Black Hole Solitaire Solver
===========================
This is a solver for the Solitaire/Patience card games "Black Hole"
and "All in a Row" - implemented in C as a command line application. For
more information about these games, see:
* http://pysolfc.sourceforge.net/doc/rules/blackhole.html
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_%28solitaire%29
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_in_a_Row_%28Solitaire%29
Installation
------------
To install this program, see the INSTALL file.
Support and Documentation
-------------------------
After installation, you can find documentation for this module with the
--help command
black-hole-solve --help
You can also look for information at:
* http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/black-hole-solitaire-solver/
- The Black Hole Solitaire Solver Homepage
Usage
-----
The format of a Black Hole board is similar to that:
-------------------------------------
Foundations: AS
QD JC TC
QC 8C 2S
KC 6C 3S
3C 8S TS
4C 4S 9H
2C 5D 2H
KD QH 3H
5C 7S AD
4D 9D 7H
JD KS 3D
JS 7C 5H
6H 6S 8D
QS 4H KH
6D AC 7D
2D 8H 5S
9C AH TH
TD 9S JH
-------------------------------------
Namely, the Foundations with the card at the foundation followed by the 17
columns, with up to three cards in each column. The initial boards for PySol
and PySolFC deals can be generated by the make_pysol_freecell_board.py
utility included in the Freecell Solver archive
( http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/ ). Just remember to add the -t flag (and -F
if you want to generate PySolFC deals instead of the original PySol ones).
The solver can be called with such a board layout like this:
$ ./black-hole-solve --game black_hole 2.bh.board
Or:
$ make_pysol_freecell_board.py -F -t 2 black_hole | ./black-hole-solve --game black_hole
Similarly "All in a Row" deals can be dealt using:
$ make_pysol_freecell_board.py -F -t 24 all_in_a_row | ./black-hole-solve --game all_in_a_row -
Copyright and Licence
---------------------
Copyright (C) 2010 Shlomi Fish.
This program is distributed under the MIT (X11) License:
L<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
