Welcome to another edition of the Neon Orbis Devlog. This week I focused on updating Solitaire. I was able to completely overhaul the core code base as well as add a few extra features and fix some major bugs. Why did I overhaul the core code base? Well, it needed it. Solitaire was my second card game that I created using the Defold game engine and since then, I have learnt a lot. The code was generally fine, but the more time you spend with a game engine, the more your understand how to best structure your code for the engine as well play to its strengths.
Along with the refactoring, I was able to fix some major issues that for some reason prevented at times either being able to select and drag cards, as well as move cards. When dragging and releasing the cards, they would snapping back to original position and no matter how many times you tried to move them, they wanted to stay put. But when you tried move another card, there would be no issues. As part of the fix I decided to change the card move mechanic from dragging to clicking as it seemed to work better and also I prefer it. So originally players would click, hold and drag the card around, but now they select the card that they would like to move and then select the card they would like to move to.
I have also updated the Main menu, added an options screen and a rules page. The options screen allows toggling between Fullscreen and Windowed, turning music and sound on or off, as well as toggling between 1 or 3 card draw. Yes, 3 card draw is now supported. Scoring has also been updated. It now follows the Microsoft Solitaire scoring rules. I have also added a few tweaks to sound effects, fonts, and UI.
For a full list of changes, head over the the release notes: Neon Orbis Solitiare v1.5.0 - Release Notes
New update is available on Itch.io for Windows and Linux. I will try and find some time and work on a release for Mac as well, and possibly an HTML5 version.
Neon Orbis Solitaire - Windows
Until next time, have fun with whatever card game you’re playing!