Pocket Sudoku 1.0

Submitted by Emil on Wed, 09/10/2008 - 18:03

Pocket Sudoku 1.0 has been released with a whole bunch of new features compared to the earlier versions. Go and get it now at the download page!

Anonymous (not verified)

Wed, 10/29/2008 - 23:39

tks

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 11/07/2008 - 12:49

it's not working on win mobile ppc any more. i can install it, i can see the icon but it will not start by touching the icon

Arne (not verified)

Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:30

Great App, love to use Vers 0.9.

Sadly 1.0 doesnt work on my phone. Create seems to hang forever. Different size doesnt work either.

Bottom line of field doesnt show, makes it look a bit funny.

Features I would find usefull (in case you have time and just love to program)
- a number for every generated sudoku to easily exchange them (number of random seed?)
- Play simultanously on the same sudoku with 1/ more friends competitivly via IP / Bluetooth.

Arne

Rellik (not verified)

Mon, 12/01/2008 - 08:03

On a VGA Device (HTC Touch Diamond) the icons are to small. When you select an icon (e.g. coloring) it highlights an area with twice the high of the icons, what's the normal high for icons in the status bar.

Otherwise great program.

Manish (not verified)

Wed, 12/10/2008 - 14:38

It's not working on Pocket PC 2003 running WinCE Version 4.20.1081 (build 13100). I can install it, I can see the icon but it does not start by touching the icon.

It does not even install .NET CF 2.0
Is that a required component to run this program.

I was able to install the cab file found under wce400 folder of .NET CF 2.0 by copying and executing it on the PPC. After that this program worked. Yet to evaluate the performance and features.

Ah, that's the same "hack" i've been using since my ActiveSync installation stopped working properly. Installing through ActiveSync is the recommended way, though.

Ken (not verified)

Mon, 03/09/2009 - 15:48

I love the game.... you got me addicted..
I have a question about a hint..

what does "All in sector on the same line" mean?
It highlights a row...

Could not find a reference on the internet.

-Ken

That hint should highlight a sector as well as a row and it tells you that all cells in the highlighted sector that can have the selected number is on the highlighted row. Consequently, all possibilites of that number on the highlighted row (outside the highlighted sector) can be removed.

Most guides on the Internet refer to this as "intersection removal" or "pointing pairs/triples", for example: http://www.scanraid.com/Intersection_Removal

Louis (not verified)

Sat, 08/29/2009 - 13:45

As I said - a lovely implementation but a bit buggy.

I love the auto possibility matrix and I love the ability to pickup a number from an occupied cell.

I have an iPAQhx4700 and I get the word "Generating" across the bottom of my screen and it stays there for either seconds or minutes. While it is there response time is quite bad. If I complete the game while "Generating" is on the screen all sorts of funny quirks occur - the next game doesn't clear the completed game, the display locks up, switches levels. After entering a game from a newspaper and solving it the cleared screen freezes on the display and starting a new game leaves the "cleared" display on....

I have had to uninstall and re-install the game a couple of times to get out of "locks". I have had to "hard reset" too as the PDA stopped recognising the stylus "taps". The "hard reset" then got rid of the .NET update so I had to resync.

There are other quirks that eventually kill the game for me and I am now looking for another implementation which is a pity because I love the features.

Sorry,

Louis

Pocket Sudoku 1.0 is a good game and as there are always some pros and cons in the game implementation, it also suffers from few bugs but an update from the team will surely solve the problems of hanging up and also proper screening of the game. It's always fun to puzzle games especially like Sudoku.

It is not just good, it is terrific. I have tried all the PPC versions of Sudoku I could find through a Google searches, even commercial pay versions (trials), and no other version comes close to PS 1.0 apart from the "Generating" bug.

I play the "hard" level on a HP hx4700 (480 X 640 lovely) and have played hundreds of games on this PDA but the bug is predictible. I have also printed (before I got the PDA) out thousands of boards and played them.

If "Generating" is still on screen when you finish the game - all sorts of silly things happen. Then you have to do all sorts of other things to get the program working again - change to "Very Easy", start a new game, play it to end, change back to "Hard" again, start a new board, "Soft Reset". Most times even a soft reset won't fix it. Plus while "Generating" is on the screen the response to input of pencil marks and number placement is painfully slow and inaccurate.

I was even tempted to debug the source myself but, even though I am a programmer of 40 years, I haven't programmed in C# before. I have started to learn C# but it will be a long term project I'm afraid.
I assume that the problem is restricted to the hx4700 as I couldn't imagine too many people playing it on other PDAs with the way it works.

I complete some games in about 2 minutes or thereabouts so it does work sometimes. Other times I just put the game down with a couple of unsolved cells and walk away until the "Generating" is replaced with "Ready" then I complete the board.

Some boards start, generate and are ready in a couple of seconds and some have the "Generating" display for 25 minutes. This has got to be a bug and a very obscure one at that....

I realise that the game is a "labour of love" and that it is free and revenue neutral for Emil but it has been over a year since the 1.0 release.

I don't know about anybody else but I only ever play the 9X9 version, anything else is not Sudoku as far as I'm concerned.

It would be great if someone could explain what is happening during the generating phase. I have been to Sourceforge and I have had a peek at the source but it is quite envolved.

Anyway I'm repeating myself. If it was available on an iPod Touch I would go out and buy one tomorrow. If it worked (the program) I would even pay for it. There are other versions but they don't come close to the features and playability of PS 1.0. Nobody has the automatic pencil marks feature that I could see. They offer manual pencil marks. The "pickup" a number from any occupied cell feature is unique and terrific.... Anyway I'm rambling....

