Software

From early on, I’ve been fascinated by computers and their ability to automate tasks that would be too tedious to complete by hand every time they are required. Planning domino fields to generate the impression of an image when seen from a distance is certainly one of them, where early domino builders had to draw plans by hand and count the required number of dominoes per color manually. During my most active time building dominoes as a teenager and young adult, I therefore developed two applications to facilitate this process. Although these are not be comparable to professional software products by large companies, I know that they have helped many builders over the years to create impressive domino toppling projects. This page provides an overview of and download links for these applications. While they are not under active maintenance anymore, I am glad to answer any arising questions about them (see contact details at the bottom of this page).

Java Fieldplanner

Java Fieldplanner is a tool that I have only shared among friends before making it publicly available on this website in 2021. It is a standalone tool based on the cross-platform programming language Java and offers several features for creating, editing, processing, and evaluating custom domino fields.

Features
  • Three dynamically switchable views for creating and analyzing domino fields: toppled view, set up view, and protocol view with adjustable domino template size
  • 3D preview of the corresponding domino template when selecting a subset of the field protocol
  • Overview panel for each view to mediate context when zoomed in
  • Quick buttons to color domino cells with common colors
  • Color histogram showing the current distribution of domino colors and frequencies
  • Replace all occurrences of a color by another one
  • Create initial domino fields for further editing from arbitrary images and textual inputs
  • Export all views to png images
  • Save and load domino fields to and from a custom data format (.jfp)
Download

To use the fieldplanner, you need to have a Java Runtime Environment installed for your operating system. Afterwards, you can start the application by unpacking the provided archive and opening the included .jar file.

Screenshots

Excel Fieldplanner

Excel Fieldplanner is the predecessor of Java Fieldplanner and has been offered on this website since 2007. It builds upon Microsoft Office Excel by reinterpreting each table cell as a colored domino and offers several additional features for creating, editing, processing, and evaluating custom domino fields. Thanks to Dimas for providing a Dutch translation of the latest version.

Features
  • Quick buttons to color domino cells with common colors
  • Adjustable domino dimensions and toppling direction of the field
  • Count color occurrences and compare to available dominoes per color
  • Replace all occurrences of a color by another one
  • Shift each row of field to create crossover effects
  • Generate and print field preview and field protocol based on colored cells
Download

To use the fieldplanner, you need a working copy of Microsoft Office Excel in the 2007 version or later. Once you open the downloaded file, you are prompted to enable macros for this document, after which you will see the graphical user interface of the fieldplanning tools. Unfortunately, other users reported that the execution of macros is generally disabled on Apple operating systems.

Screenshots

Other Domino Software from the Community

Other useful domino toppling-related applications include:

  • DominoPlanner by Johannes Linnenbrink and Jonathan Neuhauser - a tool to facilitate the preparation of domino toppling events, including functionalities to create fields, structures, spirals, and circle fields from images with various algorithmic fine-tuning options
  • domino-planner.com by Baptiste Gauthier - a fully web-based tool (i.e., no installation required) to design domino fields including automated field generation from images and texts with customizable color palettes

Please write me if you wish your software to be listed here.