This is a great app for playdate! I do have one piece of feedback: the crank to select letters is too sensitive. I have to very carefully go back and forth to arrive at the right letter, and sometimes my crank moves on its own while I’m navigating the puzzle, causing erroneous letters entered.
Would it be possible to use the system keyboard instead, such that I can enter words, backspace, etc. with it and then press okay? E.g. I press A on a Down entry, then the system keyboard pops open, and starting always from the start of that Down entry, I can use the system keyboard to enter the entire entry.
I would expect the big difficulty would be clues which span the entire screen or clues to the far right, since the system keyboard takes up the right hand side of the screen. Shifting the entire board to the left such as to keep the current selected grid cell always visible might solve this.
In addition, the standard playdate UX is to be able to scroll lists (especially long ones) with the crank. It would be nice to have this for the Puzzles list because it can get quite long, and pressing the D-pad down so many times in a row can get tiring.
Do you have any interest in releasing the source code? I would be more than happy to implement these features.
Thank you so much for releasing the source code! If possible, could you declare the license of the code in that repository? (If you are not familiar with doing so, adding a file License.txt with e.g. the MIT License would be excellent.)
Forgive my hijacking Floydhayes' comment, but I've unzipped the puzzle archive and, as outlined in the readme, copied the three folders (variety, daily, and bonus) to the PLAYDATE\Data\com.bwit.crossword\puzzles\ folder (and I can use my file explorer to navigate to the .puz files on the PD when I have the PD in Disk Mode), but when I launch Crossword, I only see the two built-in puzzles. Is there a refresh function in the game itself that I'm overlooking? Thank you (and Floydhayes :)
Hi Andy. If you are not seeing the folders you created I would guess that you are running V1.00 of the app which didn't have folder support. Please be sure you are running the current version of Crossword and let me know one way or the other if that solves the problem. You can determine the version you are using by going to Settings -> Games -> Crossword on the Playdate.
One more I would add is zoom out, so I can see the entire puzzle. This might make it too small for some, but navigation is a bit frustrating at times (just a bit though. Still loving this). It being able to recognize folder paths in the "Puzzles" folder would be great too, but not sure how realistic this is
Zooming out most of the puzzles make them nearly unreadable, at least for me. In addition, making the puzzle playable at various sizes is, apparently, beyond my abilities. At any rate I'm not going to attempt it. Sorry. Support for folders is in the current release on itch.io.
Thanks for the feedback. I've heard this from others as well and I have a version currently in test that should address the clue font size. Look for it in a few days.
I've done a few puzzles on this already, and I can confirm it's amazing. I'm going to sink SO MUCH TIME into crosswords on the Playdate. It's a perfect form factor in my hands, I can carry it everywhere in my pocket, and there's no distracting notifications nor temptation to google for answers like with a phone app. Thanks for making a killer app for this handheld.
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This is a great app for playdate! I do have one piece of feedback: the crank to select letters is too sensitive. I have to very carefully go back and forth to arrive at the right letter, and sometimes my crank moves on its own while I’m navigating the puzzle, causing erroneous letters entered.
Would it be possible to use the system keyboard instead, such that I can enter words, backspace, etc. with it and then press okay? E.g. I press A on a Down entry, then the system keyboard pops open, and starting always from the start of that Down entry, I can use the system keyboard to enter the entire entry.
I would expect the big difficulty would be clues which span the entire screen or clues to the far right, since the system keyboard takes up the right hand side of the screen. Shifting the entire board to the left such as to keep the current selected grid cell always visible might solve this.
In addition, the standard playdate UX is to be able to scroll lists (especially long ones) with the crank. It would be nice to have this for the Puzzles list because it can get quite long, and pressing the D-pad down so many times in a row can get tiring.
Do you have any interest in releasing the source code? I would be more than happy to implement these features.
Thank you so much for releasing the source code! If possible, could you declare the license of the code in that repository? (If you are not familiar with doing so, adding a file License.txt with e.g. the MIT License would be excellent.)
Please contact me offline: bwit@pobox.com
so good of you to take on board and react to comments. It’s appreciated !
I love this! Am I missing something but only see 3 puzzles? Are there more to download. In any case, great job!
This is documented in the read.me file.
thanks - I couldn’t make head nor tail of it but I’ll keep at it :)
Be happy to help if you can be more specific about the problems you are having.
Forgive my hijacking Floydhayes' comment, but I've unzipped the puzzle archive and, as outlined in the readme, copied the three folders (variety, daily, and bonus) to the PLAYDATE\Data\com.bwit.crossword\puzzles\ folder (and I can use my file explorer to navigate to the .puz files on the PD when I have the PD in Disk Mode), but when I launch Crossword, I only see the two built-in puzzles. Is there a refresh function in the game itself that I'm overlooking? Thank you (and Floydhayes :)
Hi Andy. If you are not seeing the folders you created I would guess that you are running V1.00 of the app which didn't have folder support. Please be sure you are running the current version of Crossword and let me know one way or the other if that solves the problem. You can determine the version you are using by going to Settings -> Games -> Crossword on the Playdate.
This is fantastic, just add crank to scroll through letters and it will be perfect
Coming soon with, hopefully some other requested features.
One more I would add is zoom out, so I can see the entire puzzle. This might make it too small for some, but navigation is a bit frustrating at times (just a bit though. Still loving this). It being able to recognize folder paths in the "Puzzles" folder would be great too, but not sure how realistic this is
Zooming out most of the puzzles make them nearly unreadable, at least for me. In addition, making the puzzle playable at various sizes is, apparently, beyond my abilities. At any rate I'm not going to attempt it. Sorry. Support for folders is in the current release on itch.io.
would love love love a ways to see the clues Ina larger font somehow . :)
Thanks for the feedback. I've heard this from others as well and I have a version currently in test that should address the clue font size. Look for it in a few days.
I've done a few puzzles on this already, and I can confirm it's amazing. I'm going to sink SO MUCH TIME into crosswords on the Playdate. It's a perfect form factor in my hands, I can carry it everywhere in my pocket, and there's no distracting notifications nor temptation to google for answers like with a phone app. Thanks for making a killer app for this handheld.