Matera the Mad

Do you use the Windwoes Solitaire game? Have you ever had a challenging game blown away by a mis-click when you wanted to undo a move but hit "Deal" instead because it is on top of the menu? Do you hate most of the dopey card back pictures? Would you like to change a few things?

I do, I have, I do, and I did. Here's how.

1. Get Resource Hacker, and maybe XN Resource Editor too.

2. Copy Sol.exe and Cards.dll from C:\Windows\System32\ to a working folder.

3. Fix the stupidly annoying menu:
Open Sol.exe in ResHacker. There is only one menu, and it's a breeze to do a little cut-and-paste to move the various parts around. You might want to copy the menu text into a text editor (Notepad, NOT WORD!) to work with it, and paste it all back
after the changes. Then click the "Compile script" button and save the file.

4. Better card backs:
You will need to make a dozen 71 by 96 pixel bitmaps. Open Cards.dll in ResHacker and save one of the originals for a template.

Use any pics you like, as long as they look decent resized and cropped to fit the small size of the card backs. You don't need bloody Photoshop for this, IrfanView will do the whole job. MSPaint might come in handy too.

When you have the backs done, open Cards.dll again and replace all of the card backs with your own pics. "Compile" with each change, and save when done.

If you feel like doing something really tedious, you can change the fronts of the cards too. It might be easier to do this with XN Resource Editor. I don't know, the only time I did it was with the old win9x version! That was a pain in the buttons because the backs are in the EXE and they are 16 color. The fronts, the pip side, are two-color bitmaps in either version - the two colors are black and white, and red and white, and this freaks out some image editors. I did it, anyway; I changed hearts to pawprints for my sister the animal lover.

NOW - Download and run the Windows File Protection Switcher, unless you would rather do it the fun way by booting into Safe Mode to switch the files.

Replace the original files with the altered ones. Enjoy your custom deck of cards.

Some information on Windows File Protection, in case you have trouble with it:
Hacking Windows File Protection - The gory details
AXCEL216 / MDGx Windows 2000 Tweaks + Secrets - Part 1

Be very careful if you decide to mess around with anything Windows really needs! *Sigh* Ah, nostalgia - I had some great hacked stuff in win98.

Attached Images

cards17.png (16.4 KB, 13 views)