A black and white sketch of a panda falling asleep on a tree branch

Developing a Jigsaw Puzzle Game Part 2: Document Set Up

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This is part 2 of my attempt to document the process of creating a simple jigsaw puzzle game in excruciating detail.

To create the puzzle images, I want to be able to take a Photoshop document, slice it up using the selection tools, then export those sliced-up layers. I also want to use a script to automatically generate the final, correct locations for all of the pieces and write them to a JSON file that will work on all devices.

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A Black and White image of the silhouette of a man discovering a body bleeding all over a desk.

Developing a Jigsaw Puzzle Game Part 1: Planning

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I was recently playing The Black Mirror and one of the earlier challenges is a jigsaw puzzle where you have to reconstruct a torn up photograph.

The player clicks on a piece to activate it, then they can move it around using the mouse or right-click on it to rotate it to one of four preset rotations. They click again to release it. When a piece has the correct rotation and is near the correct position, it snaps into place, which works as visual feedback that it has been placed correctly.

A screenshot from The Black Mirror. It's a pile a torn up pieces from a black and white photograph
The beginning state of the puzzle from The Black Mirror.

It was an enjoyable break from the exploring and it got me thinking about how I might add it as an optional mini-game type in my adventure game engine.

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A black and white image of a young man sitting with his head between his knees clutching some paper.
Four screenshots from Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist. The top left shows a stage with an image of Freddy as a baby shooting a water pistol. The words 'best little crackshot the west had ever seen.' appear under it. The second is of a white charge in the desert town of Coarsegold. It sits next to a cemetery. The third is a picture of Coarsegold at night, with an grand Southern house to the left of an alley leading up to town. There is a portrait of a sheriff with glasses in bottom right. The final image is a framed picture of some unsavoury looking types around a card table. Central to this is a man in black with a huge chin and an ace in the brim of his hat.

Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist

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I first played this game when I was a youngling at my Uncle’s house and I remember being so excited when I booted it up and watched the witty Ballad of Freddy Pharkas play out.

The concept was original and captivating—an ex-gunslinger hangs up his sidearms to go out West and become a pharmacist before events draw him back in to his gun-toting ways—all set in a gorgeous cartoon Wild West setting.

I quickly filled the first two prescriptions that acted as the copy protection to the game, then enthusiastically took Freddy outside to explore where I promptly walked into a swamp and died.

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Illustration of a man in a trench coat lounging on a sun lounger in Veste, Italy on a balcony surrounded by trees.

Useful Adventure Game Resources: Puzzle Documents

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Since I started my series about handling movement, I’ve learned a lot more about Entity Component Systems and I’m changing the way my engine is structured to reflect this.

While this sounds like a Typical Simon Rabbit Hole, it has fundamentally changed how I approach game engine development and I have made some huge strides with very minimal effort. Thanks to the advantages of ECS, some features that I thought would have to wait for many versions down the line have become trivially easy to implement.

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Illustration of a white shed in front of a dry stone wall and surrounded by olive trees, based on the Honesty Bar at Masseria il Frantoio