A more serious development in 3D OpenGL then Snap! Klondike Solitaire is one of the most popular games in the Android Market, and yet none of them really appealed to me visually.
Latest features included High Definition graphics, an online leaderboard high score chart, user definable images of both card backings and backdrop.
This app has been recognised by its excellence on this site https://gameskeys.net/under-the-radar-games-that-you-should-play/#Solitaire under the entry of Solitaire 3D Classic Klondike+. Thanks for your keen observance and obvious good taste! 🙂
An independent reviewer has taken the time to write a thorough review of which I appreciate very much!
Check out Daria’s review here: https://freeappsforme.com/solitaire-3d-app-review/
Thank you very much for doing that. 🙂
I wanted a clean looking interface, that didn’t require popup columns. Basically you should be able to play it as you see it without the need for tricky interfaces. I wanted to show off some of OpenGL animation, especially with the shuffle and deal, and specifically the winning sequence.
Here are some screenshots: –
And a video: –
The images below of the app are older than the current version, but I like to leave them here to remind me of how far the application has progressed!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jawfin.sol3dtab
Solitaire 3D was added to the list of the Best Free Solitaire Game Apps where you’ll see it listed as the 4th item.
http://www.appbrain.com/app/sol3d/com.jawfin.sol3dtab
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jawfin.sol3dtabpro
http://www.appbrain.com/app/sol3dpro/com.jawfin.sol3dtabpro
Improvements to version 1.2.1 to answer the comment: –
by Myra (April 25, 2011)
Well this game is just the same as before I upgraded it there is deffinetly no difference so why bother trying to create a new one
The changes log states: –
* Motion blur.
Can be turned off in the options.
* Smarter shrinking of bigger piles.
* Minor bug fixes.
So to break these down: –
1. Motion blur.
Move the cards around quickly, or watch closely as the computer moves them, or watch the flashes and you tap the undo key. Those opaque (that means semi-transparent) cards following the movement of the real card is the motion blur. It took a few days to get the effect just right. I decided to not show it during the deal and the animated win effect as it slowed it too much. Nevertheless, I like the effect and I for one am glad I bothered!
2. Smarter shrinking of bigger piles.
Previously, once a pile reached 7 cards the spacing between them dropped nearly by half. It looked a bit wrong as a 6 card pile was taller than a 7 one and it was harder to select the cards. Now the pile shrinks slowly as cards are added. This was a huge amount of work as the 3D world in which the cards are rendered into the view port (your screen) has no relation to the 2D co-ordinates from user touching the screen so there is a fair amount of math to take account of the varying pile heights. Glad I bothered, hey don’t mention it.
3. Minor bug fixes.
The touch on the top card of the pile was out by 8 pixels, I adjusted that to line up more correctly; it was close, but not perfect.
The textured backdrop on the widescreen styled phones was getting chopped at the sides (thanks Amy for pointing that out) so I detect for that and render the background appropriately.
Dragging a pile of cards, they would move at different times, so I synchronised the rendering with touch so they stay as a pile and move as such. You would have to be looking closely to notice this originally; I look closely.
There was a minor grammatical error in the help that I corrected.
I tidied up the internal memory handling the synchronising of the deck during gameplay from the different threads that can effect it; the user interface, the computer moving cards automatically and animation thread. This cuts down on some of the obscure range checking errors reported by Android’s error handler developer feedback. This bug, although rare (happened twice from 5000 installs) would do a force close on the game.
In conclusion, just because an upgrade may seem to have “deffinetly no difference” doesn’t means there “deffinetly” was not improvements, it just means you “deffinetly” didn’t notice. What I should not of bothered with is this!!! But I appreciate all feedback – as long as it improves this game for all of us 😉
Need to get it so windows phone users can play your
games I like solitaire 3d but I can’t get it on my phone
Hi Richard, unfortunately that would take a complete rewrite for another Operating System, thousands of hours. The same applies to Apple devices, so sad to say this app is Android or nothing, sorry 🙁
Hi it’s Andrew Raft here
i just brought 3D pro. and would like to know if my scores can be transferred from the free 3D solitaire game.
