Feature requests

[onlydarksets]

This is a fantastic app!  Every other version I have tried is either missing key features or is not very readable.  Your app is very legible, and I love all of the pencil mark options!

I have three feature requests:
First is a confirmation dialog when selecting either the "New" or "Create..." menu options.  Both options immediately trash your existing puzzle.

Second is "auto-pencil".  I usually only have about 5-15 minutes to play at a time, and starting from a board with all of the pencil marks filled in would let me focus on the solving skills (i.e., naked sets, hidden sets, Swordfish, X-wings, Jellyfish, XY-wings, and XYZ-wings) as opposed to the more rote pencil-marking skills.

Finally, could you add the instructions to the "About" screen?  It would be a handy reminder!

•  Click the joystick button to toggle between pen and pencil mode.
• When in pencil mode, hold down a number key to enter that number as a pen mark. This saves the steps of having to toggle to pen mode and back.
• Press the Back key to undo your last move.
• Press the '*' key to toggle highlight mode. When in highlight mode, press a number key to highlight all cells containing candidates (pencil marks) with the value of the key pressed.

Thanks, and let me know if there is anything I can do to help!

[David]

Thanks, onlydarksets!  All excellent requests.

I have been wanting an auto pencil marks feature for myself as well.  I haven't decided yet how it will work when you remove a pencil mark, though.  A little tricky, I think, since you don't necessarily want pencil marks that you manually removed, for example, using the X-Wing technique, added back.

This will probably take me a while to decide how it should work, but in the meantime, I think I could pretty quickly add a feature to at least start the board out with the pencil marks filled in, or an option to recalculate all of the pencil marks at any given time.  Hopefully this will help to alleviate the initial tedium on the difficult levels.

I also have an optional autoplay feature on my list, so forced moves will be played on advanced levels to save more of the tedium.

Anyway, I will add your requests to my feature list and try to get at least some of them in for the next release.

Thanks again!

[onlydarksets]

Thanks!  I would be perfectly satisified with an auto-pencil that just calculated the empty squares.  I'm using another Sudoku program now that does that.  20% of the time I'll pencil in the squares and just have the program verify that there are no problems.

Another feature that would be helpful is to disable the joystick click button when you are in highlight mode.  Definitely not a big deal, but sometimes I accidently click the button and come out of highlight mode in pen mode instead of pencil mode.

[David]

Version 1.0.11 now includes a menu option to calculate pencil marks.  Note that it will overwrite any pencil marks you have already entered.

It will also flag invalid pencil marks (marks that would not be a legal move), which was one of the requests from Sifaan.

Enjoy!

[onlydarksets]

Wow - that's fantastic!  1.0.12 picks up on the only two suggestions I had left!

[Rheuh]

Talking on pencil marks, could you implement a togglable option that automatically removes related marks when writing a number with the pen ? I mean, I put a 2 on a cell with the pen, I'd like the game to automatically remove the pencil marks for this digit on the same row, column and 3x3 square that I put the 2 into. (A kind of automatic pencilmark updater, indeed). This could save a lot of time, as OnlyDarkSets said, "I usually only have about 5-15 minutes to play at a time"...

[David]

Yes, this is on my list. The strikeouts are taking me way longer than I expected (trouble with sizing them correctly on any size display).  I may have to postpone the coloring/strikeout option for a little while in order to get some other features like this done.

[Rheuh]

That's no problem, the colouring is more like a gadget besides such useful features ! 

[David]

I do like the idea of the strikeout for accessibility reasons (in case someone has difficulty distinguishing colors).  So I will do it at some point, but I agree that there are other features that are higher priority at the moment.