'Spider Arachnid' plug-in for VDR

Deutsch		'Spider Arachnid' plug-in for VDR

'Spider Arachnid' is a plug-in for Klaus Schmidinger's fantastic Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Latest version for VDR >= 1.3.47:

vdr-spider-0.2.2.tgz
vdr-spider-0.2.2.tgz.asc (The signature can be verified with my OpenPGP key 0xEC0E954C.)

Older versions are available in the logbook.

© 2005-2010, Thomas Günther
This is free software and may be used and redistributed under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or any later version.

Description

'Spider Arachnid' is a VDR plug-in implementation of the best patience game. It is known as Sun demo 'Spider' and Windows version 'Arachnid'. So I call it 'Spider Arachnid'. You can play it on the On Screen Display of your Video Disk Recorder.

Although the most games can be won it's quite difficult. But with help of the unlimited history the game turns from pure chance to a tricky riddle.

This implementation of 'Spider Arachnid' is a port from my Java implementation. The VDR-specific parts are inspired by Sascha Volkenandt's Freecell plug-in and the card images are taken from Patrick Maier's Solitaire plug-in.

Installation

After installing the plug-in you have to copy the spider folder from the plug-in's source directory to the plugins folder inside the configuration folder of VDR. If you don't specify a configuration folder, your videodir is used (e.g. /video0/plugins/spider/cursor.xpm).

Rules of the game

The object of the game is to remove all cards from the tableau. It's only allowed to remove complete suits of 13 cards. So the suits have to be assembled inside the piles. The highest rank is the King and the lowest the Ace.

Initially there are some cards in the piles. Only the last card in each pile is open (face-up). You can move one open card to a matching pile where the last card has one rank above (e.g. Ace to Two, Five to Six, Ten to Jack). A sequence of matching cards with same suit can be moved at once. Face-down cards that become exposed are turned face-up.

Empty piles can be filled by any card or sequence. When there are no empty piles you can deal new cards from the pack one card into each pile.

You can suspend a game by pressing the Back key and resume it later (as long as the VDR isn't stopped).

Setup

Parameter	Values	Default	Description
Variation	(see below)	Normal	One of three variations could be chosen.
Mini			Variation with one deck and 7 piles.
Normal			Variation with two decks and 10 piles.
Custom			Variation with user defined deck, pile and deal counts.
Deck count	1-4	2	Number of decks in the custom variation.
Pile count	1-20	10	Number of piles on the tableau in the custom variation.
Deal count	1-10	5	Number of deals from the pack in the custom variation. Each deal places one more card into each pile.
OSD position left	0-720	48	The left offset of the OSD.
OSD position top	0-576	45	The top offset of the OSD.
OSD width	100-720	624	The width of the OSD. This must be a multiple of 4. Otherwise it will be aligned.
OSD height	100-576	486	The height of the OSD.
OSD error compensation	(see below)	Shrink height	Method of compensation if the OSD memory limit is exceeded.
Shrink height			Shrink the height of the OSD.
Shrink width			Shrink the width of the OSD.
Shrink width and height			Shrink the width and the height of the OSD.
Reduce colors			Reduce the number of colors of the OSD to 4 colors. Some colors of the card images will be wrong.
Hide top row	yes/no	yes	Hide the top row of the tableau. It will be shown if you move the cursor to the pack.

With the "Reset" button you can reset all parameters to the default values.

Keys

Global keys:

Key	Description
Green	Take back one move.
Yellow	Redo one move.
Blue	Start a new game.
Menu/Back	Quit the plug-in.

Cursor in pile:

Key	Description
Left/Right	Move the cursor to the left/right pile.
Up	Move the cursor to the pack.
Ok	Select all matching cards in the pile.

Selected pile (yellow cursor if colors not reduced):

Key	Description
Left/Right	Move selected cards to the next matching pile left/right.
Up/Down	Select one more/less card.
Up	Remove a complete suit.

Cursor on pack:

Key	Description
Left/Right/Down	Move the cursor to the current pile.
Ok	Deal one card into each pile.

Logbook

2005-05-12: Version 0.1.0 (OpenPGP signature)

Initial revision.

2005-05-16: Version 0.1.1 (OpenPGP signature)

Fixed compilation with woody.
Improved cover.xpm.
Reduced flickering on VDR >= 1.3.7.

2006-04-25: Version 0.1.2 (OpenPGP signature)

Removed compatibility to VDR < 1.3.47.
Added support for APIVERSION define in Makefile.
Added placeholders for Czech language texts - hoping for real language texts.

2007-02-23: Version 0.1.3 (OpenPGP signature)

Added Spanish language texts (thanks to Bittor Corl).

2007-06-23: Version 0.1.4 (OpenPGP signature)

Fixed compilation with VDR-1.5.4.
Fixed compiler warnings with gcc-4.1.2.
Updated FSF address in the license information.
Improved copyright and license information in the header of all source files.

2007-09-26: Version 0.2.0 (OpenPGP signature)

Renamed *.c files to C++ suffix *.cpp.
Added namespaces.
Added gettext support (VDR >= 1.5.7).
Resume the last game.
Customizable width and height.
OSD error compensation (shrink width/height or reduce colors).
Added setup option to hide the top row.
Set normal variation (two decks and 10 piles) as standard, together with "shrink height" and "hide top row".
Added user-defined variations.
Improved key handling.
Updated German language texts.

2008-03-29: Version 0.2.1 (OpenPGP signature)

Generating translation files without line numbers.
Added Italian language texts (thanks to Diego Pierotto).

2008-11-30: Version 0.2.2 (OpenPGP signature)

Updated Italian language texts (thanks to Diego Pierotto).
Updated Spanish language texts (thanks to Bittor Corl).

The signatures can be verified with my OpenPGP key 0xEC0E954C.

Please drop some beans
into the Coffee Kitty.