SeaTower Help

Goal
Rules
How to play
User controls
Order of cards
Remarks
System requirements
Download

Goal

SeaTower is a patience type of card game. Initially the deck is distributed randomly on the ten piles and the four slots in the heap.
cards

The goal is to move all cards to the dump (sometimes also called the foundation).
cards

Rules

Any card from a top of a pile can go on the heap as long as their is space (initially there are two empty slots).

A card originating from the top of the piles or the heap can go onto the dump if it is an ace or the immediate successor card of a card already in the dump. Successor is defined according to the common order. Note that you do not need to put cards on the dump yourself since the program is doing this for you whenever possible.
The top card of a pile or a card from the heap can be added to another pile if it is the immedidate predecessor of the destination's top card. Predecessor is defined according to the common order. For example you can move the queen of hearts only on the king of hearts but not on any other card.

If the top card of a pile is a king, it can go on any empty pile.

How to play

You can perform most moves by just clicking on a card.

If the card can be moved at all, clicking on a card in the heap will move the card to the unique position outside the heap.
If the card can be moved at all, clicking on a top card of a pile will move the card to the unique position if there is only one choice or to another pile.
To move a top card into the heap you can drag it there (actually dragging always works).
You can also click on cards or drag them when they are inside a pile. This will move the whole sub-pile if there is sufficient space on the heap.
Clicking inside the heap with a modifier key (ctrl, alt, shift or meta) pressed moves as many cards as possible from the heap to the piles.
Clicking inside the piles with a modifier key (ctrl, alt, shift or meta) pressed moves as many cards as possible onto safe piles. A pile is considered as safe if it contains only one color and the cards are in descending order.

User controls

New	Create a new game which is solvable.
Solve	Try to find a solution for the current game.
Hint	Show a hint for the next card to be moved.
Warn	If this is checked, a warning is generated whenever a game is created which is not solvable.
<<	Go back to the first state.
>>	Go forward to the last state.
<	Go back to the previous state.
>	Go forward to the next state.

Order of cards

The cards are ordered as follows (shown for Diamonds but same principle applies for the other colors as well). This means that the ace has the lowest value and the king has the highest value.
order

Remarks

Note that the program guarantees that a newly created game is solvable and the dump is empty.
The program searches for a solution by depth first backtrack search. The possible moves in each state are ordered according to the following preferences in the order given: dump as many cards as possible, try to build descending piles and have as few cards in the heap as possible.

System requirements

The applet runs on any browser which supports Java 1.1. No additional libraries are required.

Download

In case you prefer to play the game off-line you can download a standalone version for Macintosh (StuffIt archive, 68 kB, double-click SeaTower after unstuffing, trash the folder ".1" which maybe created by an overeager expander) or PC (ZIP archive, 132 kB, double-click SeaTower.bat after unzipping or open SeaTower.html with your browser which also works on the Macintosh). Requirement is in all cases the respective Java run-time environment resp. a Java enabled browser. Any kind of feedback may be directed to the author.

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