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Picture Puzzle Users Guide
Version 1.2
Copyright 1990, 1991 by
Daniel Linton Jr.
PICTURE PUZZLE is a Shareware product. It is available through Users
Groups, Bulletin Boards, and from Friends etc. You have the
opportunity to try the program at no charge to see if it meets your
needs. If you continue to use the program after evaluation, please
complete the registration form that is on this disk (orderfrm.txt) and
send it with the registration fee of $15.00 to:
Software Creations
26 Harris St.
Clinton, MA. 01510
You can also register by calling the Software Creations BBS at (508)
365-2359 with your credit card. When you register, you will get a copy
of the very latest version of the program and another diskette filled
with different Puzzles. Your name will also be put into a database of
registered users so that I can inform you of upgrades and other new
program releases.
If you have suggestions for this program, please let me know. I can be
reached in the following places:
Daniel Linton
"Picture Puzzle"
26 Harris St.
Clinton MA. 01510
Software Creations BBS (508) 365-2359
The following (RIME) conferences
SYSOPS - SHAREWARE - GAMES
CompuServe ID: 73230,3254
Shareware will continue to exist only as long as you, the
users, support it. Show us some of the enjoyment we have
brought you - Register !
PICTURE PUZZLE Users Guide
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
What is a Puzzle Program ................................ 3
What is Picture Puzzle ................................. 3
Requirements
Minimum Hardware Requirements .................. 3
Minimum Software Requirements ................... 3
Installation Registered Version ........................ 4
UnRegistered Version ................................... 4
Mouse ................................................... 4
General Information ................................... 5
Puzzle Formats .......................................... 5
PUZ Files .......................................... 5
PCX Files .......................................... 6
GIF Files .......................................... 6
SAV Files ......................................... 7
Using The Menus ........................................ 7
Loading Puzzles ....................................... 7
Saving Puzzles ......................................... 8
Resizing Puzzles ....................................... 9
Picture Recognition ................................... 9
MColors ................................................. 10
Grid Options
Grid On/Off ........................................ 10
Grid Colors ........................................ 11
Grid Crosshair Selector ............................ 11
Help Windows
Windowed Help ...................................... 12
Full Screen Help ................................... 12
Find A Tile ....................................... 12
Function Keys .......................................... 13
Sound ................................................... 13
Viewing Your Statistics ............................... 14
Command Line Options ................................... 15
Title Screen .......................................... 15
Puzzle Screen .......................................... 16
Support ............................................... 16
Special Thanks ........................................ 17
Helpful Hints .......................................... 18
Trademarks & Copyrights ................................. 19
What is a Puzzle program ?
Puzzle programs are programs that load a graphics picture up on
your computer screen and then scramble the picture for you to put back
together. Using the Mouse or the keyboard, you will have an
assortment of scrambled tiles on your screen that you must place back
into the correct place to rebuild the Picture. There are currently a
lot of programs on the market today that do this and they are all
pretty much the same in features, capabilities, and options. After
looking at some of the features that where missing from all the other
puzzle type programs I decided to create a puzzle program which had
them.
What is Picture Puzzle ?
Picture Puzzle is not just another puzzle program. Picture Puzzle
is different in many ways. Because I did not want the difficulty of
the puzzle to be dependent on how complex the picture was I thought it
would be nice to have you be able to select what size and shape puzzle
you would like. So by using the arrow keys you can adjust the number
of puzzle pieces from 4 all the way to 1400. When you build a very
large puzzle some pictures will have pieces that are identical (i.e.
Blue Sky, or Green Grass). Picture Puzzle has the ability to recognize
this and will finish the puzzle as soon as you have the picture in a
completed form, even if some of the pieces that are the same happen to
be mixed. Picture Puzzle also recognizes when you have put a piece
beside a piece it belongs next to and removes the grid between them.
This will allow you to see the picture as it is being built. There
are many many more features in Picture Puzzle so read on, and enjoy
the program !