Thank you
Hi Andrew, they certainly can! If you tell me what you’ve got I can set up a score transfer for you. Try to get all the values on the Scores screen. Note one thing though, the Pro version isn’t linked to the Heyzap! high score system, I was considering it – but as Heyzap is going to do away with keep high scores (they are single-mindedly focusing on making more money with advertising at the cost of features the actual developers use) I am going to drop them and use the Google+ leaderboards. When I finally get the chance to do that I’ll also link the Pro version into the leaderboard – but I cannot say when (very busy with my day job). In the meanwhile, can you please email me a jawfin@gmail.com you scores and I’ll organise it for you.
Cheers
Jonathan
I really enjoy your 3D pro
It might even make me late
For work one of these days
Thank You
Haha thanks. If you don’t tell your boss neither will I!!
When you want to change the face of the cards they don’t stay on the setting you choose after you leave the game. When you go back to the game it’s on big face no matter what you have set them on. It doesn’t lock your selection!!!
Hey, thanks for writing 🙂
I’ll look into this, see what it’s doing! Sorry about that.
Version 1.3
Improvements: –
French language support, which is pretty big in its own right.
Bug fixes: –
Minor layout changes in the about and options screen to allow for the extra width of some of the French words.
Score moved more to the right for a nicer look.
Added just a bit more height on the cards being moved by the game, from column to column, to the bases, and flipping cards.
Motion blur fixed on flipping a card.
Changed the behavour of the motion blur of the cards being flipped at the top. The motion blur was working in the opposite angle of the cards being flipped. In case you are wondering why the turned cards seem to flip backwards its because a forward flip will show the bottom of the 3 cards being turned for most of the animation and that looks confusing.
Changed the order the cards were autoplaying, so it will always play the lowest value card first, not just the first one it finds.
Changed the speed of checking for cards to autoplay, added 50 milliseconds to slow it slightly.
Version 1.3.1
Improvements: –
Selected cards are highlighted with the background color, only lighter. Uses a light-saber styled glow.
Bug fixes: –
It was showing the motion blur effect in the winning animation, this made the animation too slow.
Standard scoring bug: was taking off the score if an Ace was moved to a different base.
Vegas scoring bug: wasn’t taking off the score if a card was taken from the base and put back into play on the piles.
Minor tweaks in displaying a pile of cards being moved by the user over the top bases (note there is never a need to move a pile of cards over the bases, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t look right when it’s done!).
game not working properly Its showing only 3BIG STACKS of cards! Needs to b re-programmed to fit smart phone screen Its way too big to see all of the cards lined up
That’s certainly a weird one! I have it working on a 3 inch phone to a 10 inch tablet, but with the huge variety of devices I’m not surprised it won’t behave on all of them. Is it possible you can send me a screenshot of it? Even if taken with another device/camera? I may get a sense of what it’s doing. Also, this would probably easier to resolve via email, so you can get back to me on jawfin@gmail.com Thanks!
Version 1.3.2
Bug fixes: –
The popup toast messages for shorter messages now uses a smaller font.
Fine tuning of the options screen layout.
Version 1.3.3
Improvements: –
Option to have the dealing deck on the right (as requested by Tom).
This required moving the New Game button to the right too (that the button that appears when you win).
And instead of being lazy and shifting the base cards to the right before starting the win animation, I rewrote it so it works from the left too. The animation is slightly different. Hint: you can change the deck placement via the options during the animation to watch both versions.
What’s new button also put on the options screen.
Bugs: –
With the vegas scoring moving an ace from one base to another falsely rewarded 5 dollars.
The 3 deal card visual offset removed after an undo – it was showing the 3 cards below which by now should not be overlapping.
The application is set to single task to prevent duplicate 3D viewports. Happened at times when the game was paused then later resumed.
Version 1.3.4
Improvements: –
Custom image can be selected as the backdrop to the game. This was a lot more complex then I thought it would of been, so its possible it won’t work well for everyone (lots of out of memory problems and the image just going white-screen). I couldn’t make it crop, so in the end I just stretch the image to fit. The chosen color is still used for the card highlight, as well the background color if a transparent png image is selected.
Bugs: –
The ad refresh (in the free version) routine was being called twice causing the ads to change too quickly – I like being sponsored, but I don’t want to ruin the game for it, so I took out the second loop and after that slowed down the refresh even more.
Not so much a bug, but I have branched out to other ad providers to have a bit more variety!
