newprotest.org: SET!

SET!

January 07, 2006
by: jovial_cynic
The game SET was featured on boingboing a while back, and after playing it online for a while, I liked it so much that I figured I'd buy the actual card game. And then I bought a deck for a friend, and then I bought another deck for my boss.

Here's the commercial version of SET online from the official site. (make sure to read the rules on that page if you want to know how to play)

The card game is a bit different than the daily puzzle available online. For one, the daily puzzle is pre-programmed with 6 guaranteed sets, so that the object of the game is to find all 6 sets as quickly as possible. Also, the game only refreshes once a day, so you don't get to play a new game once you finish; you have to wait until the following day. The card game is different; you actually have a deck of cards, and there's no guarantee to the number of sets available in a field of cards (12 cards on the table). When playing by yourself, you just have to find a set and pick it up, and then replentish the cards with cards from the remaining deck.

My wife, unfortunately, is colorblind, and has a hard time distinguishing between the red and the green on the cards. So... I decided I'd take on the project of making the card-version of the game available on my computer in javascript. I wanted to make it as simple as possible, so I decided not to use images; I'm just using regular symbols found on the keyboard, and for "shading," I chose to use font variations - normal, strikethrough, and underline. I went ahead and used green, red, and blue, for the colors because for some reason, my wife is able to distinguish between this particular red and green on the monitor... not sure why. But... that's fine. It works.

Anyhow, here's the game on my site.

It has a couple of variations from the actual card game - instead of adding 3 additional cards if there are no sets in the field, my script takes all remaining cards together, shuffles them up, and deals out 12 fresh cards. Also, my script displays how many sets exist in the field so you don't have to wonder if you're searching in vain.

Anyhow... enjoy. I happen to love the game, and I enjoyed coding it... and now folks can play it whenever they feel like it. Let me know what you think, and if there are other not-found-online card games you'd like to see available; if I like the game, maybe I can make those too.

If you find a bug in the game, let me know - I coded this in 2 days, so I'm not 100% sure that it's error free. And if you happen to look through the code, you'll see a couple of areas of inefficient coding -- I'm aware of it. Just enjoy the game.
np category: personal
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