Requirements
Mimimum Hardware Requirements:
EGA or VGA Color Monitor and Card
MicroSoft Compatible Mouse & Driver
640K Memory
Minimum Software Requirements:
Puzzle.exe (Main Picture Puzzle Program)
Puzzle.doc (Documentation For Picture Puzzle)
grid.msg (Message for grid screen)
title.msg (Header for Title screen)
cover.pic (Title Screen Puzzle)
orderfrm.txt (Registration order form)
larrow.cur (Picture Puzzle Cursor)
*.puz (A least 1 Puzzle File)
Picture Puzzle will make use of EMS memory if it finds it
available. It is not required however. The recommended
QEMM driver is QuarterDecks QEMM V5.11 or greater.
Installation
Registered Version
If you have purchased the registered version of Picture
Puzzle just run the install program that comes on the
program disk.
UnRegistered Version
To install the unregistered version of Picture Puzzle
you will have a file called PPuzz12.exe. Take the following
steps.
1) Create a Directory Called Puzzle
2) Copy PPuzz12.exe to this directory
3) Type PPuzz12.exe
4) erase PPuzz12.exe
PPuzz12.exe is a self-extracting file which will
uncompress all of the files that are needed to run Picture
Puzzle into this directory for you. When you are finished
you can erase the PPuzz12.exe program. (NOTE: be careful
that you erase PPuzz12.exe and NOT Puzzle.exe).
Mouse
The only Mouse that is supported by Picture Puzzle is the
Microsoft Mouse and driver. Any Mouse that is 100% compatible will
work, however, you must be using the MicroSoft driver or use a mouse
driver that is 100% compatible with the MicroSoft Mouse. Picture
Puzzle does not support the Mouse Systems mouse unless it is using the
a MicroSoft Mouse driver. Problems with incompatible mouse drivers
will show up with the cursor being inversed, or the screen displaying
erratic behavior with the movement of the mouse.
General Information
Picture Puzzle was written by myself (Dan Linton) and the
graphics puzzles where drawn by a friend of mine and a member of the
Software Creations BBS, Gary Sirois. The Program was written using
Turbo C++ from Borland International and the graphics user interface
was developed using Island Systems graphics-MENU.
Gary's Puzzles can all be recognized by the GLS logo that he puts
on all his pictures. Gary developed all the puzzles using Deluxe Paint
II and Deluxe Paint II Enhanced. The digitized pictures that you
receive with more of Gary's Puzzles on the registered copy where done
using my RCA video camera and the Computer Eyes Video Capture board
from Digital Vision. These pictures where photographs that were either
taken by Gary or my wife Ranele Linton.
Puzzle Formats
Picture Puzzle can load several types of Picture formats. There
are four of them all together. (.PUZ .PCX .GIF .SAV). Currently the
program only supports one resolution picture and that is 640x350x16.
That means any pictures that are 640 pixels wide by 350 pixels high
with 16 colors, and are in one of the above formats, can be loaded and
used by Picture Puzzle. In a later release to registered users I will
incorporate VGA ability (320x200x256) and SuperVGA (640x480x256,
800x600x256, and 1024x768x256). So be sure and get on the registered
list !
PUZ Files
Filenames that end with the suffix .PUZ are puzzles that are
stored in Picture Puzzle's own format. These files have more
information in them than a standard PCX or GIF file would have
and allow you to rescale the picture into a small help window in
the corner of the working puzzle screen. This allows you to see
the complete picture as well as what you are working on at the
same time. Kind of like looking at the picture on the puzzle
box. You will find that the PUZ files tend to be a bit larger
than the standard PCX and GIF type files due to the added
information.
These PUZ files are only created at Software Creations. You
can find the latest ones on the Software Creations BBS for
download. Or write to us for the full list of available PUZ file
libraries.
PCX Files (tm)
This is the most common of formats and was created by Zsoft
corporation for use with their PC Paintbrush program. This
format is in wide use today amoung many programs and is also
supported by Picture Puzzle. There are at least 6 different PCX
formats in use and there may be more. Picture Puzzle handles most
of these and will recognize the format it needs to use when
loading the picture. As with the other file formats Picture
Puzzle will check the resolution of the picture you are trying to
load to insure that it is one of the formats supported before it
loads it.
