FreeCell Pro legacy page
Unfortunately downloads and support are no longer being offered for FCPro.
Copyright ©2019 by Michael Keller. All rights
reserved.
This page was revised on October 28, 2019.
Reports from users indicate that FCPro 6.5 works on Windows
systems through Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
FreeCell Pro 6.4 contained bug fixes which should eliminate many
of the memory problems of
earlier versions, and in particular prevent most cases of system
crashes on Windows NT and
2000 systems (special thanks to Hal Antonson and Jim Strasma for
helping Adrian diagnose
the problems). As always, FreeCell Pro should be regarded as
somewhat experimental,
and some bugs will still be present. The program is
now open source,
allowing anyone to obtain and modify the source code.
FreeCell
Pro 6.5 was the final experimental Solver Evaluation version developed
by Adrian Ettlinger, with two more solvers (by Shlomi Fish and Tom
Holroyd added). There is no documentation available for
this version, and we are not supporting it. Use at your own
discretion. F8 triggers the Fish solver and F9 the Holroyd
solver.
Note: fcpro.zip is a standard ZIP archive, and can be opened
using any unzipping program.
After unzipping, be sure to leave all three files: fcpro6.exe,
fcpro.hlp, and cards.dll in
the same folder. Do not move cards.dll to your
Windows\System folder.
Some users on Windows NT/2000 systems have reported that when the
program is run for
the first time, the cards appear as narrow rectangles in the left side
of the program
window. If this occurs, use Window/Card Size to set the card size
to 71 by 96.
Note: The code for dealing the same numbers as Microsoft FreeCell is here.
Freecell Pro plays similarly to Microsoft FC and has the same game
numbers. It does not
run under Windows 3.1. It has many options for
compatibility with Microsoft
FreeCell, including keyboard support for 0 and 9, optional double-click
to send cards to
the freecells, and won-lost statistics. FCPro also has many extra
features:
1) It records your solution in standard notation.
Note: After completing a
solution you want to
save, use the Copy command (control-C) to copy the solution to the
Clipboard, where you
can then paste it into a text file or e-mail message. Do not rely on
the xxxxxlog.txt
file. We hope that the bugs which sometimes cause the log
file to be garbled
have been eliminated, but cannot be sure of this.
2) It has deals 0 to 8+ billion; 1 to 32000 are the same as
the standard Microsoft games (and the first million are the same as
Windows XP). Deals
may be selected from the ranges of 1 to 32000, one million, or
8-billion-plus, at the
user's choice.
3) The number of freecells available can be set from zero(!) through seven.
4) It has a solver (written by Don Woods) built in.
5) It has undo back to the starting move, and redo up to the most
recent move. Undo
may be limited to one move or disabled entirely if the user prefers.
6) It saves your position in any deal to be returned to at any time.
7) It has a card finder which highlights all cards of the same rank.
8) It has supermove, which takes
maximal advantage of
empty columns when moving long sequences.
9) It has play aids (arrows and lines to show you quickly where columns
can be moved and
how much of them can be moved).
10) It has a Next Game command (F5) allowing you to play deals in
sequence without typing
the number of each deal.
11) It keeps track of how many attempts are made on each deal.
12) It has a Custom Game command allowing you to input any random deal.
FCPro was designed and programmed by Wilson Callan and Adrian
Ettlinger.
Michael Keller obtained Jim Horne's dealing code and Don Woods' solver
code, and helped to
beta test FCPro.