How to write a Solitaire game (DOS programming)

Earlier this year, I recorded a video series to teach you how to writing FreeDOS programs in the C programming language. As part of that series, I wrote a simple turn-based game; the ancient Egyptian board game, Senet.

At the time, I decided not to write a Solitaire game, because Solitaire has a lot of details that quickly become tricky. But the question remains: how would you write a Solitaire game in C? Let's take a look!

Want to learn more? Watch and follow along with the "C programming" series:

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[davidhart]

This is so dope watching programming on ms-dos. Love your content.

[LMchip]

Coding on DOS is so pleasant.
Thanks again for this teaching material.

[quovadisdorime]

Respect. In 2020 Still following your amazing works on dos

[jeffwise]

It was a long time ago. I was a DOS programmer. I always used the Turbo C IDEs. They were so easy to use. It was just a lot of fun back then. This is a very good card sorting program.

[MichaelRusso]

I like programming in DOS. No libs to update. No OS upgrades. No "no longer supported libs" Just you and the C compiler.

[BradenBest]

the is_black function could be further optimized to a macro IS_BLACK(suit) ( (suit) & 2 )

Or you could drop the struct since there's 52 cards in a deck meaning the whole set can be represented in 6 bits AABBBB where B represents 0-13 and A represents the suit. The whole thing can fit in a single uint8_t (saving 3 bytes over the struct), with an extra 2 bits leftover, perhaps useful for identifying the owner of the card in a game of up to 4 players.

IS_BLACK(card) ( (card) & 0x20 )
VALUE_OF(card) ( (card) & 0xF )
SUIT_OF(card) ( (card >> 4) & 0x3 )
OWNER_OF(card) ( (card >> 6) & 0x3 )

[emem]

Nice to see another C video. Now I know why in some games I have the same RNG seed when I run two instances at the same time. Thanks!

[spearPYN]

DOS is still the best desktop operating system.

[RetroTechChris]

Very cool! Never used the editor you are using, I will have to check that out!

[stupossibleify]

Fantastic! How would you then delete a card once it has been dealt in the game?

[MarioLacko]

Can you write Turbo Pascal/C IDE clone ?