[Kde-games-devel] More palapeli reviewing (was: How do you play jigsaw puzzles)

[Matthew Woehlke]

A few more points after playing a while longer...

- The preview is missing. A lot of times I will "solve" jigsaws by 
picking up a piece and staring at the box top until I find exactly where 
that piece goes. It doesn't always connect to anything, but at the least 
it helps to categorize pieces.

- A function to 'unclump' pieces (mainly, to separate overlapping 
pieces) would also be useful :-). I think I would do this as a tool; 
select the 'unclump' function (usual function is 'move piece'), and 
click somewhere, and pieces in that vicinity are 'unclumped'. Think of 
it like running your fingers lightly over the pieces to push around ones 
that are higher due to having other pieces underneath them.



I'm finding that 1000-piece puzzles are almost unplayable without 
features to manage large numbers of pieces. The previously mentioned 
'box sorting' would be really helpful, or see suggestion in next 
paragraph, but I could also really use a function to select and move a 
bunch of pieces at once. Think of shoving a bunch of pieces aside with 
the edge of your hand.

Something that emulates picking up a bunch of pieces in your hand and 
putting them down again would be extremely helpful. This plus unclump 
would reduce the importance of 'box sorting'.



I'm also getting really frustrated with the inconsistency of clicking. 
Half the time when I try to move a piece, I end up dragging the table 
instead. Sometimes I want to drag the table and get a piece instead. But 
most annoying is when I need to drag a piece past the visible table.

I think this should be solved by dropping the right-click background 
chooser, and instead using only right click to drag the table. This way 
there is no ambiguity what you want to do, and you can combine moving a 
piece with panning around on the table.



You've already got something that works well for small (100-piece) 
puzzles, and feels like it will be an excellent base for future 
development. I can't say I've come across a computer jigsaw puzzle game 
(CJPG) before that tries to tackle the four-digits-worth-of-pieces 
puzzle genre, but from what I've seen, palapeli could do it. First off, 
you're on the right track for getting the "feel" right; you haven't made 
the mistakes that I usually see that give CJPGs a 'wrong' feel compared 
to physical jigsaws. The performance is also there; palapeli *shines* on 
a 1200-piece, 4096x1536 image puzzle. What's missing is just a few 
features to make that many pieces manageable without causing major 
repetitive stress injury ;-).

Add mis-rotated pieces to bring that extra bit of real world challenge, 
fix the 'what do I want to move' ambiguity, fix not being able to deal 
with multiple pieces at once, and I think you're really going to have 
something great.

I'm looking forward to it...

-- 
Matthew
Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies.
-- 
So, an astrophysicist, a quantum physicist, and an astrologer walk into 
a bar...