Creator Of Solitaire For Windows Interviewed

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Creator Of Solitaire For Windows Interviewed

Posted by simoniker on Thursday January 29, 2004 @12:14AM from the seminal-gaming-auteur dept.

Thanks to B3ta for its interview with Wes Cherry, creator of Solitaire for Windows, as installed on "hundreds of millions of machines worldwide." Cherry discusses an 'Easter egg' left out of the final version ("There was a 'boss-key' which when pressed would display some random .C code. Microsoft made me remove that"), the all-important card back designs ("My fave is the dealer with the Ace crawling up and down his sleeve, which is a reference to a Grateful Dead song, 'Doin' that Rag'"), and bizarre benchmarking concepts using Solitaire ("At one point, a computer magazine proposed a SolMark computer speed test: The faster the cascade, the faster your computer.")

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SolMark by ThetaPi · 2004-01-29 00:30 · Score: 5, Funny

I wonder what my old 486 would make on that test. I think I could have played a game of 52 card pickup (perhaps several) before the cascade finished.

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"When God kisses Satan and the Incarnations applaud." "Death is dead. Long live Death!"
1. Re:SolMark by ThetaPi · 2004-01-29 01:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Perhaps, but my 486 was a bit less powerful than yours. It was 25mhz strong and had 2MB of ram.
  
  My favorite game at the time (XCOM: UFO Defense) ran decently though. I still wonder if it is possible for soldier to be 130% accurate with a rocket launcher.
  
  --
  "When God kisses Satan and the Incarnations applaud." "Death is dead. Long live Death!"
Solitaire, the real killer-app by Zangief · 2004-01-29 00:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

I guess that Solitaire for Windows is the only game that outsells Nintendo' Super Mario Bros. 3!

It is so unfair! SMB3 is a MUCH better game!
1. Re:Solitaire, the real killer-app by PainKilleR-CE · 2004-01-29 02:25 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, SMB3 is only the best-selling game never bundled with hardware, so, technically, Solitaire doesn't count unless you also count SMB1, which sold over twice as many copies (40 million) as SMB3 (18 million), and Tetris for GameBoy, which sold just under twice as many copies (33 million) as SMB3. Still, Nintendo has the top 6 and 5 of them are Super Mario titles, and #8 is SMB2 (The Sims snuck in there at #7).
  
  --
  -PainKilleR-[CE]
2. Re:Solitaire, the real killer-app by PainKilleR-CE · 2004-01-29 04:26 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The numbers come from http://www.ownt.com/qtakes/2003/gamestats/gamestat s.shtm
  
  which may or may not be reliable, as they claim they're from gamestate, but I can't confirm that. Finding sources for game sales, especially to compare over these time periods, tends to be fairly hard. It's also quite possible that those sales are only North America. Overall, though, SMB3 only comes out as the top seller if you don't count games that were bundled, and a quick search brought up another site that references this:
  http://www.madison.com/captimes/business/st ories/6 0159.php
  which also confirms the numbers being fairly accurate, especially mentioning SMB1 and Tetris.
  
  --
  -PainKilleR-[CE]
come on guys! by BigBadDude · 2004-01-29 00:41 · Score: 5, Funny

this is one of the most useful windows applications, not to mention one of the most stable ones!

the guy deserves more attention than this!

cheers for Wes!
you can't win twice in a row by Dreadlord · 2004-01-29 00:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

and this interview puts an end to the legend that says you can't win twice in a row when playing Solitaire, those who say so just suck in the game.

--
The IT section color scheme sucks.
The boss key would have been redundant by AtariAmarok · 2004-01-29 01:16 · Score: 4, Funny

("There was a 'boss-key' which when pressed would display some random .C code. Microsoft made me remove that")

In Windows, due to the presence of frequent and random occurances of blue screens with crpytic messages, having a boss key is redundant.

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Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
1. Re:The boss key would have been redundant by August_zero · 2004-01-29 03:34 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I don't know....
  
  Consider how old windows solitaire is, and then consider how computer literate the average boss was back when this game was coded. I was still in high school back them, but to my parents and many other adults computers were these magical mysterious things only barely understood at the best of times. If I told them that I had just hacked into the Russian military mainframe they would have believed me. Telling your boss that you were tweaking some windows settings or even better fixing all those crash bugs the company had been facing would likely get you a promotion, or something.
  
