Welcome to another edition of the Neon Orbis Devlog. This week I wanted to add some simple card animation to Neon Orbis Solitaire as well as having the ability to toggle the tableau background and if there was time toggle the card back. So, I was able to implement simple card animation by having cards slide across the screen from their current position to their destination. I limited the movement time to 0.5 seconds so that is was snappy, but to snappy. I also added a very simple card flip animation which is simply scaling the width down to zero, changing the sprite of the card image from card back to say 10 of Hearts and then scaling the width back to 100%. Though the animations are very simple, it does add life to the game. I will be looking within the next few weeks to add particle animations to add extra energy and sparkle to the game. For gamers that prefer to not have cards moving around the screen I have added an option to disable them via the Options screen.
Another feature that I have added was the ability to toggle tableau backgrounds. Though there is nothing wrong in always having the standard green tableau background, being able to swap the tableau is a feature that is always nice to have. To go along with this I thought why not try and implement this week the ability to toggle card backs. Implementing the ability to toggle backgrounds and card backs was actually fairly quick and simple. As I didn’t want to just add any royalty free backgrounds to the tableau, I created two designs in Inkscape and created an additional simple blue tableau. So there are four tableau backgrounds to toggle between. As I didn’t have time to make more card back designs, this version only has the standard red and blue card back designs. I will create some more during the week.
Toggling tableau background and card backs are performed by clicking on the two new icon buttons that have beed added to the top right of the game window. Click on them and they will cycle through them. I have updated the savefile to record all your preferences whether you prefer animations on or off as well as your tableau and card back choices.
For a full list of changes, head over the the release notes: Neon Orbis Solitiare v1.6.0 - Release Notes
Neon Orbis Solitaire v1.6.0 is available on Itch.io for Windows and Linux.
Neon Orbis Solitaire - Windows
Until next time, have fun with whatever card game you’re playing!