Spaces  -  An addictive Patience game

by Mike Ironmonger
updated by Gillian Bobbett

Spaces is a desktop patience card game, first published on the RISC User 6:7 magazine disc. It has been updated for this issue by fixing a small bug and adding a few extra features. Although the rules of play are quite simple the game isn't easy to complete and requires a lot of thought, especially in the later stages of play.

The application can be run from the RISC User menu system, or by double-clicking on its icon in a directory viewer. An icon is installed on the icon bar. Clicking Menu over this icon opens a menu with two options, Info and Quit, which perform their usual functions.

Clicking Select on the icon bar icon opens the main window. This shows four rows of 13 overlapping cards with a space at the left of each row. The aim of the game is to rearrange the cards so that each row consists of one suit in ascending order from the Ace at the left to the King at the right.

The two rules of play are as follows:

1) The space at the left of each row can only be filled by an Ace. To do this simply drag an Ace into each space.

2) A space elsewhere in the layout will have an exposed card to the left of it. You can drag a card into this space only if the new card is the same suit as the exposed card to the left, and is of a higher value.

Clicking the Menu button over the main window opens a menu with six options:
Undo, Same deal, New deal, Load deal, Save deal and High scores.

Undo allows you to undo the last move (or undo a new deal if that was the last operation).

Same deal allows you to restart the game using the same deal as the one which started the current game.

New deal deals a new hand.

Load deal and Save deal allow you to save the current deal to disc (where it is saved inside the !Spaces application directory as Deal), and to load it back later.

High scores opens the high score window.

Clicking the Menu button over the high score window opens a menu with two options. Auto save determines whether the high scores are saved automatically whenever they change. Choosing the option will toggle it on and off. The Save option saves the high scores.

Inside the !Spaces application directory is a Basic program called ZeroHighs. Running this will clear all high scores.

Copyright  RISC User 1993, 1995