GIF Files (tm)
This format pronounced "JIF" is copyrighted by Compuserve
corporation and stands for the Graphics Interchange Format. Of
all the formats here this tends to take the least disk space due
to a compression technique known as the LZW algorithm and named
after the people who developed it. Picture Puzzle does support
the loading of GIF files, however, you must have another program
in order to use it. This program is called VPIC.exe and is
distributed as another shareware product by Bob Montgomery. VPIC
is not distributed with the Picture Puzzle program but can be
downloaded from most BBS systems, Compuserve and Software
Creations BBS. The minimum version should be Ver 2.1A. If Picture
Puzzle does not find a copy of Vpic.exe in the CURRENT DIRECTORY
when you try to load a GIF picture, then Picture Puzzle will not
attempt to load the picture and will give you a warning that it
could not find the vpic program.
As of this writing the latest version of the VPIC.exe program
can be found in a file called vpic40.zip on the Software
Creations BBS. You can register and obtain the latest copy from
the author Bob Montgomery at the following address:
Bob Montgomery
132 Parsons Road
Longwood, FL 32779
SAV Files
Because Picture Puzzle has the ability to save the puzzles
you are currently working on it made sense to create a special
format for saved puzzles. Not only can you tell that it is a
saved puzzle but it allowed us to save just the information that
is required to put you back where you left off, instead of saving
the whole picture again. This provides us with a tremendous disk
space savings. Puzzles that take almost 100k of disk space can be
saved in as little as 2.2k of space. Because we are saving just
the changes and not the picture, SAV files do require that you
have the original picture still on the disk when you go to save
it. So if you loaded a puzzle called pooch.puz and then saved it
as pooch.sav, when you go to load pooch.sav up at a later time,
Picture Puzzle will still have to find pooch.puz on the disk to
get the picture information that it did not save.
Using the Menus
There are three different ways of using the Menus in Picture
Puzzle. You can select menu items with the Mouse by pointing at the
item you would like. This will cause the item to either be selected or
inversed depending on the function being accessed. You can also use
the keyboard to select items in one of two ways. Either using Hot
Keys (Items which have the first letter of the name highlight) or by
using the arrow keys to move a highlighted cursor bar over to the item
you would like selected and hitting the enter key to select it.
Loading Puzzles
To load a Puzzle you must first select Load/Save on the Menu Bar.
When this window drops down you will be presented with three options,
Load Puzzle, Save Puzzle, View Stats. Select Load Puzzle on the
vertical menu either with the mouse or the keyboard. Loading a puzzle
takes two steps, you must first give it the path you want to load from
(The default is your current directory), and then the filename you
would like to load. This can all be done using the Mouse or the
Keyboard.
A window will pop up on the screen that asks you to enter your
filespec. What is a filespec? Well what the program is looking for
here is the path you want to load the puzzle from and any wildcards
you may want to use in locating the puzzles names. It will
automatically put a default filespec in of "*.puz".
This means that you want to see all the files that end in .puz in
the current directory. If you put A:\*.pcx, you would get on the .pcx
files on drive A:. Picture Puzzle supports the DOS convention for
wildcards. (I.E. " *.*" means all files, "?an.*" this means ignore the
first letter and the suffix). To find out more about DOS wildcarding
refer to the a good DOS book.
If the filespec entered cannot locate any files then you will be
returned to the main menu. If it does locate the files, another window
will pop up with the filename in it. This window is the file window
and has three buttons located on it at the bottom. These are Move,
Esc, and Enter.
Move - Will allow you to move the file window around on the
screen while the left mouse button is beig held down. The box around
the window will move until the button is released and then the rest of
the contents will be drawn.
Esc - This will Escape you out to the main menu without selecting
anything in the file selection window.
Enter - Enter is the same as hitting the return key. If you have
selected any of the files with the keyboard and it is highlighted then
the enter key will cause this selection to be accepted.
If a filename is selected which is not supported by the Picture
Puzzle Program then a window will pop up letting you know that this
file is the wrong file type. You will then be brought back to the
filespec window with your previous filespec still in tack. At this
point, you can either change your filespec or select it again.