Minor tweaks to the animation and layout as I try to make it always good to look at and play.
Version 1.3.5
Improvements: –
Pulsate the score whenever it changes. I wanted to do more exciting things, but didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to hold back releasing as I fixed a few bugs reported by people and I like to get the fixes out there.
Bugs: –
Memory leak and exception in loading the deck backing handled.
Fixed a memory operation in the image backdrop loader.
If cards are selected don’t pause the screen refresh (battery saver) for the sake of the highlight.
On image reloading clear out the old images to free up memory (in the OpenGL environment).
Version 1.3.6
Minor bug fixes. Lots of little annoyances, primarily with the synchronizing of the cards. The most obvious was the freeze that occasionally happened on running the game. The application has 2 events, one called onStart and the other onResume. By definition the onResume event should not fire as the game executes as its not technically resuming anything (this event is designed to fire after a pause). Both events were calling loadGame, the procedure that restores the game from where you left it last time, so it was being ran twice – that combined with the selection routine that fires when you press the screen was cause the freeze.
Also smarter deployment of internal memory usage so it makes less calls to the Java garbage collector which was making the game stall for a fraction of a second at times.
Version 1.3.6.1
Minor bug fix. A white rectangle in the bottom left corner would display if an ad wasn’t loaded. This could only possibly happen with a user who was not being shown any ads and thus my potential for earning is zero from them, and yet I fix it. How nice am I? (And even then she only gave me 3 stars…)
Version 1.3.7
Improvements: –
To make it a little faster whislt still being smooth I slightly lowered the delay between frames from 16ms to 10ms, and took a couple of steps out of the turning card and computer animated moving pile.
Bugs: –
There is still a bug that sometimes loses sychronise between the cards displayed on the screen and the piles in memory so that cards can’t be selected or undoing moves may skip a move. This is extremely rare and thus hard to catch, in an attempt to lessen the chance of this happening the game will no longer look for cards to autoplay if the user has selected a card.
Also, I slightly increased the delay between checking for cards to play with the hope that will lower the chance of conflict – well, its looking good so far!
Version 1.3.7.1
Hopefully I’ve nailed that rare bug which locks the screen for a few seconds – the game does come good after, but it appears as if it has frozen.
Version 1.3.7.2
Tightened up the animation when the user drags the cards around – stopped that card backflip thingy, and fixed the heights (Z axis) a bit. Interacting the 2D input with a rendered 3D world is hard, I doubt if there are many 3D games that try touch coordination!
Reset the auto play timer after the user does anything to cut down the possibility of both game and user doing moves at the same time.
For the free version: locked the ad to the bottom left corner as it used the whole bottom despite being told not to!!
Version 1.3.7.3
Improvements: –
New sound for placing a card to a base. I felt this was a sound the game should have. I originally had a musical note (like Windows 7 Solitaire) but my wife said it was very annoying so I changed it to a polite click!
The sound effects of shuffling and dealing are now stopped if the user taps the screen to skip them.
Long press on Undo key to set game back to start. Again a feature I felt it needed. I’ve tried hard to keep the sychronise between the 2D and 3D worlds, but at times cards may not go where they should (usually during an Undo) – but a reset of the game will fix it.
Rewrote the synchronise handling of the deck to minimize freezing. I’ve given up trying to use the synchronise function within JAVA, it freezes far more than it logically should and the timeout is way too high. I developed my own synchronising routines (more of a signal/wait process as opposed to semaphore). I hope this will see the end of time-outs.
I have noticed on my new phone, a Huawei Sonic, that the game can go black from switching to and from it. I think its a bug in the Android OS switching the GL renderer on and off (I’ve seen other OpenGL games have the same issue) so I cannot fix that.
Version 1.3.7.4
Improvements: –
Long press the search button to start a New Game.
Free version: removed fine location privilege, drains battery and apparently was not necessary.
Bugs: –
Long pressing the Undo button to reset the game wasn’t setting the score back to how it was at the start of that game.
Version 1.3.8
Improvements: –
Statistics on games played, win and loss count, etc.
Auto save the game progress on idle – on the rare occasion it crashes (due to OpenGL bugs in Android) no progress will be lost.
