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Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

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Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#41

Post by frading »

piranha wrote: post #23
frading wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot for trying it and the feedback. As a sibling comment said, left+right click should work (as well as middle click). Which OS/browser are you using? I like to fix this. And you're right for "lose 60s", It's not the ideal wording. I was thinking it in terms of the less time you end up with, the better your score is. But "gain 60s" wouldn't work either. I'll have a think, but curious to hear if anyone has su…

Middle click does not work for me on a Mac. Maybe cmd+click or double click would be ok to do?

Thanks a lot for the feedback and suggestion. And yes, I think it makes sense to add those.

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#42

Post by frading »

jyap wrote: post #31

Lol this kept me entertained for a bit. Found it a couple of weeks ago. Hoping my number 1 ranking on Intermediate stays up a while. I’ll need to see if I can crack that Expert high list. Cheers

ah welcome back! For the scores, right now, they all keep accumulating on the same page, but I may do weekly/monthly lists, so previous highscores won't stay on the main page for too long.

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#45

Post by frading »

quectophoton wrote: post #18

Looking at the high scores, is that "." a decimal separator? Are those scores for the beginner difficulty "one and a half seconds"?

Yes, you're correct, it's the decimal separator. I remember now that this is not international. I believe the comma is used in the US? Having grown up in France, I'm used to the dot.

And that score is indeed suspicious, although there are some protections to prevent cheating. Someone would have to be quite motivated to go around them. But it might be possible, as you don't need to flag all the mines in order to win, you can wind by just uncovering the non-mines. I felt this could be allowed as this is really the same outcome. But I can see that if you're really lucky, the mines are placed in a very convenient way, a quick win could happen. But I assume this can only happen on the beginner grid, not on the larger ones.

In any case, I'll reconsider this, and may force all mines to be flagged in order to win, that might be safer.

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#46

Post by alanbernstein »

frading wrote: post #12
netsharc wrote: post #2

Neat... but I'm missing the left+right click, in the Windows Minesweeper, say you have a square with 4, and you've marked 4 squares around it as bombs, you can left+right click on the 4-square and uncover all the unmarked squares around it, instead of going one by one. Also "undo" is cool, but "lose 60s" seems backwards, considering one would get 60 seconds added to one's time.

Thanks a lot for trying it and the feedback. As a sibling comment said, left+right click should work (as well as middle click). Which OS/browser are you using? I like to fix this. And you're right for "lose 60s", It's not the ideal wording. I was thinking it in terms of the less time you end up with, the better your score is. But "gain 60s" wouldn't work either. I'll have a think, but curious to hear if anyone has su…

"suffer 60s"

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#47

Post by frading »

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #27

Excellent on iPhone 12 mini. Love it. Thank you for sharing!! Q: Would it be possible to make the grids… even more random? What’s your gridding approach? I was almost a bit "disappointed" that the grids still looked like, well, grids.

Thanks a lot to you for the kind words, that's great to read!

And I explain the generation method in another comment, but here it is as well:

-------------------- The generation is inspired by what Oskar Stålberg has done for his game Townscaper. It is done with those steps: - start with triangles (ideally in an hexagonal pattern). - merge pairs of triangles into quads, randomly leaving some as triangles. - we subdivide both quads and triangles, and end up with quads only. - smooth the whole to get nicer shapes

It can be a bit abstract with just this list, so you can see some videos in my tweet: https://twitter.com/fradingue/status/1712218108826460428

I've also created a webgl engine to solve this type of procedural modeling for the web, and you can see 2 examples scenes where you can play with parameters that affect the shape of the irregular grid:

- https://polygonjs.com/gui/irregular_quads/edit

- https://polygonjs.com/gui/irregular_quad_relaxation/edit --------------------

So even though you're currently seeing a flat grid, it's all 3D under the hood. So I'm also considering having those grids on a sphere, a torus, or even a custom 3D model. I had done some earlier test: https://polygonjs.com/gui/minesweeper_torus_sphere/edit So it's technically possible, but there's more work to have this easy to navigate around, and to still look visually minimalist while still being pleasant.

If the steam version becomes profitable, I'll definitely explore those directions. I agree this can be stretched further.

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#48

Post by frading »

dmoy wrote: post #43
quectophoton wrote: post #18

Looking at the high scores, is that "." a decimal separator? Are those scores for the beginner difficulty "one and a half seconds"?

Sub 0.5 second is world record for normal beginner minesweeper. So, could be, yea.

interesting, I wasn't aware of that. Is there an official list?

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#49

Post by frading »

SnooSux wrote: post #40
frading wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah yes, it's a nasty one. I can't see an obvious way to progress without luck either.

There are definitely ways to progress from here, but they may be more advanced? The 1 SouthEast of the bottom 2 touches two tiles, and the 1 immediately West touches a superset of those two. The difference between the larger and smaller set must be clear. And you can go further off of that.

ah yes, very well spotted! as the dev, I should really have seen that.

Re: Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

#50

Post by frading »

viraptor wrote: post #25
frading wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah very interesting! I've done quite a few iterations of the speed at which they get uncovered, and it's definitely tricky to nail down. I've tried to find a middle ground between something that's rewarding/satisfying (so should take 1-2 seconds, long enough to be enjoyed), but also doesn't block you (so should be instant). And that animation would need to very different if it's revealing 10 tiles or less, or 500+. I…

An idea (not sure if it will work well) - how about uncovering fields with a "wave" rather than one by one? So instead of linear time, make it linear-by-distance time. First reveal the original tile, then its neighbours, then their neighbours, ... It should still feel pretty fluid, but faster.

If I understand correctly what you're describing, it's more or less what's happening now. But it may not look like it if you're on the beginner grid, and may only look good/better on the larger grids (either expert size, or custom with very large size).

But in short, when you uncover the first tile of this wave, at each frame I uncover only 1/60 of the total. So if you've uncovered 600 tiles, 10 should be uncovered on each frame, and it should be done in 1 second if your display is at 60FPS.

But if you uncover 60 tiles only, it will uncover 1 per frame, and that can look pretty bland. Could it be what you see? If that's the case, I believe (with a good 60% certainty!) that I mostly need to revisit the method when it's for a small number of tiles.

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