Spider Solitaire (Windows, 2007)

The killer app in Microsoft Plus! 98 if you didn't like golf, marbles, image editors, CD players or McAfee. This page documents the 2007 version of Spider Solitaire included with Windows Vista and 7.

To do: Win8 DP1 (6.2.8102.0 (winmain_win8m3.110823-1455)) saw the removal of the built-in Windows games from the edition manifest for Prerelease(ARM); this change would be later expanded through the removal of most Win7 client editions (excluding Starter(N), Professional(N) and Enterprise(N)) from the source tree during early 830x, orphaning the games entirely. The only catch to this, however, is that the Win7 games were still compiled from until as late as Win10 v1703, which is when MS decided to ditch the rest of the older editions entirely. The binaries were included in the provided repair content sources for the following builds: 8250 (Win8 Consumer Preview), 8400 (Win8 Release Preview), 9200 (Win8 RTM), 9431 (Win8.1 BlueMP), 9600 (Blue RTM), 10586 (Win10 v1511) and 14393 x86 (Win10 v1607). As the enablement flags for the games are still present in every SKU's product policies, it'd be a good idea if someone were to re-enable them through ProductPolicyEditor and look through any noticeable code changes from within their binaries.

Debug Menu#

Like 2007 versions of Solitaire, FreeCell, and Minesweeper, this game has an internal g_debugEnabled variable. As well as the block & pause modes and logging as described on the Solitaire page, setting it to a non-zero value enables this debug menu.

Amongst the obvious options:

• Show Idle Tip - Shows a hint if you leave the cursor stationary on a card for a short period.
• Delete Settings - Deletes the SpiderSolitaireSettings.xml file from "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft Games\Spider Solitaire".
• Toggle Debug Keys - Enables the semi-colon key which lets the game play the next move without dealing another row of cards, and the apostrophe key which does the same allowing dealing of cards.
• Toggle Hint Rankings Display, Toggle Allow Any Move and Toggle Dialogs - These options have had their code removed. Execution falls through to the Game menu's Change Appearance option and sets the cards to the Large Print deck.

Solver Debugging#

Running the executable with the -solverdebug argument adds a third part to the status bar of the following format:

Solver: SC=?,MD=?,MT=?,PM=?(A=?)(Sx[y]->Sz[w]...)

PM is the number of possible moves, and the Sx[y]->Sz[w] portion are the possible moves (card y on stack x can be placed on card w on stack z). The other values are currently unknown.

This is also present in Solitaire.

XInput Support#

In the Vista/7 version, an interesting feature that isn't documented anywhere (Help Menu-wise) is XInput (gamepad) support – if the game detects an Xbox 360 controller plugged into a USB port, the P1 corner on the controller will light up, signifying the controller can be used. Possibly undocumented because Microsoft thought people were too used to the traditional controls, and a gamepad wouldn't work for a card game. It's a neat little feature, nonetheless.

Controls#