[Kde-games-devel] Fwd: [kde-doc-english] Grandfather - text: Bug? No bug?

[Parker Coates]

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Yuri Chornoivan wrote:
> Can somebody shed a little light on the following problem?
>
> ------- Переспрямоване повідомлення -------
> Від: "Andreas Rennert" <andreas at rennert.org>
> Кому: kde-doc-english at kde.org
> Копія:
> Тема: [kde-doc-english] Grandfather - text: Bug? No bug?
> Дата: Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:22:44 +0300
>
> Hello people,
>
> this is the first time I contact and therefore become a member of an open
> organisation. I hope I don't sound too naive.
>
> It is all about the KPATIENCE - KDE - Grandfather game. The help-text says
> in paragraph 6:
>
> 'All cards already in the foundations stay there, but the cards in the
> playing piles are reordered to give you a new chance to find a solution.'
>
> But you also have to tell the player in what way exactly the remaining cards
> are reordered, because they are definitely not shuffled (and shuffling is
> also not intended, or else the solver predictions could only be exact after
> the last row has been dealt).
>
> So you put the player in a position where he has less chances than the
> 'machine', and that is very unfair!
>
> If all this seems like drivel to you, then just find somebody who knows and
> likes this game, and he or she will know exactly what I'm talking about.
>
> Conclusion: The help-text is not sufficient to give the player a chance to
> be as clever as the solver, which actually IS possible. I'd love to correct
> the text by adding a sentence or two, but I can't do that because FIRST
> somebody of you LINUX-programmers has to look into the program and check how
> exactly the reordering happens, namely:
>
> a) systematically, turning the open cards onto the pile, putting one pile
> upon the other from left to right, or
> b) following some other order principle.
>
> I certainly do not think I would be able to file a bug report on this
> matter, it sounds very complicated to me. So I hope that this communication
> will find a reader who knows how to start the presumably enormous process of
> verifying my assumptions, deciding what to do about it and so on.

I don't know offhand how the redeals in Grandfather work, but I know
that they're rather complicated and I don't have the time right at the
moment to go through the algorithm to figure it out and write it up.
Please do open a bug report against KPat, simply stating that the game
help doesn't describe how redeals are done. Perhaps the deal animation
could also be adjust to give a hint to what is going on.

In case you (or anyone else) would like to try decipher the algorithm
yourself, you can find the relevant code here:
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/KDE/kdegames/kpat/grandf.cpp?view=markup#l94

Parker