Forums

Thank you Johan for the crafting the Fillomino applet. It is really beautiful.

I have a few usability suggestions; I'll post each one as a separate post so it will be easier to keep track of them.
Please don't think this means I don't like your work; I like it, and I really appreciate it.

The use of borders as connectors is beautiful. Also, it can really help new Fillomino solvers to get the idea.
There are almost no cases where manually adding the connector is helpful for the solving the puzzle; after all if, you placed a connector next to a solved cell, it means you can immediately solve the cell it connects to. There are relatively few cases where you would want to indicate that adjacent empty cells must have the same value.
For these reasons I think these connectors should be automatic.
If the choosing the color of the connector automatically is an issue you can peak a neutral one, or average the RGB values of the two cells.

In my opinion, separators are much more helpful to the solution process than connector, therefore the left click should be for separation, not connection.

Dragging black cells would be really helpful, especially when large numbers are placed there. This way one wouldn't normally need the keyboard shortcut, and can only use the mouse.
The color of the target cell should, of course, be determined by the current user color.

Dragging a number is the easiest way to fill a cell.
If a user changed the color he is solving the puzzle and then uses dragging, I don't think that he usually wants to change the color of the original cell; he just wants to save time and effort.

Thanks for your suggestions! And for your compliments too.

rantash wrote:

I think these connectors should be automatic.

Automatic elements are indeed something that we have on our list. I think it would be really useful in many genres; for example, in battleships or snakes puzzles it would be useful if the pieces you fill in take the right appearance based on the neighbouring cells, instead of the user having to click x times on it.

rantash wrote:

Dragging black cells would be really helpful.

Dragging from given numbers is also an interesting suggestion. I can see how Fillomino would benefit from that, and while it seems less useful for most other genres it wouldn't hurt either.

Both of these require some major changes to the applet though, and we have not been working on it for a while now. But we do plan to redesign the applet eventually, and when we do, we will definitely take these into account.

As for your other suggestions, they are easier to implement, but perhaps more subject to preference. Therefore I would like to hear other people's opinions on them...

rantash wrote:

Left click should be for separation, not connection.

Personally, I think it is more consistent to have the numbers and connectors both on the same (left) mouse button, since they are both "positive" elements, while the separator is a "negative" element.

rantash wrote:

If a user changed the color he is solving the puzzle and then uses dragging, I don't think that he usually wants to change the color of the original cell.

This may be reasonable. But it could also be confusing. I'm not sure on this one...

Thanks again for the feedback!

rantash wrote:

Thank you Johan for the crafting the Fillomino applet. It is really beautiful.

Maarten is the one responsible for the beauty of this Fillomino implementation.

Ok, then, Thank you Maarten.

Maarten wrote:

rantash wrote:

Left click should be for separation, not connection.

Personally, I think it is more consistent to have the numbers and connectors both on the same (left) mouse button, since they are both "positive" elements, while the separator is a "negative" element.

I agree with Maarten here, it's more logical the way it is.

On another note, I'm not very used to seeing the solution to a fillomino with filled-in cells and white numbers. I'm not sure whether that affects my solving, though.