  --
  On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Easter egg by PatrickThomson · 2004-01-29 01:41 · Score: 2, Funny

The article has the question "Is it true that there is an 'Easter egg' embedded in Solitaire that pops up a picture of Bill Gates caught in flagrante delicto with a marine mammal?" answered yes.
What I want to know is, what is this easter egg? It's for... uuh... personal reasons.

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I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
1. Re:Easter egg by erasmus_ · 2004-01-29 05:03 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Given his tone during the rest of the interview, and the fact that such an Easter egg would have been found and removed a long time ago, after the employee that made it was fired, I am relatively sure he was joking. Just to be sure, a quick Google search turned up nothing.
  
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Hours spent working by JustJon · 2004-01-29 01:59 · Score: 4, Funny

Just imagine how many thousands of hours the workforce might have had to spend actually working if it wasn't for Wes
Stable? by RealityMogul · 2004-01-29 02:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Got a copy of Windows 2000 (maybe other versions do this too)?

Run Solitaire and click both mouse buttons simultaneously on a card for a few seconds as fast as you can.
Best Solitare Score? by Ianoo · 2004-01-29 02:18 · Score: 2, Informative

What sort of scores do people get on Solitaire when running in timed game mode with standard scoring? About five years ago (during one of my Linux holidays before I saw sense again and switched back to Redhat!) I was running Windows 98 and used to play Sol a lot, and got pretty fast. However I have no idea how fast I was compared to other people, because I couldn't find people posting their scores anywhere on the Internet at the time...

My best score ever was just over 11000, and I could generally get between 6000 and 10000 if I really concentrated.
1. Re:Best Solitare Score? by GigsVT · 2004-01-29 02:24 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Last I checked a few years ago, there were online solitaire and freecell tournaments.
  
  Maybe you could look one of those up.
  
  The reason I looked is because my mom beat all 32000 or whatever the number was, of the freecell games in the Win 3.1 version of freecell. Except for one. One of the freecell deals is mathematically impossible to beat.
  
  --
  I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
2. Re:Best Solitare Score? by GTRacer · 2004-01-29 02:59 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  If you're interested, here's a good FreeCell FAQ.
  The unwinnable game you're looking for is 11982, I believe.
  GTRacer
  - Free FreeCell now, stupid Admin policies!
  
  --
  Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
SolMark as a benchmark by KE1LR · 2004-01-29 02:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

"At one point, a computer magazine proposed a SolMark computer speed test: The faster the cascade, the faster your computer."
I remember when Microsoft was doing the run-up to release of NT4 (the upgrade from 3.51) way back in, umm, 1995 or 1996. One of their arguments for moving video drivers into the kernel space was that it gave much better performance (which is true).
To demonstrate this, a MS rep at a conference I was attending showed how to trigger the card cascade on demand in Solitaire and showed it on an NT 3.51 machine and a similar-hardware NT4 machine - the NT4 machine spewed cards a LOT faster.
Unfortunately I don't remember the key combo that triggered the card spew.
1. Re:SolMark as a benchmark by beta21 · 2004-01-29 10:32 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  On an NT machine it is alt-shift-2
to be a solitaire winner! by silicon1 · 2004-01-29 03:40 · Score: 2, Informative

on a winnt based machine, press: alt + shift + 2 to be a winnar!!!!111

--
Natural-Selection Be
Another SolMark reply by Randolpho · 2004-01-29 03:40 · Score: 3, Informative

Only this one is relevant. SolMark *did* work as a benchmark! Well... once. Back in the day when I was selling computers at Computer City, running solitaire and showing how fast the cards were dealt was the best way to get folks to buy that newfangled Pentium 66 that was all the rage. We had a 486/66 installed right next to the Pentium 66. There was a huge difference, and it often got me the sale. Nowadays there's very little visible difference. But once.... it was the best computer benchmark on the market. :)

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as installed on "hundreds of millions of machines by terbo · 2004-01-29 09:38 · Score: 2, Funny

But when will they interview the author of SubSeven?

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If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
Deal Again? by Gregory+S+Patterson · 2004-01-29 11:45 · Score: 2, Funny

Know how after you win, it asks if you want to deal again? I always wondered why it doesn't just close if you click no. Surely, if you did not want to deal again, you must be done playing, so why not save you the extra click and close the damn thing?

Bad interface design, tsk tsk.