Game board upgraded

[admin]

Hello! I've gotten this message shown in the image attached for quite a few times now. It shows right after I solve a puzzle instead of the stats and leaderboard for that puzzle. Was wondering if this is a bug related to the new update?

Hmm, I will do more testing in iPad to see if there is a possible issue here. Thanks for the screenshot!

[Mr.Rutter]

Some of the game play has been improved, but the board itself is too visually busy now. I'm curious what was the rationale behind changing from the black and yellow squares? Visually, i find this update difficult to play and am frustrated by the change.

[admin]

I've removed the red X's now and just left yellow boxes, as it was before.

[jacqui583]

I've removed the red X's now and just left yellow boxes, as it was before.

Thanks for going back to the yellow boxes. However, the shade of yellow is now very pale and hard to see as opposed to the bright yellow that it used to be. I hate to sound nit-picky but can we make the yellow darker?

[BytePride]

It should be a bit more responsive now

So, not to be nitpicky, but there is one way in which it is not more responsive - it does not immediately know when you have completed the game. When I'm filling in the last square of the game, particularly in 5x5, I generally click both left and right mouse buttons in quick succession - this would guarantee ending the game regardless of what the square actually should have been. Now it does not register if the square is supposed to be filled and I quickly click between it being filled and empty. There is clearly a slight delay between clicking and it actually ending the game, probably about a quarter second.

This *mostly* isn't a big deal but on very easy and moderate 5x5s where the records are generally between 7 and 10 seconds, that's actually a pretty long time and will regularly be the difference between a record and yet another tie.

[JJBeanie]

I'm a casual player of numbergrids and am not a speed player by any stretch of the imagination, so what I do/don't like might be totally different to the regular and/or speed players.

Old Android Phone: The changes work well on my phone, however when I'm filling columns with an upward motion, the whole screen scroll upwards. Not a big deal because I'm sure I'll quickly get used to only filling columns downwards. The rows don't scroll at all.

Desktop/Laptop only

Overall: There isn't much that I like about the changes on the desktop/laptop versions. Would it be possible to have an option to play using the old version?

Specifically:

A) The game selection screen:

1) The look of the new selection screen doesn't jibe well with the screens that follow it. The old one is better.
2) The selection screen is too big. I need to either scroll or reduce my screen size to 55%
3) I have to scroll down to change the difficulty level then scroll up to see the total points available, and continue the up/down scrolling until I find the difficulty level/potential point combo I'm happy with. Then one final scroll down to start the game. Ok, so that was a bit overdramatic on my part. Usually I select the same grid/difficulty for every game, so it would be nice if there was another green "start puzzle" higher up (maybe above the grid size section).

B) The game play screen:

I'll call the area where the numbers are the edges and the area inside the edges I'll call the play area.

1) I like that the edges are blue and easy to see. Previously the grey was too pale and often hard to see. The blue is perfect.
2) I like the click/tap mode features. It means that I can now use the laptop touchpad to click and drag to confirm empty cells instead of doing each cell individually. Great change!
3) I like that undo now reverses the whole move rather than one cell per click. Another great change.

4) I don't like the blue column/row highlighting in the playing area for a few reason:

• It changes the colour of the cells already filled in - grey becomes black, pale yellow becomes an even paler yellow,
• If only one cell is selected, the blue highlighting stays until the mouse or touchpad is moved. It doesn't remain highlighted if multiple cells are selected,
• When selecting a single cell, the highlighting makes the whole row and column flash. When selecting singles cells quickly, the flashing becomes irritating, especially when playing in low light,
• There's no need for the play area to be highlighted after a selection is made. Actually, I can't see any reason for the highlighting to be in the play area at all. Just the edges being highlighted is fine.

5) The chosen yellow is too pale. It becomes even paler when the highlighting is over it which at times makes a surrounded white square look the paler yellow, too.

6) I don't like the crossing out of a completed edge because it makes it easier to find errors. In my opinion, that "dumbs" the game down. If I've completed a board but the results screen doesn't appear, I know I've made a mistake. Part of the challenge is finding where the error/s occurred. Now, it's easy to see where a mistake has been made simply because of the edges have not been crossed out as can be seen in the following screenshots:

image.pngimage.pngimage.png

The last screenshot, has a few errors. Fixing the last black cell in the 11,2 row will make that row error free and crossed out. The 2,1,1 column will still be uncrossed and the 8,1,1 column will become uncrossed, indicating more errors are in the grid. The other errors are really easy to find because this feature is narrowing your attention to problem areas. One positive, I guess, is that my solve time will go down.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth.

[admin]

Excellent feedback, thank you! I agree with many of your suggestions and have made the following changes:

1. Changed the game initialization page back to the original layout, only updated the code on the sliders to make them a bit more user friendly, especially in mobile

2. Eliminated ALL in-grid blue highlighting on mouseover and click/tap. I agree, it was making the gameplay area too busy.

Hope this helps! Thanks again for the feedback.

I am going to look deeper into this issue:

"when I'm filling columns with an upward motion, the whole screen scroll upwards. Not a big deal because I'm sure I'll quickly get used to only filling columns downwards."

Stephen

[JJBeanie]

Cheers, Stephen. I've played a couple of games since and it looks and plays so much better.