[Kde-games-devel] Palapeli: a belated review

[Ian Wadham]

Hello Stefan,

First let me congratulate you on Palapeli.  It is a truly
magnificent program.  I love the way the slicer works, the
wonderful look and feel of the graphics and the way the
pieces seem to quiver and melt together when you find a fit.

Although I am late with this review (being otherwise
occupied a few weeks ago), I have now been able to
put in many hours of play on puzzles ranging from
9 to 1000 pieces.

Like Matthew Woehlke, I am an old jigsaw puzzler from
way back and have had some beauties.  Palapeli opens
up the possibility of doing really large, challenging puzzles
without inconveniencing the whole family by taking up most
of the dining table for several days at a time.  I am looking
forward to hours of fun!

I am also looking forward to hooking my grand-children on
smaller highly-personalised puzzles.  All you need is a digital
camera and Palapeli and voila, you have an endless supply
of puzzles.  You should be very proud of Palapeli, Stefan.

But I have a few suggestions to make, mostly regarding the
GUI input, which can be rather frustrating and time consuming,
particularly on large puzzles and pieces at low magnification.

My 1000 piece puzzle is a traditional "Ravensburger" scene,
similar to this shot of the crooked house at Rothenburg ob der
Tauber in Germany:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rothenburg_BW_4.JPG

Firstly, picking up pieces is a bit uncertain, especially when they
are small.  I think the hand thingy is supposed to cover the piece
(as in grabbing a door handle), but for a long time I was trying to
use the tips of the fingers (which is more intuitive for picking up
or moving a jigsaw puzzle piece).  Then, if the hand closes, I think
you have actually missed when you may think you have got it.
Worst is that if you miss and the view contains only part of the
table, the whole view shifts and you lose sight of the piece you
were trying to pick up.

I see that the RMB now moves the view, so I would suggest
removing the LMB move of the view, maybe with a popup to say
to use the RMB.  Also I would suggest a  more "positive" mouse
pointer than the hand.

Using the mouse wheel to magnify the view quickly is excellent,
but please could the view remain centred on the mouse-pointer,
so that the area you are working in remains visible, even when
you are working near the edges of the table?

Several people have suggested a multi-piece pickup and that
might be the single greatest way to improve the GUI.  With the
larger 1000 piece puzzle I find myself continually searching for
and picking up pieces with some common characteristic, such
as timbers for the house in the center of the scene, edge pieces
for the left side or even pieces with the same color and similar
shapes (e.g. tabs at top and bottom, sockets at left and right).

These pieces are rarely found next to each other, so lassos
and rubber-banding would not work when pieces are scattered.

So I would like to suggest a "magnet" mode for the mouse.  When
the magnet is on, every piece you click on sticks to the mouse and
is carried along with it.  When the magnet turns off, the pieces are
dropped wherever the mouse then is.  As the pieces are dropped,
they are spread out into a small rectangular array in much the same
excellent way as when the puzzle is started.  There might be various
ways to turn magnet mode on or off.  The Ctrl key is an obvious
choice, but maybe there are better ways.  It would be up to the user,
of course, to make sure there was space where the pieces are
dropped.  If not, he/she would only make that mess once ...

Matthew's boxes could also come into play with magnet mode.
I suggest the boxes could be iconised or shrunk, so that the sorted
pieces need come back into play only when they are required
and would not take up much space on the table meanwhile.  One
of the pieces in the box could be used to "label" an iconised box.

Maybe someone asked for this already, but could we have a readily
accessible view of the picture we are aiming for?  At present, I open
one in Gwenview, but have to keep shuffling windows.

With a 1000 piece puzzle, the small size of pieces is a problem
when searching for a piece.  If you view the whole table, it is
very hard to see what is on each piece.  If you magnify the pieces,
you scroll a lot and tend to lose track of where you are on the table.

One solution is to start a small KMag window to magnify the pieces
and that is what I have been doing, but there are a couple of
drawbacks.  One is that the KMag window is distracting when
not in use.  The other is that it magnifies an already pixillated
image of the piece, so you can see the overall shape and color,
but not much else.

My suggestion is to have a "magnifying glass" mode for the
mouse pointer (using the M key perhaps?), so you see a magnified
image of the piece under the pointer and maybe also the edges of
neighboring pieces.  Magnet and magnifier combined could be
a fast way to find and collect related pieces.

To sum up, my suggestions are:
  - More "positive" mouse pointer.
  - No more moving the view with the left mouse button.
  - Keep the view centered on the mouse pointer when
    using the wheel to zoom in and out.
  - Magnet mode for multi-piece pickup and drop.
  - Iconisable boxes for holding sets of pieces.
  - Readily accessible view of the picture required.
  - Magnifying-glass mode for the mouse.

Just a few more minor points:
  - Can we change the properties of a puzzle in My Library?  I gave
    one of my puzzles the wrong name ...
  - Could the tab be called "My Collection"?  "Library" is for books and
    programs I would say.
  - How do you get access to the example puzzles?
  - Could the minimum size be 2x2?  I'd like to get my 3-year old
    grandson started on Palapeli ...
  - Long-term we may need ways to be not so obvious when a fit occurs
    and to tear a piece loose if it is in the wrong place.  I've seen puzzles
    with that level of difficulty ...
  - I once got rapped over the knuckles by a core-developer for putting
    a button in a menu bar, but I like what you have done in Palapeli:
    there is usually so much wasted real-estate in a menu bar.
  - Talking about real-estate, do we really need the scroll bars, progress
    bar and gadgets at bottom right.  I would rather be able to see more
    pieces ... and it is not hard to estimate jigsaw puzzle progress visually.
  - Is there some way (like mipmapping) to improve rendering of small
    pieces that contain fine detail?  They just go "speckly" ATM.  Perhaps
    an "average" uniform color would be more useful.
  - Could the auto-saving feature be made more obvious to a first-time
    user?  Maybe a message with a "Don't show this again" box.

Re the last two points, I picked pictures with large areas of fine detail
for my first two puzzles - leaves and fallen twigs.  I was then up till
2:30 am, not being able to find a Save menu and not daring to quit
and maybe lose my work ... :-(

Hope you find all this helpful, Stefan.

All the best, Ian W.