Carol's Solitaire Homepage
Carol's Solitaire is a simple card game programmed in Java using AWT and
Swing. I am using the Eclipse IDE to write this software. It is
open-source and released under the GPL license. Hosting and CVS services
are being provided thanks to SourceForge.net.
Latest News
The latest news can be found as the top link on the
News Archive. You
can also check out progress towards version 1.0 on the
Project Roadmap.
First, for all systems, download the CarolRelease-v0.x.x.x.tar.gz file, found
here.
Also, make sure that your system has the latest
version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed. Carol's Solitaire
requires JRE 1.5.0 (also known as just 5.0) to run. The installation method
depends on your platform. Go to
Sun's website for
more information. There is a download link for JRE 5.0 on that page. The java
runtime environment only needs to be installed once, then all versions of
Carol's Solitaire should work.
Note: Mac OS X versions prior to Tiger (10.4) may not be able to install
JRE 5.0. I am looking into this, but I am not a Mac expert.
Linux and Mac OS X
To uncompress the file, open a terminal on your system, navigate to the
directory where you saved the file, and enter this command:
tar -xzvf CarolRelease-v0.x.x.x.tar.gz
Navigate into the CarolSolitaire folder that was created, and type:
./Solitaire.bat
The game should now run. Enjoy!
Windows
Uncompress the file. There are many utilities, but I recommend WinZip. It is
easy to use and supports both .tar and .gz files. When opening the
CarolRelease-v0.x.x.x.tar.gz file with WinZip, you will be confronted with a
dialog saying something about the archive containing only one file, and asking
if you would like to decompress it to a temporary folder and open it. Say yes
to this dialog. Then, without selecting anything, simply press the Extract
button. Choose a directory to save the extracted folder to.
Open the CarolSolitaire folder that was created, and double-click
Solitaire.bat
The game should now run. Enjoy!
First of all, keep in mind that Carol's Solitaire is currently only an alpha
release. This means that major program functionality may be missing.
For example, many elements present in the GUI, such as save/load buttons and
dialogs, are not functional. They are placeholders for future features.
The interface is split into a card-playing area and a menu/toolbar area.
Various controls are provided by the menus, and frequently used controls are
repeated as buttons on the toolbar. To redeal the cards and start a new game,
for example, press the New Deal button.
In the card-playing area, there are two different sets of columns. The top row
of four columns is the solution area, and the lower rows of seven
columns is the play area. To move cards, left-click and drag a card
from one column to another. Stacks of cards may be moved in the play area, but
only single cards may be placed onto the solution area. See the rules below.
The Deal:
Start with a normal deck of 52 cards. To deal the cards, place one card
face-up on the table, followed by six face-down cards side by side. This forms
seven columns, with the face-up card as the first (leftmost) column. Build on
the columns by placing a face-up card on the second column and another face
down card on columns 3-7. Proceed in this manner until you have placed a
single face up-card on the 7th column. Then, began placing the rest on the
cards in the hand face-up on the columns, going from left to right and
starting at the first column again after placing on the 7th column.
The Play
Players progress in the game by making one of two moves. If a move exposes a
face-down card, that card is flipped over immediately after the move.
- Move any face-up card in the play area to any legal play area position. If
a face-up card with a stack of overlapping cards is chosen, the entire stack
must move with the chosen card. The composition of this stack does not matter.
Legal positions are the following:
- An empty position created when one of the original seven columns is moved away entirely.
- Another face-up card that is of opposite color to the card being
moved, and which is one rank higher. Rank is in order from King being
highest and Ace being lowest. Exception: If you are moving a King,
it may be placed upon an Ace.
- Move a single face-up card (one with no stack) in the play area to a legal
solution area position. The solution area is four columns above the play area,
one for each suit. Each column starts empty and must be begun by an ace of the
appropriate suit. Face-up cards may be legally placed onto the column with the
same suit only if the topmost card of the column has a rank one lower than the
card being moved.
The Objective
The objective of the game is to place all of the cards into four face-up
piles in the solution area.
This is the most recent screenshot. To see all available screenshots, go
here.
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