Bug 200201

Created attachment 35318 [details]
Image showing example decribed in the bug report

Freecell isn't a perfect example of what you're looking for. Like Simple Simon, Freecell only allows the player to pick up continuous series of cards. 

Internally, KPat performs two checks when the user tries to move a card. First it checks whether the rules allow removing the card(s) from the source pile. Then when the user drags the cards over the destination pile, it checks whether the rules allow adding the card(s) there.

To implement what you request we would have to check for all possible combinations of moves to every other pile before we can even let the player pick up a card. The algorithm to find the simplest route to move cards from pile A to pile B is also going to be pretty complex.

I guess in summary, this is an interesting idea, but I'm doubtful that anyone will jump on it. However, if someone does come up with a patch implementing this cleanly, there probably wouldn't be much resistance to it going in.

Just like to add that I don’t think it’s necessary for the *simplest* route to be used; it would be OK as long as just one *possible* route is used. (Of course, it starts to do very dumb moves, e.g., move a single card from A to B, and then from B to C, instead of moving it directly from A to C, then that would look very bad.)

(Similarly, using the demo mode, I sometimes see it doing things in what looks like not the optimal/shortest way, which can feel annoying, but isn’t really a *big* problem.)

moving single cards in freecell and moving complex structures like this are really two pair. I don't want kpat to be that kind of smart ass

now that someone else suggested it: what I reacted allergic against was "by using intermediate cards" - using empty piles is most likely fine and I actually would like to see the same for fortyandeight where I implemented it as rule without animation.

still no one wanting to implement this. Empty piles are used though