Shapeplay Instructions

Shapeplay is very simple to work with; everything you do is done via clicking or dragging with your mouse.

Shapeplay’s widget is divided into two sections. On top we have the toolbar, which houses most of the controls, and below that is the playing field where you move your pieces around.

The playing field’s controls are pretty straight forward; just click or drag a piece to manipulate it with the currently selected tool. Different tools have different effects, but there is one catch. Pieces in the playing field are arranged in a specific order, and will hide under pieces that come later in that order. Whenever you use a tool on a piece you move it to the end of the list, placing it on top of everything else. This can be used to hide parts of pieces under other pieces.

While the playing field is one big area, the toolbar has three sections. On the far left is a series of buttons depicting various shapes in the current color. When clicked, a piece with that shape and color will be added to the upper left area of the playing field. One it appears there you can manipulate it with any tool.

The middle section of the toolbar is a palette of all of the colors you have to choose from. Selecting a color from this palette will change the buttons on the left to the new color, and any new pieces will be given this color. Use the Fill tool (see below) to change the color of an existing piece to your new color.

The third and most important section is the tool selection palette. Here is a series of buttons depicting all six available tools you can use to manipulate the shapes in the playing field. Only one of the tools can be active at any one time, and whichever tool is currently selected will appear with a light blue background.

Unfortunately, my version of Flash is so ancient that it’s not possible for me to code in a way to save your work. If you want to keep the art, take a screen capture (how this is done depends on your system — try hitting the Print Screen key on your keyboard and pasting the result into MS Paint).

Here’s a brief overview of what each tool does when you use it on a piece in the playing field:

The Move tool allows you to move a piece around the playing field. Click on a piece and drag to move it to the new location, or just click the piece to put it on top of everything else.

The Rotate tool lets you reorient any piece by rotating it. Click and drag to turn a piece to face any direction you want.

The Resize tool is used to change the width and/or height of a piece. Drag vertically to change a piece’s height, horizontally to change the width or diagonally to change both. There is a maximum and minimum limit to how big and small you can make a single piece however.

Clicking on a piece with the Delete tool selected will permanently remove it from the playing field.

If you ever want to change the color of a piece, select your new color and then click on it with the Fill tool selected. The piece’s color will change to the current color.

The Eyedropper tool functions as a reverse of the Fill tool. Click on any piece to replace the current color with the piece’s color.