(Hopefully this time selecting a different file.) Note: This type of
problem would only occur if you were use a wildcard specification that
allowed you to see none supported Picture Puzzle files, like *.*.
Saving Puzzles
Saving a Puzzle that you have been working on is very easy and
quick. Because Picture Puzzle only saves the changes that have been
made to the puzzle and not the whole picture again it takes very
little disk space and is fast. To save the puzzle, just select
Load/Save on the Menu Bar. When the vertical menu drops down select
Save Puzzle. Picture Puzzle will pop up a window and try to guess what
name you would like to save the puzzle to. If you had loaded a Puzzle
called pooch.puz and then tried to save it, Picture Puzzle would ask
you if you would like to save it as Pooch.sav. You can at this point,
type in a different name or accept the one Picture Puzzle selected.
All Puzzles that get saved will be saved as .sav files. Even if you
type in a different name the program will make sure it ends with .sav.
Once you have chosen a filename and accepted it, either by
hitting the enter key or hitting the left mouse button in the file
window, Picture Puzzle will check to see if that file already exists.
If there is already a file by that name then a Yes/No window will pop
up asking you if you would like to overwrite the file that is already
there. Selecting Yes will write the current puzzle over that file and
anything that was in the file previous to this will be lost! If you
select No then Picture Puzzle will pop the filespec window back up and
ask you for another path or name to save the Puzzle to.
Once you have loaded up a Puzzle, the program will keep track of
whether or not you have made any changes to the screen. If you have,
and you try and quit out of the program or if you try to Select a
different Puzzle Size, the program will ask if you would like to save
the Puzzle first. Otherwise, if you select No, then all the changes
made up to that point will be lost.
Resizing A Puzzle
This is one of the best features in Picture Puzzle. You can make
the Puzzle any size and shape you want by selecting Resize Grid on the
Grid Options Menu. This can also be done after the Puzzle has been
loaded, but this is like starting over because the Puzzle will be
re-scrambled from scratch. If the program detects that you have made
some moves and you are attempting to resize the Puzzle then you will
be asked if you want to save the current Puzzle.
Once you have selected this Option the screen will be cleared and
white Grid on a Blue background will appear. The grid will be the size
of the current Puzzle you are working on or the default size if no
Puzzle has been loaded. You must now use your arrow keys to change the
size of the Puzzle pieces. The Left and Right arrow keys will create
more or less pieces across the screen while the Up and Down arrow keys
will create more or less pieces from the top to the bottom of the
screen.
Once you have selected the size Puzzle you want, just hit the
enter key to accept the current grid. If you have done this from the
title screen and there is no Puzzle loaded then you will be asked for
a filespec and name so the program can load the Puzzle. If you
selected this option while a Puzzle was already loaded, then the
current Puzzle will be loaded to the new grid size.
Picture Recognition
Another feature that is unique to Picture Puzzle is its ability
to tell when you have the Puzzle done. Because you can resize the
Puzzle to any size you want, and because you can load any .PCX and
.GIF files that are around (As long as they have the correct
resolution), you could end up creating a Puzzle that has tons of tiles
that are all the same colors. For instance, what if you have put all
the pieces together that are different and have only blue sky tiles
left or lots of green grass tiles left. Well, Picture Puzzle can tell
that these tiles are not in the correct place, but the pieces that go
there are the same, so it will consider the Puzzle finished. The
program will only do this for pieces that are identical, and we do
mean identical. If the piece that belongs there and the current piece
have only one dot that is different, Picture Puzzle will consider them
as NOT being the same.
MColors
MColors is going to need some explaining. Picture Puzzle has the
unique ability to be able to have the Menu Bar pop up while you are
working on the Puzzle. This makes it really easy to select things from
the Menu Bar with the Mouse while you are working on your Puzzle.
Picture Puzzle also lets you load any Puzzles with any colors
whatsoever. Because each picture that is loaded can change the color
palettes the Menu Bar uses, you could load a picture which uses colors
that make it very hard to see the Menu Bars text, if at all. So by
selecting Mcolors you can cycle the Menu Bars colors through the
current Palette until you find colors that are to your liking. These
colors will also be saved with the Puzzle if you save it to work on at
a later time.