Version 1.3.8.1
Improvements: –
Pressing Search to redo any undo’s. You can solve it, then tap back/undo many times (don’t hold it or it’ll cancel the redo) and go mad on the redo/search and watch the cards fly!
Bugs: –
The menu images for Help, About and Quit were being pixelated by the compression. Set them so they look more clean.
An ad broker updated their SDK so that was implemented too.
Version 1.3.8.2
Improvements: –
Long clicking the Back for a full undo shows an “Undo” message on the screen.
Resetting the score now closes the Score screen to return to the game.
Bugs: –
Resetting the scores wasn’t clearing the current running score, now fixed.
Free version only: The resetting of the score back to the start of the game on a long click Undo is now implemented correctly.
Minor screen handling issues documented by the error reports send in from the Android crash handler.
I have noted a few bugs in the solitaire game that were not fixed in the update and happen more frequently now. First, at times it freezes when trying to move the cards to piles or draw. And second, in several instances, in the play field, the start cards, that are upturned at start of a new game will not move to either the foundation or where you try to place them. Otherwise the game seems fine.
Thanks for that Brandy – still some niggling issues with that it seems. I’ve put in another process I hope will help with the freezes and the cards seeming to go to the wrong places at times! I think its a mix with the auto-play and undo and redo and manually moving cards – the game moves a card the same time as you are and it gets confused!
If you are on a good game and it does that to you, you can at least play it again from a clean start by holding down the Back/Undo key for one second to reset it.
Thanks again for posting, I’ll do my best to sort it. What I am working on now will be released this week.
Cheers Jonathan
Version 2.0
Announcement: –
This marks the release of a new version. The old Android OS cannot support large screens and some updates released by the telecommunications companies, so a new release has been made to allow for these. The older version will be kept on the market for the sake of backwards compatibility.
Improvements: –
The cards are drawn at slightly different random angles and offsets to provide a more realistic effect. This can be disabled by selecting Straighten Cards in the Options screen.
Bugs: –
Another routine was put in place to help with the sychronising between what is seen on the screen and what’s happening behind the scenes. Minor tweaks to the timings so it runs at the same speed regardless of the phone’s CPU[s].
Version 2.0.1
Released only for the Tablet / Froyo version to fix the white screen issues with the HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Galaxy S phones.
Version 2.1
Improvements: –
The free (ad sponsored version) come with the Heyzap social network. As this requires Internet access it wasn’t shipped in the Pro version.
The ads are hidden if the columns become so high that the ads overlap too much.
The layout of the dealing deck has been changed to show it’s height; so you can see how many cards are left in it.
The dealing sound has been changed to more closely match the animation.
This should work on all tablet and HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Galaxy S phones as well.
Version 2.1.1
Improvements: –
Move to SD card.
Quit button on the Menu.
Version 2.1.2
Improvements: –
Option to disable Heyzap for those not wanting to participate.
A new button on the screen when you win to check into Heyzap to brag about your score!
Redesign of the Menu to allow multiple rows so I can add more than 6 buttons. This allowed me to have both Heyzap and Quit buttons back on the menu.
Version 2.2
Features: –
A new deck backing brought to you by my friends at http://creativeimagesbyjaxs-kim.smugmug.com 🙂
Also, make your own backing from your gallery, downloaded images, or directly from your camera – and pick the size you want too. A small note here, this crashed a couple of times for me, out of memory (I have a cheapie phone) so if that happens a phone reset will fix it!
In the scores screen you can now post/brag your scores with the Heyzap button (free version only as Heyxap requires Internet which is a security permission that the pro version will not compromise).
The menu (from pressing the menu key) I designed myself as I wanted more than 6 items. That was already installed from 2.1.2 but I made it a bit smarter.
Bugs: –
Extremely minor change to the stack height of the pile to stop feathering on the turning of 3 cards.
Added extra frames in the flip of the card (3 to 13) for added realism (both graphics and timing) – this has no overhead as it only flips on the spot, doesn’t draw attention from the play (another card has to move to effect a flip) and a flipping card has no motion blur so no overhead there either.
So not really bugs, just fine tuning.
Version 2.3
Improvements: –
The Volume control buttons now change media volume, not the default ring volume, if sound is selected in the option.
Better handling of large screen layouts, especially more square resolutions (anti-wide screen, like 600×800) and tidier options screen.
