Jigsaw Puzzle

Developing A Jigsaw Puzzle Game Part 10: Final Thoughts

I have reached the end of my jigsaw puzzle game journey!

Documenting this process in as much detail as I did has been revealing. There were holes in my knowledge: things that I knew how to do without a full understanding of how they actually worked. Trying to explain every line of code forced me to reach for that deeper understanding.

Despite this, some of my decisions were still questionable and I would do certain things differently now. On the other hand, I was pleased at how other aspects came out and there are ways that I have implemented things in this that I definitely want to pull into my adventure game engine.

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A completed illustrated puzzle with the words You Win! in the middle. These words are rendered smaller than on the film strip puzzle.
Pieces of a cut-up purple film strip are scattered across a dark grey background and randomly rotated
Pieces of a cut-up purple film strip are scattered across a dark grey background
A screenshot of Photoshop featuring an illustrated scene from Lecce in the main window and a list of layers on the right hand side. The layers show how this image has been cut up into 16 different layers, which are in a layer group called Pieces
The dark brown regions at the left and right show where this image will be clipped on the iPad

Developing a Jigsaw Puzzle Game Part 2: Document Set Up

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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Developing a Jigsaw Puzzle Game Part 1: Planning

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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