MColors can be selected in several ways. The first is just to
point to the Label MColors on the Menu Bar and click the left Mouse
Button. Each time you click on the MColors label you will cycle the
menu colors to the next set on the palette. This can also be achieved
by using the M key on the Keyboard. Each time the M key is typed the
colors will also change. That is because M is the HOT KEY for this
selection on the Menu Bar. The third and final method for selection
would be to use the arrow keys to move the highlighted selector on the
Menu Bar to the MColors Label. Just passing over this label will
cause it to change, so care should be taken not to pass through this
selection unless you want to change your menu colors. You can quickly
cycle through the possible menu colors by using the right and left
arrow keys to toggle back and forth over this selection.
Grid Options
Grid On/Off
You may not like using the grid in Picture Puzzle while
working on building your picture. If this is the case, then you
can shut it off by selecting "Grid Off" on the Grid Options menu.
You may also want to just turn it off to help you locate a puzzle
piece that was harder to find with the grid covering some of the
pattern. In either case you can turn the Puzzles grid on and off
as you like.
If you do not want to go to the bother of bringing up the
Menu Bar and selecting On or Off under Grid Options you can use
the F8 Function key to turn the Grid On and Off.
Grid Colors
Because different graphics Pictures use different palettes
from which their colors are chosen, it is hard to tell what grid
colors will be best for that picture. You can change the grid
color to something that would be easier on your eyes and suits
you better. Use the Grid Options Menu and select "Colors". Once
you have chosen this selection, each time you hit the left Mouse
Button or type a key on the keyboard (other than the return key),
the Grid color will cycle to the next color in the current
palette. Once you have a color that you are happy with, just
click on the right mouse button or hit the return key to keep
that grid color, and go back to working on the Puzzle.
If you do not want to go to the bother of bringing up the
Menu Bar and selecting colors from the grid menu you can just use
the F7 function key to cycle to the grid color you like.
Grid CrossHair
Each time you select a tile on the Puzzle Screen with the
Mouse, the tile you have selected is indicated by a crosshair
that pops up in that tile. If the piece you have selected is in
the correct place then the tile is considered locked and the
program will not let you select it. So if you select a tile and
do not get the crosshair on it, that means you are not able to
move that piece and must select another. This can also happen if
you have picked up a piece and are trying to drop it on a piece
that is in the correct place. The program will not let you drop
your tile on a piece that is in the correct location. You will
then have to select a different place to drop the tile.
If you have selected a tile, indicated by the crosshair being
present on that piece, and you decide that is not the piece you
want to move, just click on that piece again and the crosshair
will disappear indicating that the piece has been dropped. There
is no penalty for doing this and stats screen will not indicate
that a move has been made.
The Crosshair can also be made any color you like by hitting
the F9 Function Key. Understand though that you can only change
the color of the Crosshair while it is visible, so you must have
a tile selected to change it. This crosshair color will also be
saved with the Puzzle if it is stored for later use.
Help Windows
There are two different modes of help in the program. This makes
for a wide variety of ways in which you can figure out how to get that
Puzzle built. One of these modes however, Windowed Help, can only be
used with PUZ files because of the information those files have that
allow you to use that mode.
Windowed Help
This mode, when selected, will scale the Puzzle into a window
in one of the four corners of the Puzzle screen. It allows you to
see the complete picture of the Puzzle while you are looking at
the screen you are working on. The window will be one quarter the
size of the full screen and when it opens it will locate itself
in the opposite corner from which you are working. It can tell by
the last move you made where it should relocate itself. Windowed
help can also be selected with the F1 function key while on the
Puzzle screen, but not the title screen. Windowed help only works
with Puz files.
Full Screen Help
The full screen help I call Cheat Mode. This is really a give
away. The entire Puzzle screen will be redrawn with all the tiles
in their correct place so that you can see where they go. This
mode I would suggest you use on only those real tough pieces. To
use this mode just select Help on the Menu Bar (While on the
Puzzle Screen, NOT the Title Screen) and select Full Screen Help.
