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Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

puzzlepanda.com

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Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#61

Post by snake_case »

globalise83 wrote: post #33

Hi, firstly great job on the app - really nice. I tried to do the demo puzzle on my touchscreen laptop, but while the dragging worked very nicely, I wasn't sure how to actually rotate the pieces myself (seemed to happen randomly when tapping the piece), would be nice to have a clearer way to interact, e.g. double tap to rotate 90 degrees.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! As another reply mentioned, single click/tap on a piece auto rotates it to the correct orientation.

Many have pointed out the auto rotation is either too easy or annoying, so I am considering alternatives. I originally started with single click to rotate 90deg but was told by early users it was too hard. Reconsidering ways to introduce this that is friendly to all users.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#62

Post by saxonww »

Hugsun wrote: post #38

Cool project! The site is pretty laggy on firefox. My resolution is 1440p and making the game fullscreen causes a noticable framerate drop. I don't notice the issue on Chromium. Figured you might want to know.

Came here to say this also. Linux, 1200p, Firefox 94, amdgpu/radeonsi, webrender is enabled. It's laggy enough when moving pieces that I thought the page had locked up; a FF process jumps to 100% cpu usage and my cpu fan spins up any time I try to manipulate a piece.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#63

Post by pokpokpok »

snake_case wrote: post #60
connorproctor wrote: post #52

Pieces snap together when moving passed each other, even if they aren't both in front. I just had a lot of fun exploiting this by stacking all the pieces on top of each other and then just "printing" the puzzle by moving the connected pieced past the pile.

I’ve heard someone do exactly that before too! Always fun finding ways to break the rules :) Others in here are suggesting snap on drop instead of auto snapping, which I’m strongly considering now.

i tried this trick, and saw a few interesting bugs. obviously this whole trick is an edge case, but i had some visual doubling of my large piece after certain clicks, and also i had an event happen where i heard the click sound stacked up 100 times then the app became unresponsive

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#64

Post by snake_case »

chrisdalke wrote: post #31

I clicked on the site just to check it out and ended up spending 15 minutes on your demo puzzle... well played. Awesome job on all the user interactions. The dragging controls are pretty intuitive, it always did what I expected, and it's very smooth/seamless. The little touches like the autorotation are very helpful. I can imagine that having really great interactions differentiates this from many other similar sites…

Thank you! I’m aiming to provide a more polished and user-friendly experience than the alternatives out there, and I have many plans to differentiate ever further. Glad you had a good time playing.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#65

Post by snake_case »

pokpokpok wrote: post #63
snake_case wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard someone do exactly that before too! Always fun finding ways to break the rules :) Others in here are suggesting snap on drop instead of auto snapping, which I’m strongly considering now.

i tried this trick, and saw a few interesting bugs. obviously this whole trick is an edge case, but i had some visual doubling of my large piece after certain clicks, and also i had an event happen where i heard the click sound stacked up 100 times then the app became unresponsive

Ha, yikes! I’ll have to try reproducing that, since that sounds like a bug that could happen even under normal circumstances.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#66

Post by dylan604 »

snake_case wrote: post #59
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to comment about this specifically. Being a little more generous on the drop zone would be nice. I could see the dragging around and pieces snapping in would be an odd behavior. Can you limit the "snap" test until a piece drop type of something to make it more of a concious effort than magic? Another thing I missed was being able drag select multiple pieces to move them around the workspace. The large zooma…

Yeah, good point regarding snapping on drop which would allow making the drop zone a little larger. Drag selecting multiple pieces is interesting. If I add that, I think I would need a modifier key like shift or cmd/ctrl to differentiate between this and a background drag.

Yours is the first one I ever saw that allowed for that kind of movement of the workspace, and I really liked it. I would be willing to use a modifier key to allow for both drag-select and panning of workspace. But I'm just some random on the interweb.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#67

Post by snake_case »

tylercrompton wrote: post #43

I really enjoyed that. Thank you. This is great! I have some suggestions, if you don't mind: - Biggest feature that I'd like to see is a leaderboard. While it wouldn't be fair to allow me to get on the leaderboard after already seeing a certain puzzle. - Allow users to upload their own pictures to use as puzzles. But for obvious reasons, don't make these public. - The auto-rotation, though convenient, kinda took away…

All great points, thanks for the feedback! :)

The smudge tool radius idea was especially interesting and something I’ll need to think about further. Very curious how it would affect the UX for beginners vs power users. Could be a great improvement for touchscreen devices as well.

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#68

Post by lemmingapex »

Great site! Love the idea. I would love to see the ability to alter the background color. I may also suggest you never default the background to pure black.

https://gomakethings.com/design-tip-never-use-black/

You will now notice this on most websites you visit.

You may also consider adding more sound effects and/or royalty free light background music that can be toggled on/off.

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#69

Post by qw »

snake_case wrote: post #4
itake wrote: post #3

moving the pieces cause them to rotate (to the correct position). Doesn't that make the puzzle super easy if you know how everything is oriented?

Yeah, this is something I'm considering still. I've heard from a few users that they don't like the pieces being rotated at all, and some would rather have click-to-rotate to make it more difficult. I might have to make this an option, but waiting to hear from more users on this before deciding.

I would actually want the opposite, where all the pieces are rotated the right way from the start.

Perhaps this could be a simple button that the users can choose to click instead of a configuration?

Another suggestion: It can be a bit hard to see the shape of pieces with a dark colour, on a black background. Perhaps you could add an outline when you click on the piece to make it clearer? I know we can switch between light and dark background, but the white background on a large screen can be a bit too much

Re: Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website

#70

Post by addandsubtract »

prismatix wrote: post #48
snake_case wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is something I'm considering still. I've heard from a few users that they don't like the pieces being rotated at all, and some would rather have click-to-rotate to make it more difficult. I might have to make this an option, but waiting to hear from more users on this before deciding.

Another suggestion: Tabletop Simulator has a Jigsaw Join 2 add-on that is really great for doing puzzles. They allow you to rotate the piece by scrolling the middle mouse wheel while "holding" it.

Scroll wheel only works for people with mice. Two finger rotating only works on mobile. I think something that could work for laptops (or anyone really) is a tap to rotate by 90°. The pieces only have 4 sides, so there's only 4 possible orientations, anyway. Should be a good option for people that want more of a challenge.
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