Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection

[GerReader]

Originally Posted by ploum

Thanks for the work. I’m addicted. I reported a couple of bugs on Github, I hope it’s the best place to do that.

GitHub is indeed the best place. Thanks for catching the bug in Creek, I can reproduce it and I am looking into it.

For the issue with Signpost, I'd like to discuss this here first.

My thoughts behind greying out only the cells in the middle of a sequence, and keeping the cells at the start and end active were that the start and end cells both still need to be connected, and that greying out the start would be the confusing way to do it. Grey-out should indicate that one can ignore there cells; but the start cell is still relevant so it should not be greyed out?

Furthermore, the start cell in a sequence is additonally marked with a dot left to the arrow, so this should also protect a little bit to accidentally re-connecting this cell to another target.

A possible change could be to grey out all arrows in a sequence, but keep the letter sequence indicators of the start and end cell in black. Alternatively grey out the start/middle arrows, keep the end cell all black, and the start cell with a black letter but a grey arrow. Third option: Middle cells all greyed out, start cell black letter/grey arrow, end cell grey letter/black arrow.

Would this be less confusing while still keeping enough attention on the relevant start/end cells? Thoughts? I think the third option might be the best, as this shows most clearly that the start cell is the entry point to a sequence, and the end cell the exit from the sequence?

[ploum]

My brain is working the following way : if a dot is black, it needs to be connected. If an arrow is black, it needs to connect to a dot. Everything else is scanned out.

AFAIK, it was exactly that in the previous version. Is there a problem with that way of working ? For the numbers, it makes sense to keep black the numbers of both ends while greying out those in the middle of a sequence.

Of course, that’s only my way of seeing it ;-)

[GerReader]

Originally Posted by ploum

My brain is working the following way : if a dot is black, it needs to be connected. If an arrow is black, it needs to connect to a dot. Everything else is scanned out.

AFAIK, it was exactly that in the previous version. Is there a problem with that way of working ? For the numbers, it makes sense to keep black the numbers of both ends while greying out those in the middle of a sequence.

Of course, that’s only my way of seeing it ;-)

It is a little bit tricky. I completely rewrote and simplified the logic how colors are assigned to game elements, as it is rather convoluted in the original, and I had to translate all to greyscale. Further complicating was that especially for this game the screen redraw on eInk needed to be heavily optimized.

I made some tests this morning, and I think I now prefer solution 2) from above:

a) Start of sequence: Black number/letter, black dot, grey arrow
b) Middle of sequence: Grey number/letter, grey arrow
c) End of sequence: Black number/letter, black arrow
d) Unconnected cell: Black number, black dot, black arrow

This should also be as close to the original as possible, and as I understand it, like your description.

[GerReader]

Implemented bugfix & UI changes discussed here with ploum:

• Signpost: Changed coloring of start / end cells in a sequence.
• Creek: Fixed bug that a disconnected grid still counted as valid solution.

[ploum]

Thanks a lot. Sounds great. Thanks for your work, I’m completely addict to those games ;-)

[GerReader]

Important quick bugfix update.

GitHub member 'm4mmon' found a sneaky bug in the game chooser, where on certain configurations it was not possible anymore to launch any game; the app just crashed when clicking any game button.

This bugfix hopefully resolves this issue. I guess that this bug was also the cause for this:

Originally Posted by tocy777

It's not working on Touch Lux 5, after clicking on it, it throws me out to the main screen.

and this report:

Originally Posted by Kleki

I had a weird problem which I cannot reproduce anymore but maybe you want to know anyway. I was in the middle of playing a game of Undead. The following actions caused the app to crash and exit: ...

in this thread.

Please test and report if anything still goes wrong (or if all is okay now)

[GerReader]

Next update ready.

Usual location: https://github.com/SteffenBauer/Pock...master/release

Changes:

* New grid type in Loopy puzzle: compass dodecagonal
* Improved generator in Filling
* Minor bugfixes and improvements in screen update
* Deactivated puzzles Group and Sokoban

Some remarks to the last point: After feedback from Simon, I decided to deactivate the two puzzles Group and Sokoban. Group is just too esoteric to be fun except for specialist mathematicians, and the generator of Sokoban is too low quality and is only producing extremely simple and boring puzzles.

