Pontes Sound Puzzle Manual

1. Introduction
   1. What is Pontes Sound Puzzle?
   2. What can this game do?
   3. Minimal system requirements
2. Setting up the game
   1. Set a media directory
3. Playing the game
   1. Load an audio file for creating a puzzle
      1. New puzzle from current song
      2. New custom puzzle from current song
      3. New puzzle from specific song
      4. New random puzzle from all media
      5. New random puzzle from the same directory
   2. Listen to the puzzle
   3. Navigate the puzzle
   4. Move the pieces to solve the puzzle
      1. Load the cursor
      2. Rearrange pieces
      3. Solve the puzzle
   5. Load or save the game
4. Game options
5. Keyboard Shortcuts
6. Acknowledgments and credits

What is Pontes Sound Puzzle?

Pontes Sound Puzzle is a board computer game that can generate a puzzle from virtually any supported audio file. The whole file or a part of it will be split into smaller pieces which will be shuffled.

In order to win the game, you have to arrange the puzzle pieces in the correct order.

What can this game do?

Pontes Sound Puzzle has a lot of features, some of them being really unique:

 

·         It is fully accessible for visually impaired users;

·         It has a simple visual interface so it can also be played by sighted users;

·         You only have to set your media directory. A random new puzzle will be loaded each time just by pressing the F7 key;

·         The most popular audio file types can be used for creating the puzzles. Currently supported file types are: mp3, flac, ogg, wma, wav, aiff,  mp2 and mp1

·         Puzzles are automatically saved but you can also load or save your own puzzle files;

·         You can create puzzles from the whole file or from a randomly chosen fragment of an audio file;

·         You can play using the keyboard or the mouse;

·         The program does not physically split the sound files so it has really low hardware requirements – even lower than many of your favorite media players

 

Minimal system requirements

·         Windows XP or later compatible computer

·         600 MHz or upper processor

·         512 MB RAM

·         A working sound card - Direct x 8 or later compatible sound card recommended

·         Headphones warmly recommended

 

Some music files for creating the puzzles are also required.

The more music files you have in your computer’s memory, the nicer the game experience will be.

 

 

Setting up the game

Set a media directory

Setting up Pontes Sound Puzzle is as easy as ABC. The first time you start the game you will be asked to choose a media directory. The game will then choose randomly a file from this directory and its subdirectories.

The media directory can be easily changed later pressing F4 or from the Options menu.

Once the game knows where your media files are you can easily generate a new random puzzle at any time just by pressing the F7 key.

Playing the game

Load an audio file for creating a puzzle

Pontes Sound Puzzle helps you create audio puzzles in several ways. Each mode is available from the “Game” menu or from a keyboard shortcut. Available new puzzle modes are:

New puzzle from current song

A new audio puzzle is created from the current song. This mode is especially useful when you do not use the whole song for the puzzle because it randomly chooses the start of the puzzle and then it adds pieces with your predefined fix length.

If the whole length of the puzzle exceeds the length of the song, the puzzle pieces are automatically adjusted to fit the song length. For example, if you have a file of one minute and you want a puzzle of 10 pieces, each 10 seconds, the resulting puzzle will be of 10 pieces, each 6 seconds long.

New custom puzzle from current song

A small window appears which lets you choose the number of pieces and the length of each piece.

In Pontes Sound Puzzle version 1 the number of pieces can be between 3 and 20. 

You can set the piece length in 3 different modes:

·         All song (fixed length) – Whole song is split in n number of equal pieces:

·         All song (random length) – whole song is split in n number of pieces, each having a variable length;

·         Specific length of pieces – if the length of all the pieces will be smaller than the length of the song only a fragment of the song will be used and the game will choose the starting point. A puzzle piece can be between 1 and 15 seconds long in this mode.

New puzzle from specific song

With this option, by pressing O, you can choose the song to be loaded in the game.  After the song is loaded you can confirm the number of pieces, same as in the custom puzzle menu.

Currently supported file types are: mp3, flac, ogg, wma, wav, aiff,  mp2 and mp1.

New random puzzle from all media

An audio file is loaded randomly from all of your media’s directories. The game will automatically create the puzzle from that file. If you have lots of subdirectories the game will automatically find and load supported audio files from them.

New random puzzle from the same directory

This option is particularly helpful if you have a lot of audio albums organized by folders in your media directory and you want to load a new song from the same album as the current one.

The game plays a specific sound when loading a new puzzle.  Also the new puzzle is automatically saved.

A number is assigned to each of the puzzle pieces at the generation of the puzzle and that number will remain the same for the piece until the puzzle is solved.

Listen to the puzzle

There are several ways of listening to the puzzle pieces.

·         Play current piece: Pressing space you can listen to the current piece. This piece is automatically played with auto play mode enabled.

