Hi!
I'm Roy
Contact Me
About Me
I work for a prominent company, building all sorts of web applications.
The main programming languages I use on a daily basis are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Sometimes I use PHP and Node.js for backend apps.
I’m a lone nerd who likes card games, especially solitaire, and jazz music. I’m talking about New Orleans jazz, performed by swingers such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie. So, the music I’m listening to stops in the 40s, when musicians started to add dissonant harmonies to their creations.
Anyway, I digress. I used to play solitaire and listen to jazz music at night, to unwind after a tiring day at work. And then I got this (brilliant?) idea: why not create a site that allows me – and you – to play FreeCell Solitaire and listen to jazz music at the same time? And this is exactly how playfreecellonline.net was born.
The website doesn’t include any ads or other nasty things, so go ahead, click the game image and start playing. Alternatively, scroll down to check out my developer log and find out more about this project.
Game Status
See how the game is progressing
Check out the current state of the Play FreeCell Online project.
Devlog
PFO News
My friend Ronnie caught a bug: sometimes the cards can get mixed up even though they are properly arranged in the piles on the right side of the screen. They could be placed in the Ace, 3, 2 order, for example, instead of Ace, 2, 3. The game continues to run fine despite the error, but this bug definitely needs some squishing, so I’ll take care of that.
One more thing: due to massive spam, the contact form has been disabled for now.
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Major announcement - PFO 2.0 in being developed!
PlayFreeCellOnline 2 is announced! The main feature of the second version will be the ability to play FreeCell with two players cooperatively over the same Wi-Fi network. I've never seen this done before, so it's going to be an exciting project. My girlfriend lives half a mile away, and I managed to connect to her Wi-Fi using an Alfa card from data-alliance.net. With this setup, signal strength is around 70%, which should be more than enough for what I need. The next phase will be multiplayer connectivity over the Internet, of course.
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PFO 0.9
Upgraded the rest of the game's graphics as well, to make them blend the site colors. Actually, they are supposed to match THE site color. I like blue a lot in case you haven’t noticed yet :)
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PFO 0.8
Changed the card set to a better-looking one downloaded from depositphotos.com. Additionally, the new set has a much smaller file size, which leads to faster game loading speeds. Actually, if you see some graphics you like on this site, they're probably downloaded from Depositphotos as well. I couldn't create good-looking graphics to save my life!
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PFO 0.71
The game was – obviously – missing a loading screen. PlayFreeCellOnline.net loads in under 2 seconds here, but I thought it might load slower for some of the visitors in remote countries, so there you have it.
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PFO 0.7
Added a game restart function. I noticed that sometimes the computer deals the cards in a way that makes it almost impossible to finish the game quickly and get a decent score. I didn’t want to introduce this option at first, but then I felt pity for others (including myself), so I coded it.
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PFO 0.6
Added a game help system. If you’re here, I assume you know how to play FreeCell. However, I thought that some of my website visitors may not know the exact rules, so I have created a simple, 2-page online game manual.
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PFO 0.5
Added a game score system to encourage players (including myself) to improve their scores. You start with 500 points, and with each move you make you lose one point. I score over 420 points regularly; let me know your top score and I’ll try to beat it. No kidding!
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PFO 0.4
Happy to announce that I have finally added jazz music and sound effects to the project! The game starts muted, though, for those of you who don’t want to disturb others. The game is currently using the licensed "Atlanta After Hours" soundtrack from audiohero.com.
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PFO 0.31
Not an actual game update, just taking a moment to say I'm sorry the game doesn't include music yet. The obvious choice for the JavaScript audio library is howler.js, but for some reason, I can't get it to work properly across all browsers - especially their mobile versions. Not sure if it's a bug in my code, or in the audio library.
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PFO 0.3
New mobile-related feature. The game won't run on mobile devices until you orient the screen properly. You will see a "Please rotate your device" message if you try to play the game while keeping the phone or tablet in portrait mode.
My recommendation is to play the game on a tablet, and not on your smartphone, unless you've got perfect vision; otherwise, it might not be a relaxing experience. If you've got an idea on how to fit a full deck of cards on a regular phone screen while increasing their size/visibility, contact me and let’s talk about it.
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PFO 0.2
Added mobile compatibility mode. According to server logs, it seems that almost 60% of the website visitors use mobile devices, so I needed to do that.
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PFO 0.11
Added the option to play the game in full-screen mode, for those of you who don’t want to be distracted by background notifications from other apps, etc.
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PFO 0.1
The first version of the game is online! I know graphics are ugly, but bear with me as I add more functionality to the project. I promise to upgrade the artwork once I'm done with the bulk of the coding.