About 9CardGolf

How did this game come about?

- by Stephen, our lead developer

In mid-2005 my parents were visiting and were eager to teach us a new (to them and to us) card game.  My sisters and I grew up playing Canasta with our Mom and Grandmother so playing cards is naturally one of the many things we do when visiting each other.  We played the 9-card Golf variant for many days during their visit.  I put up this Family Rules page to record the rules I was taught. Being a long-time software engineer (and just itching to find a project to implement in the latest language I was learning -C#) I kept seeing algorithms in my minds-eye as I was playing the game.  It took me months to do but I had implemented the game and started distributing it for free on Windows.  [See: Golf9Card for windows  This is the original page. Please note the installer likely no longer works on modern windows.]

Cut to 4 years later when my “Senior in High-school” Son decided to take an iPhone programming course and then I decided to join him by taking the same course.  So for the fall semester the two of us are in a College course together practicing developing iPhone apps.  By the time the course ended it became my next dream to rebuild my windows game for iOS to run on iPhones, iPod Touch’s and iPads.  It took me two years working part time (and the last months full time) to get this game ready to be released on the App Store.  For those of you reading this who are into software this was not a direct port of the game as much as it was a complete re-implementation of the game in Objective-C.  This would in the end entail a brand new score tracking subsystem, new graphics, full touch interface so game play is much more natural than my windows version, Game Center interaction, and much more. 

My Son had gone on to his studying of Photography at SCAD, Savannah but it was only right to bring him back into the effort to do final graphics for the game. We took the course together and now we’ve completed my pet project together!  I think I made a great choice in graphics artists, don’t you?  (Ok, as his father, I’m just a wee bit biased. ;-)

Oh, and thank you Dr. Rory Lewis (UCCS) for teaching the CS201 iPhone development class! 

We both sincerely hope you enjoy the results of our efforts as much as we’ve enjoyed making this game together!-Stephen and son Steve.

Photo Credit: (c) Steve Moraco - Taken from 6th floor balcony of what used to be the Savannah Motor Inn in Savannah, GA.