Sphaero Jigsaw at Sourceforge

Description

Sphaero is an extensible Java jigsaw puzzle application. It supports any image of reasonable size, piece rotation (0/90/180/270 currently), and customizable cutting style (squares, "classic" cuts, etc.).

A while back, I started looking around on the web at various online jigsaw puzzle applications. None of them had quite what I wanted: a combination of

• classic pieces (knobs and holes; the sort you'd see in popular non-electronic puzzles)
• rotatable pieces
• randomly generated cuts
• large numbers of pieces, if desired (1000 and beyond)
• fairly large size
• open source

Downloading:

Basic Instructions:

I'm going to assume you know how to compile Java software, and have an environment set up for it.

The Java files are all in the same package: net.sf.sphaero.

If you just want to try out the software, the easiest way is to run JigsawFrontEnd. I recommend extra heap space if you're going to use an image of, say, 800x600 or larger pixels:

  java -Xmx256m net.sf.sphaero.JigsawFrontEnd

NOTE: You're going to have to supply your own image file(s). Just pull some off the web if you don't have any.

Future Improvement:

If you want to help with the project, the bug that's caused me the most grief is the memory bug. See JigsawFrame.java for a description. Other improvements include

• better piece cutting - the classic cutter sometimes leaves "pinhole" gaps between pieces (you'll know them when you see them)
• implementing completely free rotation
• a web applet version
• code to play a nice "thunk" sound whenever pieces are joined
• more JigsawCutters!

Enjoy!

- Paul Brinkley (paulbrinkley@sourceforge.net) 20031229 23:02