The Bakers Game Refresh

It is time to update you with a few of the changes you're going to see in the refresh of Bakers Game:

1. Game state will be saved

If you exit the game the current state will be saved. I hadn't quite figured out the NSKeyedArchive bit on the first go, but it turns out that it's really quite simple. You'll be able to keep playing your game even if interrupted by a phone call. By far, this was the #1 most requested change.

2. Vastly improved UI

It was impossible to tell which card you'd hit in version 1.0. This wasn't a major flaw, but all the other card games highlighted or "glowed" the card that had been hit (or the stack that had been hit). I went a different route; having no initial success on the "glowy" graphic front, I threw in some placeholder animation that simply expanded and contracted the card's graphics. And this looked WAY cooler than any glowy-based graphic, especially when an entire stack is selected! You'll be pleasantly surprised at the end result.

I've also animated the card transitions so you can watch them flow from the tableau to foundation, etc. It's much better than the current "freeze-tag" interface.

3. Now a Universal app - play on the iPad in native resolution

I wasn't thrilled with the way the game looked in the iPhone emulation mode so I've rebuilt the app to support both the iPad and iPhone. It will even support orientation changes for the iPad.

4. More guaranteed winnable boards!

The game will still be free, but there will be 2,500 standard boards available, and 8,000 easy boards - all of which can be won.

5. Did I mention more boards?

For a mere tier 1 price (that's 99 cents for North America) you can expand the number of winnable boards to 5,000 standard and 12,000 easy. Plus, with your purchase, comes ...

6. Cheat mode - never lose again!

Only available with the boards package purchase - draw a big "C" on the screen with your finger and a card will be moved from the tableau to the foundation. Unlike most other Solitaire games, I don't track the cheats. It's a computer game - if it's not fun then people won't play. If you back yourself into a corner it's entirely your choice of retracing your steps or moving a wall, right? It's Solitaire! Who's going to care?

7. That other cheat thing - yeah, that's disabled

The move counts will not stray into negative territory. Sorry. THAT was a bug.

The new application should be heading to the Apple reviewers sometime next week; the code is done but I'm still constructing the winnable boards. I will be using the Amazon EC2 services cloud computing resources to blow through the rest of the searches - for less than $20/hr I can purchase resources equal to my home computer running for a day. I'll definitely be blogging my adventures there!

Keep coding!