Puzzle Together News

Today's update was a long time coming, and adds some exciting new features while also fixing a bunch of troublesome bugs.

Here's what's new:

New Features

• When generating a custom puzzle image, there is now a menu that lets you choose from 30 different styles. Choose "General" if you'd rather describe the style yourself, or choose "Classic Style" if you'd like to stick with the style Puzzle Together has been using up until now.
  
• You can now generate multiple custom puzzles simultaneously -- no more need to wait for one to complete before starting another.
  
• Improved quality of custom generated puzzles.
  
• Custom puzzle generation now has better understanding of non-English image descriptions.
  
• Added a bunch of new table color options, under 'Settings'.
  
• A pop up asks you to confirm before sorting pieces, to help prevent accidental sorting.
  
• There is now a 'ping' sound when a chat message is received.
  
• Added the option, under 'Settings', to turn off the ability to change the camera angle by right-click dragging the mouse.
  
• Under 'Settings', in the menus of actions that can be assigned to mouse buttons, you can now rotate pieces left (counter-clockwise) as well as right (clockwise). So, if you'd like, you can assign one mouse button to rotate in one direction and another button to rotate in the other direction.
  
• You can now zoom closer in and further out. Also, the speed of zooming in/out and changing camera angle with the keyboard has been increased.
  
• Any player in an open puzzle can place pieces in their final position, so long as at least 90% of the puzzle's connections have been made.
  
• On the "Join a Friend's Puzzle" page, there is now a copy button next to the join code, to let you easily copy the code to your clipboard so you can paste it in a message.
  

Bug Fixes

• When you change your username or e-mail address under 'Settings', you no longer need to hit enter for the change to take effect.
  
• If a puzzle was completed when there was no connection to the server, it never registered as being completed. This has now been fixed, and any affected puzzles should now show up as completed when you enter them.
  
• When using ctrl+click to add a piece to the set of selected pieces, it will no longer also cause the piece to rotate.
  
• When you "like" (favorite) an AI generated puzzle, it will now appear on the Library page when you select "Favorites" from the Show menu.
  
• When you purchase an AI generated puzzle, it will now appear on the Library page when you select "Purchased" from the Show menu.
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to hang when entering a puzzle, if you had left the previous puzzle while pieces were still selected.
  
• A sort can no longer be started if another sort is in progress.
  
• Fixed a problem that could cause the puzzle box to permanently disappear.
  
• Added logging to help find a problem that prevents some players from being able to make purchases.
  

This month's update improves the search function, and fixes some bugs. Here are the details:

- The search function now shows matching results from Puzzle Together's whole puzzle library, not just the collection of AI generated images. Also, the AI images that it does show are higher quality than before.

- Fixed an issue with the database that would cause problems connecting to the game each day sometime between 4am and 8am EST, for about 20 minutes. It could also cause disconnections and issues keeping track of stats and progress throughout the day.

It's a small update this month, with the following changes:

- Fixed a bug that could cause pieces to disappear or become stuck to the table in multiplayer puzzles. Hopefully this is the only problem that was causing this to happen, but do let me know if you still encounter these issues after this update.

- Fixed a problem that could cause the "Loading..." screen to get stuck for a long time when the game starts up, for accounts that have played many puzzles.

- Improved the quality of the AI puzzle image generator. If you tried generating images in the past but were disappointed with the results, give it another go! There's till a lot of room for future improvement, but the quality is now significantly better than it was.

This update includes a few new features and bug fixes that have been a long time coming! Here's the list:

• New puzzle piece shapes! When you start a puzzle you can choose from Unique Shapes (no two pieces will have exactly the same shape), Repeating Shapes (piece shapes repeat in a 5x5 pattern; this is the way all puzzles have been in the past), or Identical Shapes (all pieces have the same shape -- for an extra challenge).
  
• You now have the option to link your Steam Puzzle Together account with your mobile account, so that purchases, as well as the list of puzzles you're working on, are shared between the two accounts. To do this, go to the Settings page (in Puzzle Together on Steam), click on "Link Accounts", and enter the username and password of your mobile Puzzle Together account.
  
• The functions of the mouse buttons can now be customized. On the settings page, there are dropdown menus to select the functions of tapping the left, right, and middle mouse buttons. By default, they do what they've always done -- tapping the left button rotates a piece, and tapping the right button brings up the Sort menu. But now, any of the buttons can be configured to do either of those, or to start/stop dragging (see next item).
  
• Some players would prefer to tap a mouse button once to pick up a piece, then tap it a second time to drop the piece -- rather than dragging it the whole way. This is especially important for players who have difficulty or pain when holding down a mouse button. The Settings page now includes the option to configure any of the mouse buttons to start/stop dragging. This means that one click will pick up a puzzle piece, and a second click will drop it. Likewise, one click on the puzzle table will start panning the view, and a second click will stop panning.
  
• The list of icons for puzzles on the "My Puzzles" and "Open Puzzles" pages now includes icons showing whether the puzzle has unique, repeating, or identical piece shapes. Each of the icons now also has a tooltip to explain what it means.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the Steam overlay from appearing (and so prevented purchases from being made) on Mac OS.
  
• Fixed a problem that could prevent music from playing.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented some puzzles from being made open to the public.
  
• Fixed a bug that would prevent a player from logging back into their Steam Puzzle Together account after they had created or logged into a non-Steam account from the same device.
  
• The number of free custom (uploaded) puzzles that can be available at one time has increased from 4 to 6.
  

Here's what the December update includes:

• Puzzles can now have up to 3000 pieces!
  
• Every puzzle now has a 40 piece option
  
• Faster sorting of large groups of pieces
  
• Sorting color can now be sampled from the puzzle box
  
• When two sorts are happening at once, pieces no longer scatter everywhere
  
• Fixed a bug when searching for puzzles similar to a custom puzzle
  

Happy holidays, and enjoy the puzzling!