Just Jigsaw
For PalmOS, and Symbian OS (Series 60, Siemens SX1, Nokia Communicator)
It was designed to look like a real jigsaw, and this is how the screen
shots really do. Once you start playing, you realise that this is
not quite the same: in particular, you can't stick one frame to
another, like you do in real life. Nevertheless this
implementation looks
much closer to the real life than any other Palm-based
jigsaws
I've seen, and it has a variety of options for getting it less
realistic ... but often more convenient to play. :=)
The only software I know to work in a similar way was xjig a
real masterpiece for X-Windows (a great system that by no means
has to be confused with a similarly named but and awful
counterpart) written by Helmut Hoenig in 1996. I couldn't use the
source code because of having troubles with understanding someone
else's logic (others have similar problems with mine). It appears
that with limited resources, I couldn't implement Helmut's design
anyway.
I started with xjig design of joining frames into bigger ones
and eventually into the whole image, but soon realised than Palm speed
was insufficient for moving big frames. With enormous regret I adopted
a less intuitive approach of sticking frames to board. Soon I realised
that the second scheme has an advantage also from the player's
prospective
especially with big images that couldn't fit into a small PDA screen
and
required scrolling.
Another crucial problem specific to Palm was the absence of mouse
button which caused problems with differentiation between move,
rotation, and flip. The Palm version of JJig gives you a variety of
ways to do that, but still with pointer buttons it would obviously be
much more intuitive. The first PalmOS release appeared as an Easter
present in April 2002.
Since mobile phones usually don't have even a stylus, the
mobile version appeared unthinkable, but once I found about Nokia
7650 and 3650 with built in cameras and excellent image
processing tools, I couldn't miss the chance. Fortunately mobile
devices have much more buttons than Palm, and this allowed a very
elegant solution to the problem: you
simply have two modes - one for moving cursor and selecting a frame,
and
another for operating selected frame; you have separate buttons
for
move, rotation and flip which you can't have in Palm !
For Nokia Series 60 the code was almost completely rewritten, however
the "sticky design" remained even though the CPU is fast enough
for
something better... sorry, we are slightly behind the schedule and
can't
wait till next Easter :=) .
Enjoy
February 2003
Please, select the page you are after:
Jigsaw for PalmOS
Just Jigsaw for Symbian OS
(Nokia 7650 / 3650, Siemens SX1, Nokia Communicator)
Palmcurst
Web Page