I hope, I hope, I hope a new version comes out soon with the bug fixed.... I hope, I hope, I hope.....

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 12/18/2009 - 15:41

I installed the V 1.0 and got the message:
"Sorry - your device is not supported".

It would be convenient if the download site listed which devices were/weren't supported.

Once you play Pocket Sudoku - no other Sudoku game will be worth playing again.

Thanks to Emil it is the BEST implementation of Sudoku ever!

I have played Sudoku games on Nintendo (lots), iTouch (a few) and many on the PC and NONE of them come close to the gameplay of PS 1.0.

Enjoy!

Louis (not verified)

Sun, 04/04/2010 - 02:47

After months of development I have got the object size down by 40Kb and games "Generate" much quicker, generally in seconds now except the odd one, now and then, will still take a couple of minutes. But most games now take less than 10 seconds to "Generate and Set Difficulty".

My version logs every game generated - how long to generate and how long to "Set difficulty" (for analysis).

I have removed languages, symetricals, diagonals, hard wired automatic pencil marks, radically changed the statistics storing and display, hugely modified the game display with three more fonts sizes, display naked and hidden singles in red and large font.... And hard wired 9X9....

Where the game was excellent before it is now almost perfect (for me anyway). Still needs improvement with "generation" times. I am considering replacing the generation routine but it is the "Set difficulty" routine that takes most of the time delay.

Louis (not verified)

Sat, 04/24/2010 - 01:14

In reply to by Emil

Sorry it took so long to reply - doing lots of other things I'm happy to say. I still play dozens of boards a day though. Only at "Hard" level though, I can't quite make the jump to "Very Hard".

How do I share? Do you want me to post the project to you?

I am not only a newbie to C# and VS2008, I have no idea how to send the code to you without an email address.

Apart from hard wiring some options, removing other options, changing the display etc I haven't really touched the generation and "difficulty setting" routine. Just commenting out the symmetry in the "generation routines" seems to reduce the delay.

I will be happy to send the code to you as it is basically yours anyway. It is only as a result of your releasing the code that I have been able to play with it. Thank you :)

I suspect my improvement in times was a result of removing diagnals, squigly, symmetry and hard wiring the board to 9X9. I NEVER play any other size so don't need them.

I can replace the generation code but that would only remove a couple of seconds (average) off the generation time. As I said (and you no doubt know) the real delay is in the "Set Difficulty" routine and I haven't been able to find a faster set difficulty routine in all my searches and user forums I posted help requests in.

Tell me how I can get the code to you :)

Louis

Hi Emil,

Find attached the Project of my modified Pocket Sudoku. This is a "zip" of my working Project and a lot of the comments etc are for my own understanding.

I apologise for my newbieness. This is my first OO project and my first attempt at C# and .NET. I was a commercial BASIC programmer - Assets, Creditors, Debtors, General Ledger, Manufacturing etc was my bread and butter.....

I really flitted around the program not attacking the root of the delay, the "Set Difficulty" routine.

The front of frmMain has a list of my amendments.

Thanks for your original source.

Any comments and suggestions are particularly welcome.

Sorry I was such a long time - I am retired and busy babysitting 5 grandchildren....

Regards,

Louis

zink (not verified)

Fri, 04/16/2010 - 15:54

I found a workaround for the hanging problem (the ppc hangs while generating a new grid, and you can't do anything until it ends). Just run Mort Player, play any mp3 file, pause it, and Pocket Sudoku won't hang any more, so you can start playing immediately after starting a new game (I know it's hard to believe it works, I couldn't believe it was that when I first experienced it). This works on my Loox 718, however, the overall slowness of the program is present anyway. I'm thinking about converting Pocket Sudoku to native (unmanaged) C code, since the original author doesn't seem to have time or interest in continuing it. This should speed it up quite nicely, but I don't have much time either for now, so I don't know if it will work out at all. It it does, I will release my results.

Nice to hear that you found a solution, although a very strange one.

Currently, my old iPAQ is in a drawer so I don't use it very much anymore - that's the main reason it has been a while since I last developed anything for it.

Hope you find the time to make a native version of it!

Louis (not verified)

Sat, 07/23/2011 - 02:21

I've played, literally, thousands of games. The generation/set dificulty delay has always annoyed me so I eventually did it.

I added a "Batch Generation" mode.

I run it at night when my PDA is being recharged. I now have an HP iPAQ 212 VGA. It takes about 4 and a half hours to generate 1000 games - about a megabyte.

Now when I press the "New Game" button, the next game comes up instantaneously every time :) Each game is deleted as it is loaded.

No more delays, no more bad response to the stylus, it's marvellous.

The next time I run Batch Generation mode, it replaces the deleted games. Should the stored games run out (highly unlikely) the program will generate games on the fly as before.

What was a brilliant Sudoku program is now even better.

Thanks to Emil for it in the first place. :) :)

Great to hear. I never got your mail from the first post you made here, but if you are interested in sharing you can mail it here (hidden for spam protection reasons). Please comment if mail doesn't work, and we can find another solution.

Louis (not verified)

Sat, 08/13/2011 - 08:08

In reply to by Emil

Sent to your hidden email address.

With apologies for delay in replying.

Hopefully it will work THIS time....

Pedro (not verified)

Fri, 07/29/2011 - 14:04

Great game... I've tried a lot of commercial versions and I like this free one better. Why? Simplicity, focus on the numbers and useability (is this spelled correctly?).

I've been using it for so long on my ppc that I now uninstalled other verions from my pc and installed pocket sudoku. The only thing I would like changed would be this: when you're enlarging the game window, the numbers allways stay the same size... it would be better if they got bigger as well.

Great job on this game.