Game: Hex of hearts

[germanico5]

Greetings. I've been thinking about the rules for a new solitaire game, and I hope you like it. If so, I’d love for it to be included in the game. Here are the rules for you to review.
Hex of Hearts
Hex a Deck Game Type
1 deck. No redeal.
Objective
Move all cards to the foundations.
Quick Description
Like Calculation, but with a hexadecimal deck, and a suit-restricted first foundation.
Rules
Cards are dealt into four columns of fifteen cards, and the remaining four cards are dealt to the foundations.
The four foundations build as follows:
• First foundation: Hearts only. Builds up or down by 1.
• Second foundation: Non-hearts. Builds up or down by 2.
• Third foundation: Non-hearts. Builds up or down by 3.
• Fourth foundation: Non-hearts. Builds up or down by 4.
Building on the tableau is not allowed.
Cards in the tableau may be moved to an appropriate foundation at any time.
The game is won when all cards have been moved to the foundations.

[joeraz]

So the challenge with making Calculation type games for non-French decks is that Calculation works because the deck has 13 ranks. For a deck with 13 ranks, if building up by 2, 3, or 4, one card of each rank would be played to the pile before any ranks repeat. But with a Hex A Deck's 16 ranks, this would not be the case.

In order for a Calculation type game to work, the number of ranks would need to be coprime to 12 (which is the least common multiple of 2, 3, and 4). With 16 ranks, the 2 foundation will only ever be able to contain even numbered cards (or odd if the starting card is odd). The 4 foundation would only be able to contain 4 different ranks (multiples of 4 or a similar sequence by 4 depending on the starting card). The 3 foundation could contain everything, but cards played to the 2 or 4 foundation, potentially including the base cards, would likely leave gaps that could block the 3 foundation.

If you like, I could try and put together a plugin with the game as you describe, and we can play around with it to see how much of an issue this is. Or we could make some modifications to make it work - for example, if the wizards are added to the game with a value of 17, the game might work better as 17 is coprime to 12.

[germanico5]

I have no problem modifying it. Adding a wizard or something sounds good. I wanted it to be "Hex of" for originality and difficulty, but if necessary, we can change it.

[joeraz]

Now that I'm finally back in the position to add new games, I went ahead and added a variant of this to the latest code. With the wizards added as a seventeenth rank, the numbers add up to make the game winnable. I also had to make the dealing more like standard Calculation, as if you dealt all the cards upfront, about 75% of games would be dead deals.

You can try it out in the latest master branch.