Once the screen has been redrawn, just hit any key or a mouse
button to continue. You can also select the Full Screen Help
using the F2 Function Key.
Finding A Tile
On some of the really big Puzzles it can be very hard finding
a certain tile. Well, there is a way you can get help finding it,
but it will cost you! If you select a tile and then hit the SHIFT
F1, the tile that belongs where the tile you have selected is,
will be moved there. You will hear two double beeps in the
speaker and it will be counted as an incorrect move. (After all,
we can't let you have credit for that one!).
There is of course another variation to this. You can select a
tile and hit ALT F1, and that will put the tile you have selected
where it belongs. Again you will get the double beep and receive
NO credit for finding that tile. This can be a little confusing
but once you get the hang of it, it is a very helpful feature for
those tough ones. Just remember, once you have selected a tile
(the crosshair is on the tile), you are either going to move that
tile where it belongs or move the tile that belongs there to that
spot.
Function Keys
The function keys can be used in place of the menus or hot keys
while working on the Puzzle. They allow you to select things a little
faster than if you have to pop up the menu, scroll to that function
and then select it. Not everything can be selected from the function
keys, just options that would be used while in a Puzzle.
The function keys CANNOT be used while the Menu Bars are on the
screen, simply because they have their own Hot Keys used to select
items on the menu faster. (The first letter of each word on the Menus
is highlighted for this purpose). The Function Keys for Picture Puzzle
have the following definitions.
F1 - Windowed Help F2 - Full Screen Help
F3 - Sound Off/On F4 - Load Picture
F5 - Save Picture F6 - Stats Window
F7 - Grid Color F8 - Grid On/Off
F9 - Crosshair Color F10 - Quit
ALT F1 - Find Tile SHIFT F1 - Place Tile
Sound
Sound in Picture Puzzle can be disabled or enabled. There will be
one low beep that lets you know that you have disabled the sound. When
the sound is enabled you will get various tones throughout the
building of a Puzzle. These tones will become more familiar as you use
the program.
Scramble
Scrambling will sound just like scrambling. For every tile
that is being placed on the screen a random sound will be heard.
No matter how big or small the Puzzle or the pieces, the range of
the sound will be adjusted.
Load
During a load you will again get a sound for every tile that
is being placed on the screen. This time however, the tones will
be incremented up the scale as the pieces are being saved.
Tile Correct
This is a very distinctive sound that starts low and goes to
a higer frequency very quickly to let you know that you have
placed that tile in the correct place.
Tile Locked
This is a very quick double click to let you know that this
piece cannot be picked up or moved by placing another piece on
the top of it. You will also know from the fact that the
crosshair will be visible in a tile that is in the proper place
(Locked).
Tile Moved
This is a single click that lets you know the pieces have
been moved or swapped but the tile that you picked up was NOT
placed in the correct position. If the tile that is swapped out
with the tile you selected lands in the proper place you will not
get the Tile Correct sound because it was not the tile you
selected. It was just moved by the one you selected, and happened
to move in the correct spot.
Find A Tile
Both the ALT F1 and the SHIFT F1 have a distinct sound. It
is a double beep that is quickly evident. If you are going to
cheat we might as well tell the world !
Viewing Your Stats
The stats screen is a real handy thing to have and can be popped
up on the screen at any time, even before you load a Puzzle. This
screen will always let you know where you are in the Building of your
Puzzle. You get to the stats screen by selecting the Load/Save item on
the Menu Bar at the top of the screen. You may have to use the right
mouse button or the ESC key to pop the Menu Bar up. At the Bottom of
the Load/Save vertical menu you will see View Stats (Sorry it was an
afterthought!). When the window comes up it will indicate the
following statistics:
Puzzle Size:
The Puzzle size is the number of pieces across as well as the
number of pieces down. The default grid size is 16 x 7 which will
give you 16 pieces across the Puzzle and 7 down. That is a total
of 112 pieces. You can have a Puzzle that is as small as 2 x 2 or
as large as 40 x 35 which would give you a 1400 piece Puzzle.
Number of Pieces:
This will show you how many pieces are in your Puzzle. The
default size is 112 pieces. The grid can be adjusted to have a
minimum of a 4 piece puzzle or a maximum of a 1400 piece puzzle.
