

With this release out of the way, we will also be releasing new Vista compatible versions of our other games. 

2007

Hello, welcome to the first post of 2007.  Yes, I haven't been updating much lately, but that has been mostly because there hasn't been much to say.  That's going to change now.

First, a look back at 2006.  I set a lot of goals for last year.  Some of them happened and some of them didn't.

The web site redesign was completed (although there were a lot of problems with the project and I'm not entirely happy with it).  The marketing screens were changed in many of my games and I did make the trial period changes I had planned (I added a restriction in the trial period where the trial is limited to game numbers 1-30, so there are only a limited number of different game positions a trial user can play). 

The switch to a different ecommerce provider did not happen, as I was unable to find a suitable replacement for RegNow.

But the biggest change of all in 2006 was not even considered at the start of 2006.  The move to the new house was the biggest change we've made in years and it was a very good one.  At the end of 2006, our standard of living was much better than at the beginning, and the difference is the new and better house.

For 2007, I don't have any particular goals that I want to accomplish.  My main priority at the start of 2007 is to get all of my products updated for the new Microsoft Vista.  This has turned out to be somewhat more annoying of a project that I had originally anticipated, but more on that later.

Beyond the immediate goal of just getting new versions of our games out, there are several new product projects that I hope will come to completion soon (one will be ready very soon).  In addition, I'd really like to come up with some idea that would give sales a good kick higher (of course, that's nothing new). 

And on the stock trading front, I'd like to turn in a good year in 2007 where I stay disciplined with my trading for the entire year.  I did not have as good of a year in 2006 trading as I would have liked.  It got off to a great start and it had a pretty good finish, but I traded poorly in the summer and therefore didn't make as much money as I should have.  Given that I expect that there will be a period in 2007 where the market performs at least as poorly as it did last summer (and it will probably be worse), I want to do much better this time when the market is bad.

But we begin 2007 in the best position ever for the start of a new year.  We own our house completely (no mortgage payments ever again!), we have a hit product that is still selling after 11 years, there are some new products in the pipeline, and both of us and all 3 cats are healthy.