More messages for Heyzap winning, only for Vegas scoring when you start getting over $10,000 (up to $250,000!).
New languages introduced: Italian, German and Japanese – as I hope to reach a wider audience.
Bugs: –
Fixed bug counting streak if game is left while the winning animation is playing.
Note these others aren’t actually bugs from my point of view, they are just not improvements from the users point of view.
I needed to implement font resizing depending on the user’s language for Japanese (and Chinese too which is still in the works).
Custom deck backing for the HTC Evo was scaling the image returning from the crop application. I found a way to prevent that from happening – the solution is rather ugly … but it works.
Version 2.3.1
Bug fixed which was introduced in 2.3 which blacked the screen out after playing for a short while.
Version 2.4
Improvements: –
New language, Simplified Chinese.
Tapjoy Offerwall to earn points that can be spent in hiding the ads.
The labels on the Options screen are now clickable, and do the action to which the relate (if applicable). Even the Scroll label will scroll the Options window down.
Improved the layouts of some screen for Tablets.
Some minor tweaking to the card layout (only if 13 cards are deployed vertically on a pile, K down to A). Also some workarounds for known bugs in the Android OpenGL. From the error feedback screen I hope to have shut down some Null Pointer Exceptions which are showing up in the image selection screens.
Bugs: –
Fixed the bug that was clearing the winning streak count which was reported to me by a considerate player.
Version 2.4.1
Improvements: –
Shadows! This actually doesn’t use the OpenGL shadow architecture as that is so expensive on the resources instead I calculate where the shadow will be for each card and render my shadowy object at that location (with depth perception disabled).
On the Free version all advertising has been removed from all the support screens. Also the user gets informed with a Toast message that their Tapjoy points have come in.
When the deck deals it has a slight pause on the very last frame as it renders in the base locations and such. I’ve fixed it so it finishes the deal before turning those on.
Bugs: –
Fixed the touch location for turning the deck, it was out by 5 pixels.
Based on error reports that the Google Market gathers I check for NullPointerException errors that occur – they are mostly in the image processing so probably raised by less powerful phones that run out of memory or just cannot cope.
Version 2.4.2
Improvements: –
On-screen Undo and Redo buttons.
Minor tweaks to the shadows. The width of the shadow more accurately reflects the angle the card is currently at. Shadows have been disabled in the shuffle stage, but is still there for the deal.
Normalised the speed settings. Slowed up the default speed a notch and made the other speeds
The Undo now animates.
Saving the game’s progress only happens after it changes, it would save regardless. So it accesses the drive less and may save the battery a little.
Bugs: –
Fixed a bug which wasn’t saving the score with the undo history, so if you quit the game and came back and started Undo’ing your moves the score wouldn’t go down.
Version 2.5
Only released for one version of my application. I have 2 which are the exact same application due to a mix up of supporting newer features whist still catering to older devices. So I’ve used one without advertising. As I see it, I was hiding the ads for the user for one minute with 10 TapJoy points, as a normal game will last quite a few minutes the player is now getting a lot more playtime for the same “price”.
The changes implemented are these: –
* All advertising removed.
* They have been replaced by a token system which allows you to play without ads.
* Many security privileges removed as they are no longer needed.
* Accounts security added so PocketChange can identify its users across devices and other supported applications.
* Bigger on-screen undo and redo buttons for tablets.
* Fixed shadow bug where face up cards were not casting a shadow.
Also, a big thanks to Brian Kendig who did my amazing new icon, check out his site at http://www.kendigfxdesignco.com
Thanks Brian 🙂
Version 2.5.1
Improvements: –
Specific bases for suits, allows the cards to be played to set bases by suit.
Slight border around the cards. A suggestion from Brian Kendig which more easily shows where the cards are when they overlap.
Fade in and out transitions of the other screens, like the options screen – which was another suggestion of Brian’s.
Bugs: –
Shadows fixed on cards which are face up.
Version 2.5.2
Improvements: –
A couple of suggestions from Jay Menace: A brightness slider in the color picker. And new dealing animations.
Bugs: –
Removed a few unneeded variable declarations in the Pro version.
I love this app. The only thing I wish it had was to let the user know when there are no more moves.
