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Show HN: The classic Minesweeper on an irregular grid

polyreplay.com

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

#61

Post by frading »

viraptor wrote: post #55
frading wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Yes, I'm on a small grid, so only see a "chain" of the boxes being uncovered one by one. It does feel pretty slow, even though I'm nowhere close to speed solving : - )

I've thought about what you said a bit more, and I think you meant it should accelerate with time? In any case, I've just done that and deployed it. So if you refresh the page, the animation should - hopefully - be less bland. Feel free to let me know what you think.

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

#62

Post by frading »

Szpadel wrote: post #15
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…

maybe "60s penalty" would be better wording?

"60s penalty" wording is live! Thanks again

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

#63

Post by frading »

labster wrote: post #53

I couldn’t beat the tutorial on iPhone SE, the modal text covers where the game needs you to click

Thank you for letting me know.

Would you be able to take a screenshot?

I'm testing for the iPhone SE using chrome dev tools, and the display seems fine there, so what I see it most likely not accurate.

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

#64

Post by frading »

Retr0id wrote: post #57

This is fun. I was playing classic minesweeper the other day and remarked on how I was basically playing on autopilot, I've internalized all the logic and playing is just muscle memory now. But playing this version, my intuition is all wrong! I lost my first 2 games, and now I'm going to have to force myself to slow down and think through things more carefully, rather than trying to rely on my now-incorrect intuition…

That's great to hear, thank you! And yes, that's exactly the intention, it's a game designed to keep you on your toes.

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

#65

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

frading wrote: post #58
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #51

This is really cool. I have wasted far too many hours playing minesweeper and this adds a bit of challenge back to a game that's become a bit too mundane for me(I mostly play it to fall asleep now). I will say though that it seems like the map ends up a bit empty, reducing the difficulty. Managed to get through the expert setting without encountering a single 5, for instance. And a question: Does this generate maps w…

Thanks a lot! And yes, the ratio of mines vs clear tiles may not be optimal, and is currently completely random, so guessing may be required at times. But there's an undo button so you won't have to restart a new level if you hit a mine. But I'd love to remove guessing ultimately. I just haven't found a reliable way to make it work yet, and would need to dedicate a fair amount of hours to it, which I've preferred all…

Simon Tatham has a completely guess free minesweeper in his portable puzzle collection: https://git.tartarus.org/?p=simon/puzzles.git;a=blob;f=mines...

The basic idea is he generates a grid, runs it through a deductive solver, and if it fails, heuristically changes the grid a little where it failed and tries again.

I'll try some different ratios and get back to you!

edit: I tried some runs with size 3 and 20% mines, that felt a lot more like expert difficulty Minesweeper too in terms of the sizes of the empty patches you uncover by uncovering a 0.

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

#66

Post by em-bee »

https://polyreplay.com/minesweepertwist?p=expert&s1=7&s2=43&...

opening a shared url like this doesn't seem to work. i just get the beginner view.

also i noticed that sometimes a tile is empty or white even though it should have bevels because there is actually a bomb under it. it's a cosmetic issue maybe caused by the algorithm to automatically uncover empty tiles.

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

#68

Post by frading »

em-bee wrote: post #66

https://polyreplay.com/minesweepertwist?p=expert&s1=7&s2=43&... opening a shared url like this doesn't seem to work. i just get the beginner view. also i noticed that sometimes a tile is empty or white even though it should have bevels because there is actually a bomb under it. it's a cosmetic issue maybe caused by the algorithm to automatically uncover empty tiles.

ah, that share url is indeed a bug, thank you for finding it, I'll work on it.

For the tile not having bevels when it should, would you be able to take a screenshot? That will help me understand when this happens. I haven't seen this yet, so I'm not entirely sure what could cause this.

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

#70

Post by frading »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #65
frading wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot! And yes, the ratio of mines vs clear tiles may not be optimal, and is currently completely random, so guessing may be required at times. But there's an undo button so you won't have to restart a new level if you hit a mine. But I'd love to remove guessing ultimately. I just haven't found a reliable way to make it work yet, and would need to dedicate a fair amount of hours to it, which I've preferred all…

Simon Tatham has a completely guess free minesweeper in his portable puzzle collection: https://git.tartarus.org/?p=simon/puzzles.git;a=blob;f=mines... The basic idea is he generates a grid, runs it through a deductive solver, and if it fails, heuristically changes the grid a little where it failed and tries again. I'll try some different ratios and get back to you! edit: I tried some runs with size 3 and 20% mines,…

Thanks a lot for taking the time to check this, that's very useful info.

Although the reason I haven't set 20% as the default, is because I'm concerned this may create too many situations where guessing would be required. So I'd need to have the solver in place. So thank you for the link as well.

Although now, I'm wondering if the solver can be smart enough to allow situations like this, where finding how to progress isn't quite obvious, like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234686

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