Quick suggestion

[muskratio]

I love these puzzles! Very fun, interesting logic. I have one suggestion (and I hope such a thing is welcome - if not, my apologies!): I wish the eliminated squares stood out more, instead of just having a small dot in them. Often enough I get to the end of the puzzle and I have to search for the final open square that needs a star, because it's hard to see in the sea of eliminated squares. If the circles were a fair amount larger, or if the eliminated squares were darkened, or if there was something else to help distinguish them when looking at the whole board, that would be extremely helpful.

Cheers!

edit for a quick question: If a hint says "(NEEDS FLESHING OUT)", is that an internal note?

[admin]

Thanks for the feedback! I will see what options I can come up with that might make the eliminated squares more visible at a glance.

"NEEDS FLESHING OUT" is indeed an internal note that a certain type of hint needs additional work - usually it will happen in an instance when the only logical move that's left is quite complex and relatively difficult for the script to put into human-readable English. In theory that shouldn't ever get displayed but since it has I have obviously missed something - I'll add some debug code to the hint engine tonight to log when this happens so I can go back and apply the necessary patch.

EDIT: Eliminated square dots have now been increased in size by about 80%.

[muskratio]

Thank you! That's a big help!

And re: the hint note, that makes sense. I've only come across it once (well, a few times, but only during one puzzle - on one of the 14x14 3-star boards). At the time I was definitely stuck on the logic, and didn't understand why I should be able to figure out what it was telling me was true, haha. Not a big deal at all, of course!

[Unikittycornastegasaurus]

I wholly concur with this suggestion! I was thinking that just last night. I really wish you could fully black out or grey out all eliminated squares by a toggle switch or something. Then you could undo the toggle switch and have the board go back to showing dots.

Also really, really, really, REALLY wish there could be a pause button. Blacking out the board while paused would be fine and would disallow using the pause to simply get a better time.

A checking mechanism would be nice, too. I LOVE how the hints work and how they teach you the logic instead of randomly filling in a space. But sometimes I want to make sure I've not made a careless error instead of needing to know a hint.

Overall, really GREAT puzzle! I am loving Star Battles!!!!

[admin]

Re: fully blacking out squares, I'll think about that a bit. Would like to give the new elimination dot size a chance first to see how things improve and then iterate from there. My concern with fully blacking out squares is that you might then lose visuals on shapes/colors, and I don't want to add extra toggle buttons to the board if it can be avoided.

I do agree that a "Check Errors" button would be helpful, especially on the larger, more complicated puzzles. Will add that to my list.

Pausing games, unfortunately, is not an option - we had that in the past with other puzzles, but players would simply take a screenshot, pause the game, solve it at their leisure from the screenshot, then unpause it and fill in the solution straight away for an absurdly low score. It ruins any sense of fair competition.

Thanks for the feedback!

[muskratio]

I agree that fully blacking out squares risks confusion by blocking information; I'm not a fan of that idea. For me personally, the larger circles are a HUGE improvement, and if that were the only change made I'd be pretty happy. However, IMO tinting the squares darker (in addition to the dots) would be very helpful as well, just because it would aid in separating an eliminated square from one next to it in the same shape at a glance. It's not a big deal anymore (and perhaps some other solution would be better, this is just my thought) - I'd say 80-90% of the problem has been solved for me with the bigger dots - but I do still sometimes find myself staring at a puzzle, unable to figure out what to do next, and resorting to clicking the hint button... only to find out that there's an incredibly obvious next step that I just failed to see, like there's only one open space left in a row for a needed star. That said, I'm not actually a smart person (just a dumb person who happens to enjoy logic puzzles!), so I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a problem for other people!

On an unrelated note, is there a way to re-solve puzzles you've already solved (but not for a time or points, of course)? This is extremely unimportant and if it doesn't already exist please don't worry about it, but occasionally I find myself wanting to go back through a puzzle and follow my logic again to see if it actually made sense.

And finally, I just want to say that I love how smooth solving puzzles on this website always feels. Filling in the squares is viscerally satisfying (not just this puzzle - most/all of the other puzzles are equally satisfying, though I definitely have my favorites). I also agree that the hint system is great. The hints are remarkably clearly explained and were a great help at the start when I was trying to work my way through the premise. I also really appreciate the "start over" button, as a person without the patience to trace back through everything I've already done if I suddenly notice an error! Haha.

Cheers!

[admin]

> On an unrelated note, is there a way to re-solve puzzles you've already solved?

Not currently. I have an idea for a future feature that will allow you to "Challenge a friend", where after solving a puzzle, you can generate a unique URL that can be shared via email or social media and anyone who wants to try to match or beat your time can try that exact puzzle via that link. (Obviously times/statistics wouldn't be saved for any of those games since solution-sharing would be an easy way to cheat.) This would essentially function as what you're looking for, you'd just use your own generated url to re-access the puzzle.

Many thanks for the feedback and kind words - always extremely satisfying to see people enjoying the site!

[Unikittycornastegasaurus]

Thanks for the quick reply!!!!!! I totally understand why there's no pause now.

I hadn't realized when I wrote the other night, but the circles are larger and it helps A LOT!!!!!!!!! It makes seeing eliminated squares easier. It has helped, but not completely eliminated the problem of trying to see things like when a row is totally eliminated save for 2 squares. Like Muskratio, I too stare at the board forever and then click a hint and find out I missed something obvious. I seriously doubt that we're the only 2 people having that problem! I really like the idea of tinting the squares darker. BTW, Muskratio, I consider myself smart and if you are doing these puzzles you are a smart person too!

Eventually, if you play enough of these puzzles, you will get one that you previously completed. I play Numberlinks quite a lot and sometimes I finish one of those only to find that I made a great time months ago and my second try didn't come near. Of course, there is no way to know whether you did that puzzle before; it's totally random.

Anyway, thanks for another great puzzle. I LOVE Star Battles. It's my new favorite puzzle!!