Btw, Megaman X GiantBomb is still available for anyone that wants to check it out.

http://goo.gl/tTODi

Full write up on that one is here but the links there might be a bit old and broken.

You've gone down a dark path, my friend...

But hey, nice work!

@fobwashed: What version of Picross did you play? Was it the new one that just came out on the nintendo store?

Picross is totally awesome and this is some real good work.

The one thing that kind of confused me was that if there are multiple numbers in one column or row then they gray out depending on how many cells you've filled in. This threw me off when the row says 1 2 and i fill one in anywhere on the row and the 1 grays out but then when you put a second next to it it swaps and grays out the 2. I'm not sure if that's how picross games work these days, my experience is just mario picross.

Besides that, i'd love to hear more about the image processing and level creation process code-wise. :)

New Version is up with multiple puzzles and hints available.

Download here

remember u must uninstall before installing a new version -_-;;

Been playin' that one on the 3DS -_-;;

Yea, I didn't really put too much time into the numbers logic. Basically, they only gray out to help a player if they've got the correct number of stuff filled in on that row/column -_-;;

Updated again to have some basic sounds effects and a total of 10 puzzles. Enjoy? -_-;;

Download Link

Great job, dude. You should check out Griddlers.net for some extra ideas too. I think most of that site is Java rather than XNA, but maybe it'll help.

Seriously, were it not to vanish soon, a fully-realized version of this would be an awesome thing to find on XBLIG one day. There ain't enough Picross in the world.

@mento: It'd be pretty easy to just throw up there, but since all the solutions are basically people in the industry, I'd feel weird about putting it up there for sale. Also, it'd have to be for sale because the annual license to be able to put up indie games is $100 and I haven't renewed in years since I stopped targeting the 360 =P

I was thinking if I had some more time, I might try adding some stupid stuff but haven't really put too much thought into it. I'll check out griddlers.net when I've got some time =)

Now make it 3D

I. Love. Picross. this is the best thing ever.

I permanently scratched my DS Lite screen playing Picross DS. Ever since, I have been a picross junkie! Downloading this right now so I can play it all day. At least I won't have to worry about charging my PC while playing :) More than once, I would use the entire battery on my DS playing nothing but picross.

Unfortunately, I don't have the 3D chops to do so -_-;; I'm eagerly anticipating a new 3D picross game cuz it was pretty damn spiffy.

I also! Though, putting this together has somewhat alleviated my addiction.

I didn't take it as far as scratching screens, but I've always been a bit obsessive compulsive about finishing all the puzzles before being able to move onto anything else whenever there's a new picross out =P

@fobwashed, loving the Picross! Thanks for the game!

One issue though: Once I got to the third grid square for the first puzzle, I started getting massive slowdown. Game just started lagging really hard as I moved the mouse around and tried to clear squares.

Not sure if it's just me or if other people have had that happen too, but I thought I'd let you know. Otherwise, great work!

@bumpton: That's a little strange. Is it something that you can cause to happen every time? And is the slowdown only on that one square in the first puzzle? If it is a bug, it sounds like a weird one since there really isn't that much goin on in the game =P If you've got the time, lemme know and I'll see if I can recreate it here and if so, squash it =)

Great job duder!

Also, I had absolutely no idea about the Mega Man X Giant Bomb. That's pretty cool.

I've tried the first puzzle twice and both times the slowdown got so bad it was unfinishable. It works for about 5 minutes then it basically stops responding.

tyty! Go ahead and take on both Brad and Ryan -_-;;

No idea why this is happening. If you could, can you just get to a puzzle screen and leave it running for a while and see if the same thing happens? Or if it only happens when you're actually solving stuff and breaking blocks?

I left it open for 20 minutes before working on the puzzle and it ran smoothly until the last segment of puzzle 0, where it slowed right down again. It doesn't seem to be related to how long it's been open. It's only using around 100mb of memory even when it's totally unplayable, so I'm not sure what's going on.

Thanks for the help, I think I might have figured out where the problem is. There's a memory leak (maybe) with the sound effect where every time it's played, it creates a new instance of itself instead of reusing the existing one =P I'll take a crack at it and holla at you when it's fixed!

@shaunage: Alright, I think I may have fixed it. The DL is in the same location but is 1.5 instead of 1.4.

You need to uninstall the previous version for the new one to be able to install =) Lemme know if you've still got any problems. . . I'm pretty sure that hole is plugged!

Alright, so, I have about 2 whole semesters' worth of programming knowledge (i.e. not much). Mind explaining how your Picross solver works, to satisfy a newbie's curiosity?

@vasta_narada said:

I pretty much set it up as inelegantly as possible.

For every single line, I generate every possible answer.

During generation of every possible answer, I remove any answers that are not possible due to the player's set cleared and marked spots.

From the remaining possible answers, it removes all spots that are conflicting (if one answer has a spot as marked and the other as cleared, it's a conflicting spot).

Every spot that is not conflicting is logically supposed to be either marked or unmarked. If there are any spots that should either be marked or unmarked, I set the numbers on that line to indicate that a logical move is possible on that line by changing the color to blue.

