Hi Mr. Campbell!
On Friday 02 September 2005 19:57, Gary Campbell wrote:
> I've just put up on the web the first release of my full blown FreeCell
> Solver. I wish you would take a look at it, and if you think it deserves
> it, put a link to it into any web page you have control over that you think
> should refer to it.
I'll link to it from my other solvers' list:
http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/freecell-solver/links.html#other_solvers
It has a prominent link on the front-page of Freecell Solver's (with a capital
"S") site, and also appears in the navigation menu there.
Looking at it, I see it is a .COM program, which from what I recall is a DOS
program that is actually the raw image of an x86 memory sector. Since it's
only 12331 bytes long, I guess it is written in Assembler. That's quite an
accomplishment.
Note that at the moment, I am Linux-based which means I'll have to run it
under dosbox, dosemu or whatever. This will involve a large performance
penalty.
A couple of times, I contemplated hand-optimizing some time-consuming routines
in FCS by implementing them in Assembler, and giving the build system a
choice to use it instead on an i386 system. But then I thought that it would
be "cheating". I still must make sure Freecell Solver is available as a pure
C program, because I cannot guarantee it would run on an i386 VM. One
anecdote about it is that it is distributed as part of the KDE desktop
environment's kdegames package, which aims to be built on any UNIX flavour
and architecture. (I actually received a few bug reports about
incompatabilities with such systems.)
I suppose you have used atomic moves? (I.e: moves that move one card at a
time.) How did you implement the state collection? How are your states
represented?
Being a DOS program - does your solver has a limit of 640 KB memory?
Looking forward to your answers.
> The direct link to it is: http://numin8r.us/programs
> Click on "FreeCell Solver" to download a copy.
An advice for you is to have the link say "Download the Executable" or
something along these lines. Possibly including the filename. In any case,
your link says "Freecell Solver" with a capital "S". I don't see a reason for
the "S" to be capitalized. "Freecell" is a name, but "solver" is not.
Generally, "Freecell Solver" with a capital "S", refers to my solver, and not
to any other Freecell solver. It's a bit confusing, but I'm to blame for my
lack of imagination in better naming my solver. (and for not entirely being
aware of the rest of the Freecell and Freecell solvers culture that existed
before its writing).
But thanks for linking to the FreeCell-Pro page which mentions the other
solvers among else.
> You can click on the "little man" to access the rest of my website.
> -Gary Campbell
BTW, your name ringed a bell, but a Google search revealed that there is a
famous Country singer who shares your name. (and also other people called
"Gary Campbell").
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish shlomif_at_iglu.org.il
Homepage:
http://www.shlomifish.org/
Tcl is LISP on drugs. Using strings instead of S-expressions for closures
is Evil with one of those gigantic E's you can find at the beginning of
paragraphs.
Received on Fri Sep 02 2005 - 10:36:08 IDT