Moves to Finish:
Indicates how many pieces are in the wrong place, which tells
you how many moves it would take to finish. This, of course, can
be beat because you could put a piece in the correct location and
may bump the piece that was there into its correct spot also.
Total Moves:
This is the total number of moves you have made on the Puzzle
so far, including both Correct and In-Correct moves. If you pick
a piece up however, and drop it in the same place you picked it
up, it is NOT considered a move.
Correct Moves:
Indicates how many pieces you have picked up and then
dropped in the correct place.
Incorrect Moves:
Indicates how many pieces you have picked up and then
dropped in the wrong place.
Most times a single piece was moved:
Keep your eye on this statistic as it may surprise you !
This will keep track of how many times you have moved any single
piece. The program will keep track of how many times each piece
has been moved. It then uses the value for the piece that was
moved the most. This does not indicate how many times a piece has
been moved in a row, it indicates the most times a single piece
has been moved.
Number of times the help screen was used:
This will track the number of times that you have used the
help function. Whether you use Windowed Help or the Full Screen
help, it will be counted. It will not however, count the number
of times you use the SHIFT F1 or the ALT F1 (Find A Tile).
Number of times the Puzzle was saved:
This indicates how many times you have saved the Puzzle. It
is helpful when you work on the really large Puzzles and want to
know how many times you have come back to it.
Command Line Options
Picture Puzzle allows you to select your Puzzle right on the
command line if you prefer. Just type the name of the Puzzle you want
right after you type Puzzle to start the program. Picture Puzzle will
however, bring up the title screen first and then when you hit the
return key it will proceed to load your Puzzle. The only limitation is
that it will be the default grid that is used unless you have
specified a .SAV Puzzle which will load whatever grid size it was
saved with. All formats will work in this manner, but be sure to give
a valid Puzzle filename or the program will just exit when it finds
out that it cannot load the Puzzle. The following are a couple of
examples for loading a Puzzle from the commandline.
Puzzle pooch.puz - Load the Pooch.Puz Puzzle
Puzzle hplane.gif - Load the HydroPlane Puzzle
Title Screen
The title screen is the first screen you will see when you start
up Picture Puzzle. It will come up whether you have specified a Puzzle
on the command line or not.
You will see the title box for Picture Puzzle at the top of the
screen and then a window will pop up below the title box with a scaled
down version of one of the Puzzles in it. The Puzzle will sit there
and scramble itself randomly into all different sizes until you hit
the return key to move on. REMEMBER however, once you do hit the
return key, give the Puzzle a chance to finish scrambling the screen
that it is on !
Next, if you have an unregistered copy of Picture Puzzle a
window, will pop up with all the registration information in it.
Along with this window, at the top of the screen will be a Menu Bar
that will allow you to select where to go from here. A couple of
things are different on the title screen Menu Bar than on the Puzzle
Screen Menu Bar. Those are the Info and Help Selections. The Info
Selection drops down a menu that has all kinds of information screens
about how Picture Puzzle was written, by whom it was developed, how to
register, how Picture Puzzle is supported, and a special thanks
section. This same information is provided later in this manual in
more detail. The Help selection drops a window down that will allow
you to select help on most any features and modes in the Picture
Puzzle program. This is the Online help section. If you have not read
all of the sections in this manual, or just need a refresher on a few
things, that is the place to look.
Puzzle Screen
The Puzzle screen is used after a Puzzle has been loaded into the
system and is ready to be worked on. Like the title screen, you can
pop up the Menu Bar and select items with the mouse just like you did
on the title screen. However, two of the selections on the Menu Bar
are different when you are located on the Puzzle screen. On the
Puzzle screen's Menu Bar "Info" has been changed to MColors (See the
MColors section) and the "Help" selection still says help, but instead
of dropping a vertical menu down that has parts of the manual in it,
it now is used for getting the Windowed or Full screen help.
