Androjig v 1.0
François Pessaux (c) July 2011
What is AndroJig ?
AndroJig
is a jigsaw game.
Starting from an image scattered into several pieces, the aim is to
rebuild this image.
Images can be chosen either from the ones available on your device
(phone, tablet) or by searching on Internet for some keywords.
Time is not limited and the game can be interrupted at any moment then
continued thanks to an automated saving mechanism.
The number of pieces the image is scattered into can be chosen among a
pre-computed set of resolutions guarantying that pieces won't be too
small and will have a global square shape (however, the shape is not a
square, is it a usual jigsaw shape). This means that puzzles can
contain little or lot of pieces according to your choice.
How to use it ?
AndroJig presents 5 views:
- The welcome view
allowing to choose starting a new or the saved
game.
- The setup view allowing
to configure a new game.
- The WEB search view
allowing to find an image via Internet.
- The play view in which
the game runs.
- The help view
displaying the present page.
Welcome
view menus
Help
Displays the present help page.
About
Shows the current version of AndroJig.
Quit
Allows to quit AndroJig avoiding leaving it running
in background, hence frying resources.
Starting a new game
Pressing the "
Setup New Game" button sends you to
the
setup view in which you
will choose the image and the number of pieces of the jigsaw.
There are 2 ways to select an image:
- From the device clicking on the "Image
(from Device)" button.
- Searching on Internet clicking on the "Image (from WEB)" button.
Selecting image from
device
This allows to pick an image from any
"provider" available on your device: camera, gallery, files browser, and
so on. The number of "providers" depends on the features of your device
and the installed applications. For instance, if you installed a files
browser, you will be able to inspect the directories of your device and
pick found images.
Selecting image from the
WEB
Selecting this sends you on the WEB search view in which you can
enter keywords and find related images on the WEB. This feature uses Google Search and obviously requires
your device to have access to the net.
Keywords are to be entered in the
upper text edit area. Pressing the "Enter"
key or the "Search" button
triggers the search.
You can access next / previous results of the search using the "Previous Images" / "Next Images" buttons.
Found images are displayed in the middle part of the screen and you can
switch between them by dragging in the left and right directions.
To select the desired image, simply click on it. The selected image
size will then be display in the "Selected
Image Size" area below the displayed found images.
Once an image is selected, you can press the "Ok" button to validate and return
to the setup view to finalize
you setup.
It may happen that, even if the thumbnail image was shown in the search
result, the real image is no more available on the hosting WEB site. In
this case, an error message is displayed to notify this and you
remain on the WEB search view.
Once an image is
selected...
It is time to finalize your game
configuration. You are then back to the setup view that was updated
with the image information and the pre-computed available sizes of
jigsaw.
Image information summarizes:
- The image file name on the device.
Note that if the image was
selected from the WEB, it has temporarily be copied on your device in a
dedicated directory, hence it will always be named "AndrojigData/aj_tmpd", but this is
not very important.
- Whether the image will be rotated by
90°. This is the case when your image is taller than wider. Since AndroJig
requires (and forces) landscape orientation, in order to maximize the
display size and to minimize the scaling of your image, it will
automatically make the image using for its largest dimension the
largest dimension of your device.
- The original image width and height.
- The width and height once the image
is scaled (an if needed rotated) to fit you device's display.
- The available resolutions, i.e.
number of pieces vertically and horizontally.
- The average pieces size according to
the selected resolution.
Once the image is selected, you just
need to select the resolution you want for the game and press "Ok" to
launch the game and be sent to the play
view.
Continuing
the saved game
AndroJig automatically saves
the current running game when the
application gets closed or when you return to the welcome view without having finished the jigsaw by using the "Leave Jigsaw" menu. Pressing the "Continue
Saved Game" button
reloads this saved data and removes them. This means 2 things:
- There is only one saved
game at one time.
- Once reloaded, the state of the game
stored on the device is discarded.
It will be replaced later if the current game has to be saved. If the
game crashes or is killed by a third-party application, the game state
won't be saved again and then it will not be possible to continue it
anymore.
Once this option is selected, the game directly switches onto the play view.
Playing
The play
view
is the area where you play the game and solve the jigsaw. Moving a
piece is done pressing it
and dragging it at the desired location. If 2 correct pieces get close
enough, they will clip together automatically. Pieces can be clipped
together at any point of the screen, no need they are at their final
position in the global image.
Once all pieces are clipped and the image is rebuilt, the game ends and
you get a notification. Once you have watched your marvelous image
enough ;) you can leave the game using the menu "Leave Jigsaw".
Play
view menus
When invoking the menu button, 3
items are available:
- "Arrange Pieces on Borders":
This allows to spread the pieces along the 4 borders of the display
like shown in the picture below.
- "Change Background Color":
Depending on the image, the different colors may be more friendly. This
menu allows to select a new color for the background. A window gets
opened showing a color wheel in which you can select a color by
pointing it on the wheel. Currently selected color is shown in the
center circle area, and once the desired color is selected clicking on
this circle allows to terminate selection and close the window.
- "Leave Jigsaw":
This menu allows to exit the current game. It has 2 purposes: either
save and quit the current running game in order to continue it later,
or exit an ended game once end of game was notified. In effect, when a
jigsaw is completed, the final picture remains visible and you must
explicitly request to exit to return to the welcome view.
Known issues
AndroJig
still suffers little
known problems that do not prevent having fun but that are worthy be
to known in order to workaround.
- Once launched, sound volume is not
updated when the sound settings of the device are modified (increased
of decreased) via the system settings panel. Simply think to set the
volume before launching AndroJig
or quit it, change sound volume and launch it again.
- Killing AndroJig via a third party
application may leave it in an inconsistent state, preventing from
continuing the killed game. It may happen in such a case that when
re-launched, it shows a black screen with only menus available: in this
case, select the "Quit" menu
and next run should be fine.
Anyway, it is always advised
to properly quit AndroJig using the "Quit" menu of the welcome view, menu
especially made for this.
Release notes
- Version 1.0: First public release.
How to reach me ?
If you want to reach me, please email me at:
francois_pessaux@yahoo.fr.
