Jigplay is a simple jigsaw game allowing to create and play custom jigsaws from JPG or PNG image files.

Not surprisingly, jigsaws are the well-known game in which a picture is scattered into multiple parts randomly spreat on a board and that you must connect in order to recover the original picture.

JigPlay is free software, provided with no charge ... and no warranties
This means that you do not have anything to pay to use it.
This also means that I won't be responsible in any case of whatever happens if you use it. I also have no obligation to change, fix, upgrade or whatever JigPlay. This program is gracefully provided to who wants and need it, in any case I remain the author, with the right to do whatever I want with it and its source code.

Once it will reach a stable state, sources will be released to provide support and example for people wishing to develop on the machine. Source code liense doesn't follow a particular licence, instead here are the rules to apply when using this source code. The source code can be freely distributed, it can be used as inspiration but if you intend to extend JigPlay reusing entire parts of the source code, then you will have to make your program also free as well as its source code. In other words, you can borrow some parts but if you borrow all, then make your software and its code as free as JigPlay.

JigPlay is completely mouse-driven, providing menus for actions other than pieces movements. Pieces are selected by clicking on them on the play-field with the mouse then dragging them holding the mouse button pressed while moving it.

Initially, JigPlay doesn't show anything in the play-field. To start a new game, select the menu item "Game > New...". A dialog then pops allowing to specify the picture file to use and the number of pieces it must be scattered in and optionnally a scale factor to apply to the image.

Selecting the image to map on the jigsaw is simply done via the "Browse" button, or the cmd-b keyboard shortcut. Supported image formats are JPG and PNG.

Pictures are not limited in size. However, if the selected image is larger than the screen, the play-field will scroll in order to access the whole image. Note that the size of the play-field is always larger than the image in order to leave room enough to move pieces around and leave the central part of the play-field available for the image reconstruction. It is however possible to resize an image to make it fitting a desired dimension. To do so, check the "Resize" button and move the slider to select the desired width and height for the image. Image can only be shrunk, not enlarged, by a factor ranging between 0.2 and 1 time the original size (i.e. between 20% to 100% of the image size).

The number of pieces can be selected among a popup displaying the suggested dimensions. These dimensions are computed to that, according to the image size (possibly scaled) pieces are pretty square and not smaller that a certain dimension (currently 30 pixels). Enforcing quasi-square pieces makes a better visual rendering of them. Modifying the size of the picture (either by scaling it or changing the picture) will result in different suggested resolution because the need to get square pieces divides the image width and height differently. When a suggested dimension is selected, the average piece size is displayed as information.

The currently running game can be suspended by saving it on the disk in a file via the menu item "Game > Save...". The complete state of the game is stored on the disk, the positions of the pieces as well as the image used for the game. This especially means that if the file used as image to start the game disappears, it will still be possible to continue the jigsaw from a saved game. Games are saved in file with the ".jps" extension.

Invoking the menu item "Game > Load..." it is possible to load a game saved from the disk and continue it at the point it was saved. Games are saved in file with the ".jps" extension.

Initially, pieces are sprout randomly on the play-field. It is possible, invoking the menu item "Game > Arrange Pieces Around Corners", to sent the pieces all around the corners of the play-field, hence leaving its central area free for image reconstruction.

Depending on the picture background or most represented color tones, the background of the play-field can be changed to contrast better with the pieces by selecting the menu item "Game > Change Background Color".

Currently JigPlay is at an early development stage. More features are planned, among which:

For any suggestion, comment, bug report, feel free ton contact me by email at:

francois_pessaux<HAT>yahoo.fr   (replace <HAT> by @)