Once you are on the Puzzle screen the Menu Bar can be popped up
by clicking on the Right Mouse Button. Once up, a selection can be
made or you can just point to pieces of the puzzle and start moving
them. The Menu Bar will know when it is supposed to go away. If you
click on the Menu Bar in a place that does not select any of the
labels, the Menu Bar will disappear and the tile underneath will be
selected. If you find that this was not what you intended to do just
click on the selected tile again and the move will be cancelled.
Support
Software Creations BBS is the 24 hour, 7 day a week, support
board for Picture Puzzle. Picture Puzzle can however, be found on
other quality BBS systems such as Xevious and Channel 1. Software
Creations carries more than 50 conferences, echo mail from all over
the world, a Games Gallery with Online MultiPlayer games, and Online
Order Door, and over 1 Gigabye of great programs for download and
evaluation. For access to the Software Creations BBS use one of the
following access lines:
(508) 365-2359 - USR HST 9600/14.4k
(508) 365-9668 - USR Dual Standard 9600/14.4k
(508) 365-9669 - 2400 MNP 5
Special Thanks
You can't write a program like Picture Puzzle without having some
people to thank. Without these people this program would have either
taken a lot longer or not existed at all. They are as follows:
Gary Sirois (Pooch, Ski, Hplane, Swan, Lemond, etc, etc)
Gary has done more than a fantastic job on all of the Puzzle
Pictures. This allowed me to release Picture Puzzle to you with
all of our own original Pictures. Gary drew these Pictures all by
hand using Deluxe Paint II and Deluxe Paint II Enhanced. If you
have an interest in using some of Gary's Graphics or his color
clipart collection, he can be found on the Software Creations
BBS. Gary has also created several disks full of great Puzzles.
Nels Anderson (Mah Jongg, Shooting Gallery, SuperFly, etc)
I can't count the times Nels has given me advice and
encouragement. In writing Shareware, and with my own Software
Creations BBS. Without Nels Software Creations would not have
been where it is today. Nels is the Sysop of XEVIOUS, the support
board for his and Dick Olsen's software products. They have been
producing quality software now for several years and supporting
the shareware industry. You can try their programs by calling
Xevious at (508) 875-3618. Or get them from the Software
Creations BBS.
Dick Olsen (BassTour, Tikler, etc)
Along with Nels, Dick gave me many tips, hints and pointers
on putting out good Shareware. Dick's programs are of very high
standards and are among the first programs you should look for
when trying to find quality software for your enjoyment.
Samatha Anderson
Samatha is the daughter to a very close friend of mine. He
mentioned to me one day that she really liked playing with the
mouse on his computer but didn't really have anything she could
use it with that would be simple for her. Thats how Picture
Puzzle got started. Thank-You Sammi ! (Note: No Relation to Nels
!)
Helpful Hints
What are valid paths ?
Here are some examples:
C:\PPuzzle\Puzzles\*.puz
Finds all the puz files in the directory Puzzles from the root
directory on drive C.
If you are already in the directory PPuzzles you can just type
\Puzzles\*.puz and it will find them also.
*.gif will locate all the gif files in the current
directory.
Resizing the Puzzle :
If you have loaded and already scrambled the Puzzle but
decided that you did not want that size, you can still change it.
Before you make any moves just reselect the Resize Grid Option
again, select another size grid and reload the puzzle. This can
be done as many times as you want. It's better to reload and
resize before you move any pieces on the screen, because you will
just loose those moves anyway unless you save them as another
Puzzle.
Sometimes the grid can hide things
You may notice while you are building a Puzzle that you think
the picture is all done and the tiles that are left are all the
same. If the grid did not remove itself from the screen then the
Puzzle is not complete yet. There are still pieces that are
different. The difference may be hidden under the grid. You can
select the grid OFF option and look at the tiles again. This
will clearly indicate which of the pieces are different.
Trademarks & Copyrights
PUZ files are developed by
Dan Linton for Picture Puzzles
PCX files & PC Paintbrush are
developments of ZSoft corporation.
GIF and 'Graphics Interchange Format' are trademarks of
CompuServe, Incorporated.
an H&R Block Company
IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines.
Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Turbo C++ is a registered trademark of Borland International, Inc.
Graphics-Menu (tm) is a trademark of Island Systems.