Kidspuzzle Help.
Kidspuzzle is a classic puzzle game for PC: Try to order the puzzle pieces in order to recreate the puzzle picture, in a similar way as you would do with a "real" puzzle. The application is intended to be for children: puzzle pictures are motifs of the kids-world and the number of puzzle pieces is kept small, for several of the available puzzles even very small, so that the program can even be useful to the youngest ones.
New ...
Loading a new puzzle. A dialog box opens and the user chooses the puzzle by browsing the file system and selecting the folder, containing the puzzle files. The name of these folders always starts with Pnnn, where nnn is the number of pieces of the puzzle.
Open ...
Opens a Kidspuzzle state file and loads a puzzle, saved before, at the state, it was, when it was saved. A dialog box opens and the user chooses the file by browsing the file system and selecting the file, containing the puzzle state information. Unless you chose another one, these files have the extension .kps. If the state file is deleted or not, depends on the settings made in the Options menu.
Save As ...
Saves the current state of a puzzle to a Kidspuzzle state file. A dialog box opens and the user saves the file by browsing the file system and entering a filename. If no file extension is specified, .kps is used. If you may or may not override existing files, depends on the settings made in the Options menu.
Exit.
Exit the Kidspuzzle application.
Puzzle download.
Opens your web browser, pointed to the Kidspuzzle download directory on www.streetinfo.lu. The puzzles are stored as ZIP archives, containing the configuration file and the puzzle piece pictures. All files start with Pnnn, where nnn indicates the number of pieces. P016 - Merry Xmas_3.0.7 contains the 16-pieces Merry Xmas puzzle, included within the version 4.0 application download archive. All files end with a version number of the form m.s.u. Please, have a look at Version compatibility below for details.
Choose a puzzle and download the .zip file on your hard drive. Extract the puzzle folder with its content to any location, you like. If you now run the Kidspuzzle application, choose New in the Puzzle menu and select the folder, that you extracted, in the dialog box. The newly downloaded puzzle should be loaded correctly. The .zip file itself is no longer needed and may be deleted.
The selections, that you make in this menu, are written to the file kidspuzzle.conf, that is read at application start. Thus, your actual settings will be used, the next time, you run the program.
State files override.
Select, what the application should do, if the filename, you specify in the Save As dialog box, already exists: 1. Ask before overriding a file (default option, with you to decide to override the file or not), 2. Override files without asking (this may delete a puzzle state file, that you wanted to keep), 3. Never override state files (the file can't be saved with this name and you have to repeat the operation).
State files deletion.
Select, what the application should do with a state file, after you opened it, in order to restore a previously saved puzzle (Open dialog box): 1. Ask before deleting a file (may be useful to prevent deleting a file without wanting to do so, for example, if you select the bad file), 2. Automatically delete files (default option, as normally these files are no longer useful), 3. Never delete state files (all files are kept; you'll have to delete them manually).
Help.
Displays usage help for the Kidspuzzle application (this text) in your webbrowser.
About.
Displays version, author and date-written of the Kidspuzzle application.
Load a fresh puzzle with New in the Puzzle menu. The puzzle picture is displayed, all pieces in the correct order. To begin, push the Start button: The puzzle pieces are now shuffled and appear at random positions within the picture. To move a given piece to a given position (the one, you think, is the correct one): 1. Click this piece with your mouse. A colored circle appears on the clicked piece, telling you, that it is actually selected for moving (to unselect a selected piece, just click it again). 2. Click the piece at the position, where you want to move the selected piece. The two pieces' positions are exchanged: the piece, that you selected to be moved, is placed at the position of your second click, and the piece, that was at that position, replaces the one, you clicked first (the one that you chose to move).
The movement of the second piece is the major difference between playing Kidspuzzle and doing a "real puzzle", with "real pieces" on a table. If you're irritated by that, tell yourself, that this second piece is of no importance at this moment. The only thing, you have to consider to solve the puzzle, is choosing a piece and moving it to the position, that you think, it belongs to. Isn't that what you actually do, when you do a "real puzzle"?
The (final) puzzle picture is displayed at the top right corner of the application window, so you can see there, how the completed puzzle should look like. With bigger puzzles, this picture is unfortunately rather small. But, there's another way to have a look at the (final) puzzle picture: Push the Show button to display all puzzle pieces at their correct position; to continue doing the puzzle, push Restore.
The names of the puzzle download files on www.streetinfo.lu end with a puzzle file version number of the form m.s.u, where m and s are the main- and sub-version number and u is an update-number, that has no other function than "grouping" all puzzles of a given version, that have been created/published together at a given date. The m.s part of the puzzle version number corresponds to the m.s version number of the application itself. Thus, all puzzles v4.0.x have been created with the release of Kidspuzzle v4.0 (the one, that you're actually using).
It is important to have a closer look at the main-version number of puzzle files, that you want to download. In fact, puzzle files, that have a main version number, that is higher than the main version number of the application, will not work with that application and when you try to load them, you'll get an error message. On the other side, Kidspuzzle is backward compatible and program modifications, with publishing of an updated application with a new (higher) sub-version number, do not affect the puzzle files. Thus, with your actual Kidspuzzle v4.0, you can use puzzle files with version 4.0 of course, but also any versions 1.s.u, 2.s.u and 3.s.u. And, if I published a new 4.1 version, also the corresponding puzzles 4.1.u. However, if one day you find puzzle files 5.s.u on the download page, they will not work with your actual application and if you want to use them, you'll have to download Kidspuzzle v5.0 or higher (if some day they exist).