·         Play specific piece: Pressing Control space lets you choose which piece to play.

·         Play clipboard:  Pressing C you will listen to the clipboard if a fragment is loaded in the clipboard.

·         Play end of current piece: pressing Z you can listen to the end of current puzzle piece.  

·         Play end of clipboard. Pressing X you can listen to the end of the fragment in the clipboard,

Note that the length of the end fragment can be set in the game settings.

Also, pressing tab once after Z or X the following piece will be played continuously.

·         Play whole puzzle. The whole puzzle can be played by pressing A if you have the time to listen to it.

·         Play from here to the end. Pressing D plays from where you are to the end of puzzle

·         Play solution. Pressing S plays the puzzle solution. Useful when using randomly started fragments of audio file

At any time you can stop the playback by pressing the Q key.  

If Auto play is enabled each piece will automatically play when selected.

Using the keyboard, there are three ways of navigating through the song while listening to a piece or the solution:

·         Pressing Control Right arrow or Control Left arrow will jump 1 second forward or backwards

·         Pressing Shift Right arrow or Shift Left arrow will jump 5 seconds forward or backwards

·         Pressing Alt Right arrow or Alt Left arrow will jump 15 second forward or backwards

You can navigate through the song also by using the mouse:

·         Rolling the Mouse wheel up will fast forward

·         Rolling the Mouse wheel down will rewind

Song volume can be adjusted by pressing Page up and Page down keys

Audio markers volume can be adjusted by pressing Control Page up and Control Page down keys

Navigate the puzzle

You can navigate through the puzzle using the keyboard or the mouse.

Using the keyboard is pretty straight forward:

·         Press right to go to next piece;

·         Press left to go to the piece before you;

·         Press Home to go to the first puzzle piece

·         Press End to go to the last puzzle piece

·         Press j to jump to a specific piece

You can simply left click on a piece with the mouse to select it.

Move the pieces to solve the puzzle

In order to solve the puzzle you have to rearrange the pieces in their correct sequence in the song.

Pieces can be rearranged using the keyboard or the mouse.

Using the keyboard, the process is similar with the copy-paste process in windows:

Load the cursor

Pressing the Up key will load the selected puzzle piece on the cursor. At any time you can listen to the cursor by pressing the c key or to the end of the cursor by pressing the x key.

Using the mouse the process is similar to dragging and dropping. You can load the cursor by holding down the right mouse button and then drag it to your desired location.  IF you press Control at release a insertion will be made, else a swap will be made.

A distinct sound is made when the cursor has been loaded.

Rearrange pieces

There are two modes of replacing puzzle pieces:

·         Swap mode – pressing the Down key will swap the previously copied piece with the currently selected one.

·         Insert mode – pressing the Enter key will slide all the pieces towards the place from where the piece has been moved. This is helpful if you have some arranged pieces and you don’t want to disturb them.

Pressing Control Enter lets you choose which puzzle piece you want to insert at the current position.

Dragging the mouse with the right button pressed will swap the piece to the desired position in the game interface.  Pressing Control while releasing the right mouse button will insert the piece in that position

If auto play is enabled the end of the previous piece and the inserted piece are played after insertion.

Solve the puzzle

When the puzzle is in the correct order a menu appears showing you some statistics and also allowing you to quickly decide what to do next.

You can generate a new puzzle, consult the currently solved one, open the folder containing the file or play the file in your default audio player

Load or save the game

The puzzles are automatically saved when moving a piece and loaded at startup.  If you want, you can also save the game by pressing F2 or using the option in the menu. You can also load a game by pressing F3.

Note that you can load a game only if the audio file that created the file remains in the same place in your computer’s memory. Saved games do not save audio content from the puzzles.

 

Game options

The options menu contains several game options:

Main game options can be activated by pressing the F10 key. Here you can:

·         Change the default values for number of puzzle pieces and piece length

·         Set the audio file and the default media directory

·         Change the audio volumes for sound markers and for puzzle pieces

·         Set the length of the end fragment played (in seconds)

·         Enable or disable Auto play in navigation

Note that Auto play can be quickly toggled by pressing F12.

The game language can be changed from the “Change game language” menu.

You can also check for updates from the options menu.

 

Keyboard Shortcuts

The following table contains all the keyboard shortcuts for the current version of Pontes Sound Puzzle:

 

Acknowledgments and credits

Pontes Sound Puzzle was created and developed by Ioan Campean. You can contact him at campus@pontes.ro

If you like the game you can give him a coffee to inspire future developments by donating via Paypal.

The original game idea and a lot of other contributions have been made by Emanuel Boboiu.

This game is hosted on the Pontes Organization website (www.pontes.ro).

You can find a lot of cool scripts, programs and games at http://www.pontes.ro/en/scripts/