Working smooth. What is the business model? Don't see any pricing.
Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
61–70 of 87 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#62Minesweeper can be more difficult than meets the eye...
I made a minesweeper solver a couple years back that solves the exact probability of a mine in any uncovered space
Its actually pretty hard, you have to factor in every single possible permutation of mines in the uncleared areas. That's OK, there are some optimisations you can do, but for certain board configurations the processing time needed would skyrocket. I suspect someone has made algorithms which solve it a lot faster though.
There are some minesweeper games that only show you boards where you can solve yourself algorithmically, where every space can be cleared with 100% probability that it will not be a mine. But what about making a game similar to that but it relying on the player's ability to guess probabilities more, the game would reward the player (ie, cleared space is not mine) if they correctly choose the best possible play probability-wise (but that otherwise would not be 100% certain).
I'm sure there are many other variants that could be made too
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#63This is super fun!... until you meet someone who is just sweeps (pun intended) the floor. There is no way for me to even play with some players. I wish I could "block" them, because the fun is gone when every tile is gets completed before I can even react. My best game was my first, where I played against people my skill. Whenever the user "rapidash" is in the lobby, I might as well just quit, since I won't be able t…
I just assumed they were bots since they seem to be clicking at the rate limit.
The rate limit is extremely low for good minesweeper players. My mean time for finished expert games without marking is something like 130 seconds. If I half-mark in order to use the left+right click effectively, that knocks like 20 seconds off.
The rate-limit seems to be 2 clicks/sec. a 130s time at expert is 3.8 clicks/sec. My record is just a little more than half that.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just assumed they were bots since they seem to be clicking at the rate limit.
The rate limit is extremely low for good minesweeper players. My mean time for finished expert games without marking is something like 130 seconds. If I half-mark in order to use the left+right click effectively, that knocks like 20 seconds off. The rate-limit seems to be 2 clicks/sec. a 130s time at expert is 3.8 clicks/sec. My record is just a little more than half that.
I agree with this, for good Minesweeper players (my record on expert is around 55 seconds) a rate limit of 3 per second is low enough that it feels frustrating and glitchy. I think I averaged approximately 5 clicks/second on vanilla Minesweeper, but presumably with higher peaks. I imagine at launch you're getting more curious first-time players, but your community would likely gravitate towards more experienced players over time.
A simple suggestion to encourage more fair matchmaking without building a big system for it is to have separate Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced boards, and let players self-select.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#65On mobile I couldn't make a mistake. Every tap was charitably interpreted as the correct action to take on that square whether it be flagging a mine or revealing empty space / numbers. I clicked every tile and never exploded a mine.
Game design suggestions for preserving the Minesweeper flavour (e.g. tension to not explode!) and to discourage random guessing:
- Every time you explode a mine, you can't perform any actions for the next 5 seconds in addition to losing a few points.
- Exception: for the first little bit (say 5-10 seconds, or until a certain percentage of the board is opened) no punishments for incorrect actions (maybe just scores, but don't allow scores to go negative).
- Modify flagging to be private per-user information (don't provide any points for it) and allow undoing flags. As someone else mentioned, this keeps with the flavour of the original minesweeper where the goal is clearing; mines are automatically flagged at the end.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#66If you didn't heard of it yet, there's a Minesweeper game where you try to solve it Algorithmically I.e. you make rules like "If there are 2 free cells around number 2 them flag them" and the game recursively applies them to the board Except simple levels solve fast and in ten minutes you are on monstrosities like ?2?? ?32? 23x2 x-bomb x?3? ?-unknown https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/
For me Bombe was fun, but I lost interest once rules needed to be complicated enough that I would have to run them for multiple hours to solve further levels. You either end up needing rules with four or five variables to apply fully generally, or you break down and define a combinatorial explosion of rules with some of those variables specialized. The priority system doesn't work reliably either; I frequently see a…
I couldn't make heads or tails of the UI, honestly.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#67If the rate limiter buffered your action instead of just reverting it entirely, with some indication like a faded out ghost to indicate that the action will be played out later, it would be much better. Otherwise it's too frustrating to have to click everything three times because the game keeps undoing what you did.
Also, 2 APS is hardly competitive in this game.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me Bombe was fun, but I lost interest once rules needed to be complicated enough that I would have to run them for multiple hours to solve further levels. You either end up needing rules with four or five variables to apply fully generally, or you break down and define a combinatorial explosion of rules with some of those variables specialized. The priority system doesn't work reliably either; I frequently see a…
I couldn't make heads or tails of the UI, honestly.
The dev does have a penchant for making dense and obtuse UI, but once you get used to it it stops being a problem. I remember when I first booted up Bombe I thought the UI looked as obtuse as the one in ComPressure, went to Steam to check, and lo and behold it was the same dev :D
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#69Besides whats called out by others: It would be nice to have the usual action of "press both mouse buttons" on a number to open all non flagged fields around it. That reduces the amount of required clicks a bit. But maybe its intentional to avoid one player scoring too many points at once?
That does work already. You don't even have to use both mouse buttons, just left click is enough.
Re: Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
#70played as "birch", here's my first impressions and feedback - my play style was definitely limited by the "2 actions per second" limit (I had to actively control my pace), and also disrupted by the info tooltip appearing over the cells I want to click when those extra fast clicks happen to be towards the bottom - placing a mine counts as an action, which incentivizes farming hunting mines while letting others explore…
Definitely agree on the left clicking of mines requiring something a little more harsh. Possibly a 2 mistake max before exploding you out of the game or maybe a cool down timer which doubles on each explosive error.