Adding games from Politaire

[Arcorann]

Politaire is a website with a wide variety of solitaire games, as well as a system that allows one to build one's own games (upon which the provided games are built). Putting aside the builder, I note that there are quite a number of games we could add from there:

• Several original games, such as Mondo Spider (a Spider variant played with two eight-suit decks), and Sarlacc (a FreeCell-like game with an interlocking tableau);
• Games not necessarily original that nevertheless aren't yet in PySolFC, such as Cromwell (a two-deck game with a draw) and Stewart (a Martha variant where only single cards can be moved).

Thoughts?

[joeraz]

I am familiar with Politaire, and have already added several games from their collection. Cromwell was actually added in the 2.20 release. The main reason Politaire isn't in the compatibility lists is because those don't include web-based apps (I wouldn't object if someone was to add it, though).

Regarding original games, depending on where I found them, I tend to be reluctant to add those unless I can find other sources for the game rules, in case the inventor isn't okay with it. Also, any sort of game that uses more than four suits would require a new type of cardset with images for all the extra suits - someone was working on making a sixteen-suited cardset, but I haven't heard any updates on that lately.

[Anomalocaridid]

Upon a bit of investigation, I found some information that may be helpful.

Regarding original games, depending on where I found them, I tend to be reluctant to add those unless I can find other sources for the game rules, in case the inventor isn't okay with it.

Near the top of the Politaire webpage is a link to the personal website of Jan Wolter, which displays front and center a link to a web form for contacting his life partner. Someone could probably use that to ask for permission for adapting the original solitaire games Wolter created.

Also I should probably mention that it is not possible to contact Wolter himself because unfortunately his personal site also displays an announcement that he passed away in 2015 in the same place, hence it directing people to his life partner rather than him.

Also, any sort of game that uses more than four suits would require a new type of cardset with images for all the extra suits

On Politaire's "Malarkey" page, it mentions that the cardset that most of Politaire's games use was derived from a PySol cardset. As far as I can tell, it appears that this is the same one used by the six and eight suit games, Jumbo Klondike and Mondo Spider.

In fact, I used inspect element to see if I could browse the directory for the cardset Politaire uses, and sure enough, it has a COPYRIGHT file that says it is a PySol cardset and licensed under the GPL 2 or later. Although it does not appear to be updated to reflect Wolter's additions.

(Note that in order for Mondo Spider to use alternate colors for diamonds and clubs as well as traditional colors for other games, the cardset includes both color variations. It appears to have 10 suits in total and a set of suitless cards.)

As far as I can tell, it might be possible to just straight up download and use Politaire's cardset without breaking any rules. Of course asking for permission about this as well may be worthwhile if that is still a concern.

[joeraz]

Thanks for the information. I confirmed the cards Politaire is using are based on PySolFC's "Gnome Bonded" cardset.

Due to the GPL's viral nature, if anything released under it is modified, it would need to be released under either the GPL V2, a later version of the GPL, or a compatible license. To do otherwise would be a GPL violation. However, there are two reasons I'm a little hesitant to just assume this and just use the Politaire cards as-is:

1. The GPL is designed for code, not images. I never found a really good explanation on how the GPL works on image files.
2. We don't know how the extended suit files were created. Just as easily as being modified versions of the existing cardsets, they could have just been recreated from scratch.

I'm usually one to err on the side of caution with things like this. But if other developers think I'm overthinking it, I'll go along with them.

Even if we can use Politaire's cardset, we'll still need to create foundation images for all the new suits as well. I'd also like to get a version of the extended suits for my Neo cardset as well (https://github.com/joeraz/neo-cards), just to give everything a consistent look and feel for users using a higher resolution display.

I am currently designing version 7 of the PySol cardset format, so if we want to add new types of cardsets, or variations on existing ones, now is probably the best time to do it.

[joeraz]

Got an update.

I was able to get in touch with Valerie, who gave me permission to add the Politaire original games. I can start working on Sarlacc soon (there's another game I'm reviewing that also uses an interlocking tableau).

I also got permission to use the extra card images. So we can add the Politaire cardset, but there are still a few things that we'll need to sort out if we want to add the extended suit games:

• Would someone be able to create a higher resolution version of the extra suit images - ideally as part of my Neo Cards library (https://github.com/joeraz/neo-cards)? I want to make sure all of the default cardsets have a consistent look and feel, and higher res cardsets can better adapt to different monitor sizes.
• We'll also need bottom images for each suit, both the cardset specific bottoms, and the general bottoms. Plus, the finder images for the find card feature.
• The two games that use the extended suits are Mondo Spider and Jumbo Klondike. Jumbo Klondike uses six suits, two colors, and colors do matter. Mondo Spider uses eight suits, four colors, and colors do not matter. This sounds like two new cardset types (we could also use a subtype if we're able to design the cardset carefully). Any thoughts?
• Aside from Mondo Spider and Jumbo Klondike, what other games could we add that make use of the extra suits or these new cardset types?
• Lastly, I am planning a 3.0 release (not right away, but definitely in a matter of months, not years). The cardsets package will need to be updated for the 3.0 release. As the cardsets package is separate, I try to limit the number of times we do a release where the cardsets package needs to be updated, so getting the new cardset type(s) added for the 3.0 release would be the ideal situation.

I can try to do the images myself, but I'd say that my graphics skills are passable at best.

Does anyone have any feedback or thoughts on this?

[joeraz]

Okay, a version of Stewart and Sarlacc are both in the code, and will be in the 3.0 release. Like I said before, Cromwell was already there and added in 2.20. I'll continue to add the remaining games from Politaire sporadically.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be able to do anything with Mondo Spider or Jumbo Klondike at this time, as I don't really have the resources to make the six or eight suit decks a thing at this point. They may have to wait until version 4.0.