As Simon is understandably not comfortable to have these two puzzles in a collection available to the general audience, I decided to deactivate them. I never really played them, and I guess that they are not too popular with other people, anyway.

[wold]

Thanks

Originally Posted by GerReader

Update 24.04.2021. V 0.7.7
Furthermore, (update 12.3.2021: should be fixed now) this post reported that the app isn't working on a Touch Lux 5. As I haven't heard anything more from that user, I'd like to ask people here who own a Touch Lux 5 to test the app, and confirm if the app really crashes on that device or not.

Works for me with 0.7.8 nightly. The icon appears as "@SGTPuzzles".

Originally Posted by GerReader

Thanks, thats very important to know. Most probably caused by the lower screen resolution of your device (the Touch Lux 3 has 758 x 1024 px resolution). I see also that the font size seems to be too big, and some game names are cut short ("BlackBox" -> "BlackB").

Isn't it also due to the status bar (with time/icons)? The chess app does away with it, but perhaps it was never updated or something

[GerReader]

Originally Posted by wold

Thanks

You're welcome! Its really cool to see that other people are enjoying the app too!

Originally Posted by wold

Works for me with 0.7.8 nightly. The icon appears as "@SGTPuzzles".

Perfect, good to hear. The '@' is expected, that indicates an external user-provided app.

Originally Posted by wold

Isn't it also due to the status bar (with time/icons)? The chess app does away with it, but perhaps it was never updated or something

Shouldn't be, as I use exactly the height of the status bar combined with the screen resolution now as the basis to scale every element in the app.

You have a Touch Lux 5, did I get that correctly? It would be really helpful for me if you could make some screenshots of the app (best of the game chooser screen, some different game screens like 'mines' and 'solo', and the parameter screen of 'solo', and post them here.

[wold]

Originally Posted by GerReader

You have a Touch Lux 5, did I get that correctly? It would be really helpful for me if you could make some screenshots of the app (best of the game chooser screen, some different game screens like 'mines' and 'solo', and the parameter screen of 'solo', and post them here.

Sure, here you go. The minus/hide hints button on solo doesn't work BTW.

[GerReader]

Originally Posted by wold

Sure, here you go. The minus/hide hints button on solo doesn't work BTW.

Perfect, thanks a lot

Thats looks actually quite ok, in comparison to other devices with a different resolution. The menus itself are rather big, but otherwise its okay, especially the game chooser looks usable now?

Regarding the minus button on solo: That button is actually doing something else.

The '+' button is adding all possible clues that don't contradict already placed numbers. (contradict as of row/column/area)

You can use the '-' button after you placed some numbers. Pressing '-' will then remove from all hint marks those that aren't compatible with the full numbers anymore.

I introduced these two buttons because putting in / removing clues on the game criteria (row/column/area) is just too tedious for me, I want to concentrate on the challenging aspects of the game. For a future version I am planning to introduce UI configuration for each game, so that one can configure if these buttons are present or not.

Try it out like this: start a game by filling the marks with '+', then play a little bit, and then press '-' after you have filled in some numbers. It should become clear what this button is doing.

[EastEriq]

Originally Posted by GerReader

Quote:
Originally Posted by wold
Works for me with 0.7.8 nightly. The icon appears as "@SGTPuzzles".

Perfect, good to hear. The '@' is expected, that indicates an external user-provided app.

You can actually change that with a line like

@Sgtpuzzles=Simon Tatham Puzzles

in your system/language/xx.txt, where xx is the language code of your localization.

[GerReader]

Next update:

Usual location: https://github.com/SteffenBauer/Pock...master/release

Changes:

* Fixed an access of uninitialized memory, which caused occasional crashes launching an Ascent or Signpost puzzle
* 'Place hints' button in Map now places only valid hint colours
* Adjusted size requirements for tricky difficulty level in the Magnets puzzle (too small puzzle sizes caused the generator to hang)
* Minor UI changes in Guess

[Lykke]

Hey, I just tried the newest version on my Touch Lux 3 yesterday, and the puzzles scale much better now. I'm able to play with more squares than before.

[Skeeve]

Hi Steffen.

About Usabilty for "Solo": When I have highlighted a cell and then switch from "Fill" to "Notes" or back, the cell's status doesn't change. I have to select the cell again to make it switch.

Also, in order to make it more visible, which status is selected, maybe it would help to have the number row use a smaller font when notation is active?