I've posted some stuff to help people out with developing puzzles using the system I set up. I'll put up a more official guide later.
I guess the easiest way to create a puzzle is to spread the tiles out in front of you and just experiment, but of course the problem there is that not everyone has all of the expansions, and in order to transfer the arrangement of the tiles to an online puzzle, you need to know the title of an individual tile. (I suppose, if you really can't find any other way, you could make the puzzle and send me a photo
) The system I've set up is pretty (very) rudimentary, but it works online, using almost the same set up as the actual puzzles, and should hopefully help out a bit. The best approach is probably to use both real tiles and the online resources together.
So first of all you'll need to pick a template. I've made a number of these, which are linked below:
4x2 |
4x3 |
5x3 |
5x4 |
6x4 |
6x5 |
7x5 |
7x6 |
8x6 |
8x7 |
9x7 |
9x8The smallest ones obviously aren't going to provide much challenge, but might be useful for learners or young children; I included them mainly for the sake of completion. The largest template has 72 tiles, which is the same as the basic game - naturally, there could be larger templates, but I thought that was a good place to stop. Bear in mind that the demo puzzle I put up was 7x5 - only 35 tiles! Imagine what a 72-tile puzzle would be like.
Instead of containing a tile, each box ('frame') contains a menu of all the possible tile configurations - 149 at the moment - organised according to the descriptions I used in the Annotated Rules (in fact, I'd suggest downloading the Consolidated Tile Reference to help you put your puzzle together). That's quite a lot to look through, but I've also prefixed some of the links with an asterisk (*). This helps identify what I'll call 'recommended tiles' - tiles which are clearly laid out. Basically, I'd suggest avoiding any tile which has a 'symbol' on it - for example, trade goods, princesses, tower foundations - unless you decide that the tile configuration is essential, or you're building a puzzle which specifically needs that symbol. The rationale behind this is that, as the puzzles get bigger, and people use the smaller resolutions to fit the whole puzzle onto the screen, many of these symbols become difficult to read. Try out the demo puzzle at 66% and you'll see what I mean. However, I've still 'recommended' the entirety of the basic game and
Inns and Cathedrals, since pennants and lakes should still be clear enough; and most of
The River,
The River II, all of the the
GQ mini-expansion, and a number of other tiles are recommended, which should give you plenty to play with.
When you click on a link, that tile will be loaded into the frame. The tile is identical to those used in the puzzle, except for the title marked in the centre to help identify which tile it is. Clicking on the tile will rotate it 90°, as in the puzzle; however, while the fourth tile in the sequence would link back to the first in the puzzle, creating an endless loop, in this case the fourth tile links back to the original menu. It's not a perfect solution, and it'll probably bug you (remember to check what the title of the tile was before you link to the menu, in case you regret it later), but I think there needs to be a simple way back to the menu, especially for people with awkward browsers.
That's the essence of the process, anyway; and, in conjunction with the tile reference, you should hopefully be able to construct the puzzle without too much difficulty, although it might be a little slow going until you become familiar with the titles of the tiles. The next step, however, is the one where you have to be careful.
All that's needed to convert the arrangement you've created into a proper puzzle is the titles of the tiles (and the angle of rotation for the start position, if you wish). A simple list, read left to right:
Tile 1 | Tile 2 | Tile 3 | Tile 4
Tile 5 | Tile 6 | Tile 7 | Tile 8
etc.
and so on. If you send me that list, I'll enter it into the three files (on for each zoom) and the puzzle will be ready to go. Obviously, the hardest thing here is making sure that you get the titles right. I'm afraid that there's no way to automatically send the titles at the moment - maybe later, with some real programming and not just basic HTML. The simplest solution would be to take a screen-shot. Alternatively, check out the printing options of your browser - a couple on my Mac do rather good PDFs of a page that's being viewed, showing exactly the configuration you've created - Omniweb, for example.
If you've got a power-user's browser like OmniWeb or Opera, you can even edit a template, check out your puzzle, and mail me the HTML itself, since these browsers allow you to edit the HTML of a site and save a local copy. In Opera, for example, just right-click anywhere on the tiles, scroll down to 'Frame' and select 'Source' from the submenu. You can then edit the titles of the tiles which should be linked to, and see a live rendition of your puzzle (only at 100% zoom right now). You'll find a link to the proper puzzle templates at the bottom of the developer templates. Opera also works extremely well with the back-button - it goes backwards frame by frame perfectly, allowing you to retrace your steps with ease. And another cool thing about Opera (plug plug plug) is that, rather than merely resizing the text, you can resize the entire page, which is perfect for checking out what your puzzle might look like at different zoom levels.
One thing I would ask, though, is for people not to create puzzles and then post the results on their own websites. I'm posting all of this stuff - both the puzzle and developer resources - on my own internet space, as a part of the CarcassonneCentral community and I'm more than happy for people to make use of the resources in whatever way they want, provided the results fed back into the community.
Send me the puzzle, and I'll add it to the puzzle showroom (or gallery, or whatever we decide to call it) and everyone can try it out.
I think that's about it. I hope I haven't forgotten anything.
Go on, give it a whirl!
