The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[fish]

This is my first posting here, and I hope I've gotten the right board. My apologies if not...

I figured Sudoku would be a nice way to gain some experience with writing mobile software, and as such I've written my own Sudoku game. The game runs on mobile (cell) phones which support Java (namely J2ME MIDP v1) and has a host of handy features.

http://smmj.sf.net/sudoku/

The software is not commercial. It can be downloaded for free to any Java enabled phone/device from "http://smmj.sf.net/SudokuME.jad" , which is actually just an alias for the longer "http://smmj.sourceforge.net/SudokuME.jad" (so try the latter if your phone has trouble with the former).

I intend to release the source code (the programming instructions, to those who aren't programmers) into Open Source under the GNU license - so any programmer will be able to study how it works, fix bugs or release their own customised version.

What I'm looking for is feedback on...
(a) does it work (on your phone)?
(b) is it useful?
(c) how it might be extended?

I also have a legal question - my game is capable of downloading games from on-line archives stored on the web. In theory this means you could have access to the latest games from newspapers and other sources, however I am uncertain as to the legal nature of Sudoku puzzles. I noticed that sudoku.org.uk provides an archive of Daily Telegraph puzzles. I used this archive, in part, to create a demo archive on-line for my game. Can the abstract data from a puzzle be considered copyrightable, as well as its printed form? Quite possibly! (With that in mind, can anyone suggest a public domain source for Sudoku puzzles?)

[peppermint-bunny]

I'm also just venturing into mobile java and thought SUDOKU was an ideal subject. You are quite a bit ahead of me - I've downloaded your java code and your jar file and would like to thanks you in advance for this learning material. Silly question maybe - but how do I upload the jar onto my phone?

[PaulIQ164]

I imagine it depends on your phone. Mine's a Nokia, and you need a data cable (or Bluettoth or IR if your PC has it) and the PC Suite software, then there's an application installing program.

Edit: Scratch that. You want to find the place on your phones Web menu where you can download apps, and point it at the address given above. I just got it to my phone, and it looks great!

Edit edit: Well, the app's a little too tall for my phone's screen, but then I've seen that on a lot of apps I've tried - I think my phone's just funny.

[fish]

Edit edit: Well, the app's a little too tall for my phone's screen, but then I've seen that on a lot of apps I've tried - I think my phone's just funny.

Yes, sorry about that. If you run it on a phone with a baseline J2ME specification (the minimum display size allowed by J2ME specs) then the game is a little too tall. AFAIK most phones these days have higher resolutions. As always, it's a balancing act: if I add code to make the display scroll then this complicates the UI and adds to the memory footprint.


That said, scrolling would allow us to play games of 16x16 in size... so perhaps it would be worth the effort (?)

Your thoughts welcome.

[nimisis]

I've written a su doku solver as a java applet which is free to use.

To try it out - http://www.nimisis.com/projects/sudoku.php

This solver doesn't spoil the game by showing the solution immediately. Instead hints can be given as and when the user would like one.