[Complete] Crazy4Jigsaws.com

[flashisland]

Hey everyone!

I've been trying to create a jigsaw puzzle game since flash 6, but masks were just too slow back then. Then came along flash 8 and I could finally do dynamic jigsaw image cutting with bitmap caching and cool filter effects. This game started out as just an experiment but gradually developed into an entire website. Finally, after working on this in my spare time for a year and a half, I've finally finished!

You can check out the website and game at http://www.crazy4jigsaws.com.





The site consists of an image gallery where users can select various jigsaw images to play. Users may then select a puzzle cut of their choice ranging from 12 to 192 pieces. Additionally users can upload their own photos or send jigsaw puzzle e-cards. A new jigsaw image is added to the site every single day.

Members of the site earn puzzle points for each jigsaw puzzle they solve. These points can be redeemed for tickets in the monthly drawing.

I'm planning on releasing a premium version of the game next month. The premium version will include the ability to play full-screen jigsaw puzzles, piece rotation, save option, and background and piece customization.

Let me know what you guys think!

[Sauceofallevils]

Seems cool, it would also be neat if there was a two player mode, where you and someone else could have two version of the same puzzle and whoever finishes it first wins the jigsaw match. Good luck, and good work!

[lesli_felix]

That's really well done. I hope the site's a success, clearly a lot of work there!

I don't agree about not being able to do it pre-flash 8 though, just harder to achieve the same effects, the bevelling would have to be pre-rendered, that's the only difficulty I can see.

[flashisland]

Thanks for the suggestion Sauceofallevils. I might look into doing that in the future.

Lesli_felix, the problem with doing it pre-flash 8 was that the use of masks to cut out the pieces from an image was just too slow to be practical. Flash would slow down with only a few pieces on the stage. Cache as bitmap allows me to treat each cut piece as a separate image, thus allowing flash to play at a decent speed. I agree that the beveling effect could have been faked in earlier versions.

Thanks guys!

[Alluvian]

To me, jigsaws have always been cooperative ventures. I have never sat down and done a jigsaw by myself. That would make me look too hard at myself and make me wonder and why I am sitting in a room by myself doing a jigsaw.

There is an MSN plugin game thingy where two people can play the jigsaw at once. This would to me be far better than a competitive version. Although the two at once could certainly be competitive if you included a running count on how many pieces each player put in place. It would be GREAT if you could see the other player moving around pieces as they move, but perfectly functional if you just did an update every time a piece actualy moved. Then the local client could just animate the move on it's own.

The site looks great! I have not tried the puzzle itself yet. It LOOKS beautiful. If you don't have piece rotation in yet, that should be priority number 1. At LEAST 90 degrees rotations.

[renderhjs]

perhaps not intended perhaps intended:

this group in the middle works as group even though the upper jag saw is not really connected with the other ones,- just though I´d let you know.

The controls are very nice,- I also think the weblayout works very user friendly as I had no problems playing a jig saw game instantly as a guest. I think that´s important because with sub- sub menus or forced registrations you wont win new users.

If you ever plan on upgrading this game/website, some ideas:
- other puzzle patterns to choose from (more edgy, mc Escher style,..)
- explosion button,- will explode puzzle pieces on the mouse spot (like hammering with your fist on the board)
- some hurry up mode (like the hacking mode in Bioshock ) where you have to fastly complete certain areas of the puzzle so that an inner element of the puzzle picture can walk through certain parts of it.
- battle mode with 2 players where each player earns more points if he completed spots from a map (the puzzle image) and with enough points canweaken the counter player wich gets less points. Well something like a node play (UT3,..)

[Alluvian]

I think the concept of battle mode would even work if you just allow 'cooperative' play and count the pieces each solved. You can play cuthroat that way if you like. Keep an eye on what pieces your opponent is using and work to move those pieces towards your part of the puzzle, or hide them under the pieces you have collected...

I know one person who actually plays jigsaws this way in real life. She likes to hide pieces she knows you are looking for so she finishes the parts she is doing first. We had to make a rule where you were not allowed to take any pieces off the table, heh. Her cuthroat sometimes worked in my advantage because she had a real good eye. If I was missing a key piece, I could almost be sure it was on the bottom of her pile of pieces! Always answered with an "Oh, you needed that?" and an evil grin.

