Spider Solitaire

The killer app in Microsoft Plus! 98 if you didn't like golf, marbles, image editors, CD players or McAfee.

Debug Menu


Like Solitaire and FreeCell, the game was rewritten for the release of Vista so it also has an internal g_debugEnabled variable. As well as the block & pause modes and logging as described on the Solitaire page, setting it to a non-zero value enables this debug menu.

Amongst the obvious options:
 * Show Idle Tip - Shows a hint if you leave the cursor stationary on a card for a short period
 * Delete Settings - Deletes the SpiderSolitaireSettings.xml file from "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft Games\Spider Solitaire"
 * Toggle Debug Keys - Enables the semi-colon key which lets the game play the next move without dealing another row of cards, and the apostraphe key which does the same allowing dealing of cards
 * Toggle Hint Rankings Display, Toggle Allow Any Move and Toggle Dialogs - These options have had their code removed. Execution falls through to the Game menu's Change Appearance option and sets the cards to the Large Print deck.

Solver Debugging
Running the executable with the -solverdebug argument adds a third part to the status bar of the following format Solver: SC=?,MD=?,MT=?,PM=?(A=?)(Sx[y]->Sz[w]...) PM is the number of possible moves, and the Sx[y]->Sz[w] portion are the possible moves (card y on stack x can be placed on card w on stack z). The other values are currently unknown.