I only run it on every line on the puzzle's load. Following the load, it only runs on the lines where the player has made a change. Some user friendly changes I could make is to indicate which number is set if it's determinable with the provided information. I think to figure that part out, I'd just have to sort through the possible answers again and determine if a set of cleared spots is definitely a specific hint number.

To check if a puzzle is solvable, I just run the line solver on every line, and set the logically determined spots to the state they've been determined to be in, and then re-run the line solver again. Rinse-repeat until either there are no more moves possible (puzzle is fail!) or the puzzle is solved. You can try this out on the version I uploaded by hitting the "P" key and then clicking on the current puzzle box you're on over and over. But shhhhhh.... that's a debug secret ;-)

That seems to have fixed the slowdown issue. Nice job!

I love me some fuckin' Picross, man. Awesome job!

Your next challenge: Picross 3D

Happy to hear! A weird instancing bug with the sound effects... I'll have to look out for that one in the future. Glad I caught it here in a small program rather than a huge one =P

I could prolly do it cept for the fact that I have zero 3D modeling chops =( Man, I loved that 3D picross game.

@thoseposers: It seems like the new (well, new to the US, I think it came out a while ago in Japan/Europe) Picross game use some kind of "smart" system for graying out numbers. For instance, if you have row that's labelled "1 1 2", and you fill in the leftmost square (or the one next to it), it grays the first 1. If you fill in the 3rd square from the left, it doesn't gray anything, because that filled in square could be either of the two 1's.

Likewise, a 10 square row labelled "4 2" would gray out the 2 if you filled in

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ X X _

but it wouldn't gray out anything if you filled in

_ _ _ _ _ X X _ _ _

because those two filled squares could be the 2 or the tail end of the 4. It also wouldn't gray anything out if you filled in

_ _ _ _ X X _ _ _ _

because the filled in squares can't be from the 2 (as there would be not enough room for the 4).

Awesome program. I love Picross. My main complaint would be lack of persistence between puzzles or later instances of the application. Also, I found it strange that the mouse events ignore whether the window is in focus. So I'm clicking on a window in front of it and it registers in your application. I'd also like the ability to turn the audio off.

Yea, I've seen that and was just too lazy at the time to implement it because I was focused on just getting the puzzle solver working =P I think I know a way to get it in there. I'd have every possible solution also store which marked points belong to which numbers and if any of the numbers line up to determine which ones have been used and which numbers to grey out. I'd guess since I'd have to rewrite the number's class a bit, it'd prob take at least 2 to 3 hours to get working right... I don't think there's enough interest in this thing for it to really be worth it at this point though and I wouldn't really have much to personally gain from it neither -_-;;

Thx =) I thought about having a save file form but since there's no real end game and each set of puzzles is self contained, I didn't really see the point of it. The mouse events ignoring whether or not the game window is active is as simple as always checking whether the game window has focus or not so I'll throw that in if/when I put up another update. Also, yea. I set up the sound effects to play at a player set volume but never got around to adding a volume slider. I'll at least add a mute option next time I patch. Thanks for checking it out!

@fobwashed said:

I personally don't care for all the color gradations. I'd rather it just show whether you've satisfied the numbers in a given row or column (not even whether they're placed correctly).

I guess the point would be if you'd solved some parts and wanted to finish it later. At least a warning that you'd lose your progress would be nice. There were 2 parts (each from a different puzzle) I found that I couldn't solve using just logic (or at least not using my normal tactics), so after encountering the first I went to another puzzle only to return disappointed that all my progress had been lost. I finished them all anyway, reluctantly using the Hint button for those 2. Thanks for entertaining me for a day.

Damn, that really sucks. Do you remember which sections of which puzzles it was by any chance? I'll put it away for a rainy day fix =P The logic stuff always assumes that whatever moves you make is correct so it's possible that there was a mistake made earlier in the puzzle since it'll never tell you that you made a mistake. Worst case scenario, you could always just fall back on the hint button as well -_-;; I guess I do need some practice with writing save files so I could whip one up next time -_-;;

@fobwashed: I don't remember the first one, but I believe the second one I encountered is the bottom-right corner of Puzzle 7. Perhaps there's a more advanced tactic I am unaware of, but I got stuck after filling in only 4 boxes and eliminating 6. For a puzzle that small, I could have gone with trial-and-error without resorting to the Hint button, but it was there and too tempting.

Puzzle 7, bot-right is solvable using logics. I can't figure out which 6 you're eliminating though.

@fobwashed: For some reason, I guess it didn't occur to me to do what you did at 0:25. So I got up to that point. It's a tactic I almost never use. If the hint would have put an X there at that time, I probably would have noticed it made sense and felt dumb, but instead it just uncovered a block somewhere. Thanks.

@fobwashed: where can I find the Megaman X giantbomb game? :)

@fobwashed: where can I find the Megaman X giantbomb game? :)

@dawiiz: http://goo.gl/XiXtnm here you go. I swear I'll update it eventually -_-;;