"How to Add Games to Your Site" Blog

Creating a Scrambler

While creating a new scrambler for Surfnetkids today (you can take a look at Railroad Scrambler) it occured to me that determining the correct number of rows and columns for a scramble was a topic that needed addressing. So here goes....

1) Rows and columns for square pictures: use an equal number of rows and columns and you will get square tiles within your square picture. Make sure the width of your picture is divisble by the number of rows/columns. For example 420x420 is a good image size for 3x3 or 4x4 or 5x5 --- but 410x410 only works as a 5x5 (because 410/3 and 410/4 both have remainders.)

2) Row and columns for horizontal-orientation images: use more columns than rows. This will get you square tiles if you size your picture accordingly. In other words --- for a scrambler of 4 columns and 3 rows to have square tiles, you will need to size your image with the width of 4x and a height of 3x --- where x is ANY number at all. But it is PERFECTLY alright to have rectangle tiles (instead of square ones) in which case you just need to size your image so that the width is divisible by the number of columns and the height is divisible by the number of rows. For example.... for a horizontal picture with 4 columns and 3 rows, you can size it 400x333 or 200x153.

3) Rows and columns for vertical-orientation images: use more rows than columns. This will get you square tiles if you size your picture accordingly. In other words --- for a scrambler of 3 columns and 4 rows to have square tiles, you will need to size your image with the width of 3x and a height of 4x --- where x is ANY number at all. But it is PERFECTLY alright to have rectangle tiles (instead of square ones) in which case you just need to size your image so that the width is divisible by the number of columns and the height is divisible by the number of rows. For example.... for a vertical picture with 3 columns and 4 rows, you can size it 333x400 or 153x200.