I have thought of this. I was trying for a realistic approach in that when you play on the table with a real deck it won’t tell you there’s no moves let – but I grant I do moves automatically so the comparison does come unstuck there! It will tell you if you’ve gone through the deck and didn’t do anything.
The primary issue though is even if there is a move it may not progress you towards solving that game (if possible) – so it wouldn’t be completely accurate. Something I’ve been planning is to see if the current game is solvable and if so warn you if you intend to start a new game without finding the solution – and even offering to play the solution for you. If you feel that would help you to enjoy it more please let me know 🙂
I appreciate you answered back…thank you very much
Version 2.6
Improvements: –
A new deck! It’s a much higher resolution and is more pretty!! Due to the higher demand of resources I check if the device cannot handle it and set the game to the lower res deck.
On the com.jawfin.sol3d version the PocketChange exercise was a complete flop. Pretty much everyone hated it and the app lost a lot of it’s rating, plus it made next to nothing anyway (70 cents a day!). So, that’s gone and I’ve restored the traditional advertising model.
Oh and, I made a promotional movie: –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhvOKVe_5rM
Bugs: –
If the game is closed during the shuffle/deal of a new game not all the settings for that new game are correct – this has been fixed.
Edit: –
Further changes were employed but didn’t justify a new version number. I cleaned the new deck up some more to be more presentable. I dispose of unused images to free up the heap space. And the game will play faster once all turns have been turned over and it’s on it’s final run.
Version 2.6.1
Improvements: –
I was trying to cover both a HD deck and a large-print deck – but it was impossible to tackle both with one deck so I’ve split it into two. The user gets a choice of which deck they prefer on the installation of this version.
Minor tweaking of the deck images, moving the numbers and pips around to make it more attractive and readable.
Bugs: –
Better disposal of the unused images when the user changes deck, to free up the memory.
Version 2.6.2
Improvements: –
Smart selection, selects those cards from the pile which are playable. Speed up face up play a bit more and disabled sounds during this. A new sound effect for a card turning over.
Card images are smaller but same quality, using less resources.
Bugs: –
Fixed long undo not resetting the flip count for Vegas 3 card.
Use a plain toast message for the out of memory errors as the graphic overhead of the coloured Toast isn’t loading!
Version 2.6.3
Improvements: –
Color red the current scores. Also resuming any Vegas game will restore the balance as it was from when it was last played.
Shows the notification bar on the support screens.
Bugs: –
Undo remembers the card overlap on the drawing pile up top.
Integrity checker on the cards positions.
Fixed double click handling.
Better handling of deck images in memory, especially after it’s closed and re-run.
Pressing undo twice exactly 1 second apart gets treated like a long press, that has been resolved.
good morning,
this is the best solatare game I have ever played and I thank you for it…My only problem is I just bought an Ipad and I cant find this app…I am hoping adventually I will …
Thanks alot Annette
Hey there Annette, thanks for writing 🙂
I’m sad to say that this app is only available on Android devices. It’s different hardware and compatibility to Apple devices such as iPads and iPhones – which is why you won’t find it there. I am sorry about that.
Version 2.6.4
Improvements: –
New random generator algorithm which will do near perfect random in this circumstance. Any appearance of repeating is just coincidence!
The application closes itself if the phone turns off. It was struggling reloading the higher resolution decks when restoring the game at the same time as the phone.
Minor layout change to the deck backing selection screen as it was no longer evenly spaced on the smaller devices as the notification bar is now shown.
I really enjoy this game
It is the best 3 d solitare game I have ever played
Version 2.6.5
Improvements: –
The user defined background images now render in a much higher resolution.
Minor change to the card flipping so it doesn’t start to flip until the card above has moved away. Also the reverse is true for undoing, the card is down before the moved away card has returned.
The internal routine which checks the deck integrity is more extensive.
Bugs: –
Fixed a bug in undo, specifically undoing taking a card off the top bases to a pile – this was placing at the wrong height which failed the deck integrity check and made the game restore to the state before this was done.
it`s a great solitaire game but The tapjoy offerwall is not
availlable anymore, you an remove this hint from the nagscreen.
Thanks for that. I assume you are using AdFree which has just recently added TapJoy to their block-list. That wasn’t overly bright of them I feel, as TapJoy doesn’t show ads on the screen, it’s only a site you go to earn points – in other words you’ll only see it if you choose to go there. Some applications use the TapJoy points as a form of in-game currency too, which AdFree will also prevent.