[artlink]

Lesli_felix, the problem with doing it pre-flash 8 was that the use of masks to cut out the pieces from an image was just too slow to be practical.

Never needed any mask to make a jigsaw in Flash 5, just break the image. With the exact same engine you just have to edit the properties of the image in the library and replace the image by another. It takes 5 seconds to create a new visual, and this way you can sold 5 millions of those games without doing anything.

I always find it very funny when people talk about the amazing things post Flash 5 versions can do and how it was impossible before.

[renderhjs]

@artlink:
it´s not appropriate anymore doing it like that or with flash 5- not only does flash 5 can´t load JPEG,PNG or gif images,- using dynamic media content is almost impossible over multiple instances and requires either preparing special to be loaded swf´s or the image to be embedded already in the main swf file.

Perhaps think of an update to at least Flash MX

[flashisland]

Alluvian:
I agree that a lot of people would like to play jigsaws with another person. I'd love to try working this into the game in the future. I do currently have support for piece rotation (90 degrees) but I'm reserving that for premium members. I've never tried selling games directly to consumers so it will be an interesting experiment.

I can't believe your friend hides jigsaw pieces! That must make things really hard. I agree that most people would prefer a "casual" experience rather than a competitive one. Maybe having two modes of play would work best.

renderhjs:
That is a bug that you found, but unfortunately there is no easy way to correct it. I'm using a pixel-by-pixel collision detection algorithm to detect if two pieces should "click" together. This allows diagonal pieces to click together as well. From the players I've talked to, they don't seem to mind it. Thanks for your other suggestions!

artlink:
I agree that a jigsaw game is completely possible in Flash 5, just not practical for how my site works. My game dynamically loads an image and uses masks to cut it into the jigsaw pieces. Since I add a new image every single day, I only need to have one version of the flash game that I never need to edit. It just makes things a lot easier for me and my visitors only ever need to download one flash movie.

[artlink]

@ flashisland and renderhjs

Like I said, it takes 5 seconds to make the jigsaw have a new visual. I am sure that even if you have one new every day, you could find 5 seconds in your agenda to do it. So 60 new visuals will take 5 minutes. Even I have 5 minutes to spare a day to do that while no one on earth would have the time or patience to make 60 of them in the same day.

Concerning the undinamic Flash5 not being able to load pics on the fly, you got to keep it mind that it will take more time to any genius out there to finish the first jigsaw than for the second pic to be loaded (a pic is like 50kb). So your SWF can contain tons of MB, the next image will be ready all the time.

I aint saying that it's the cleanest or best way, just pointing out that it can be done - and I have done it back in the days - with F5 with no problems, no complains from clients and good money in the pocket for the laziest piece of code ever.

Well somebody has to defend poor ol' F5, and I was the only one to raise my finger then


OT but got the same reaction when somebody point out the "new" features in every version of Photoshop. Then I have to open my 5.5 to show them that it was already there long time ago

[renderhjs]

but it´s dump und not a satisfying solution at all if there is more technology besides flash running the whole system- it makes you even more dependable on flash- because only someone who actually has flash installed (not the player) could change anything at all- sorry but those days are past

perhaps consider a update (maybe your OS as well )

[flashisland]

artlink:
Once again I admit that a similar game concept could have been done in flash 5. I chose to use masks and dynamic image loading to both have fun with the new technology and to save on bandwidth. Forcing my users to load a different jigsaw player every time wastes bandwidth, thus forcing up my costs. Even the jigsaw cuts are loaded dynamically to cut down on bandwidth.

Right now there are 163 jigsaw images on the site. That means that I would have to have 163 different flash movies for my users to download. What if someone finds a bug? What if I wanted to change the look of the game or add a new jigsaw cut? That's a lot of changes that I'd rather not make. Having one jigsaw player means one change. It just makes more sense.

I think we all agree that this type of game was possible back in Flash 5. It's just impractical not to take advantage of latest technology to save yourself time in the long run.

Now that this thread has turned into a battle of Flash 5 vs. 8, does anyone else have anything constructive to say about my site?

Thanks!

[renderhjs]

I already gave you my input,- if you want some harsher crit:
- the yellow dollars look spammy, so do elements like "click here" and "win" but I guess that´s normal for such website.
it´s just that those websites always scare me and I usually close them