As there are other ways of blocking the ads, I left that part of the message in for those players. If this is a feature you would use, perhaps try contacting the developers of AdFree and asking them for an option to allow TapJoy and perhaps other content blockers (like LeadBolt).
Version 2.6.6
In keeping with the hi-res custom image I’ve now included hi-res default background images for the larger screens.
Improved images of the sorted base piles, and improved handling of the sorting bases screen.
Minor bugs fixes, like hiding the Heyzap button if the user turns it off during the winning animation. Also more error handling and capture of out of memory errors when dealing with these larger images.
You have the best solitaire on the market. But I have a suggestion. When a game has been won, could you have the cards fall down, after a double-tap, and explode similar to Windows 7.
Hey thanks Jim 🙂
The Windows version uses sprites whereas I am rendering 3D objects, textures wrapped around a wire-frame. This doesn’t mean it cannot be done, it just means it’s a lot harder! I’ll think on falling and exploding cards as another winning sequence – as I said it’s not natively easy but certainly one worth having a go at!
Version 2.6.7
Improvements: –
Exploding cards on the winning sequence! As asked by Jim this blows up cards each time you press the screen. Unlike the Microsoft version which just does a colour montage, this actually blows the card up into little bits which go spinning away!
Shows the New Game message on long press of the redo button.
More optimising on the image handling utilities.
As requested by a user on an Android forum I halved the wait time on the ad-blocker nag message after the first one.
Extended checking on the auto-finish, will run if the face up pile has more than one card given they are in descending order.
Bugs: –
Fixed a graphics glitch on a full undo.
Version 2.6.8
Improvements: –
Using Quit on the menu will unload Solitaire 3D from memory.
Suppress “New Game” message if clicking on the redeal button if there is no cards on the face-up pile.
Bugs: –
Reset scores now clears the Vegas totals.
Version 2.6.9
Improvements: –
Heyzap now supports a high score table which I’ve incorporated.
I’ve also tweaked some minor settings, like the manner in which the cards are exploded; I slow it down near the end so you can see the individual cards blow up.
This update is only for the free version as the Pro version does not use Heyzap!
Version 2.6.10
If you manually redo undone moves, it now won’t clear the redo history (or future, as it were).
Some Heyzap and Leaderboard bugs fixed.
Again like the previous couple of version as this is Leaderboard and other Internet related items there’s no need to upgrade the Pro version.
Version 2.6.11
There’s better identification of the exploding cards in the winning animation. It will show through other cards and it’s path to the bottom is less convoluted.
Updated supporting SDKs for newer devices, newer version of Heyzap.
Version 2.7
Significant changes throughout the application. The game engine has been redesigned to allow games to be solvable. The estimated difficulty factor can be seen in the About screen. Solutions are available in the free version by spending points earned from the OfferWall, and in the Pro version the solution is available immediately.
The question and prompt dialogs have been changed to look more like the rest of the application.
Lots of little bugs and fine tuning, but the most significant was if playing Vegas 3 card turn and a undo – redo was done over the turn of the deck the turn wasn’t counted towards the maximum of 4.
Note: I don’t want to give the impression that this was a minor piece of work. I spend something like several hundred hours of work developing the AI to solve the game and make it run on an Android device. For comparison these guys got paid a government grant to do what I’ve just given away here! and that’s on a PC!! I had several failed attempts at it first and learnt from my experience – I am proud of the result. If it fails in anyway don’t flame me out >.< just tell me and I'll fix it 🙂
Version 2.7.1
Lots of little improvements: I changed the re-deal count of Vegas 3 card draw to 2 re-deals, as it should of been. I hope I’ve fixed the GL Swap Buffer that plagues pretty much every OpenGL Android application due to buggy drivers from Qualcomm, but I cannot test this.
When the game is playing a solution back it will not turn the screen off.
The HeyZap Leaderboard high scores was reset due to some corruption in the current rankings.
Also was removed was the “you have an ad blocker” message; it seems some people took offence to complete honestly, that or they prefer to think the game doesn’t have a caring developer – ironically removing the message allows this blissful ignorance to carry!
Not related to the application’s development but I changed the images of the store, bringing them up-to-date to highlight the current features.