Re: [Enigma-devel] level submission: minesweeper

[Ronald Lamprecht]

Hi,

Andreas Lochmann wrote:
> Brian Huffman schrieb:
> > I have attached an updated version of my minesweeper level.
> >
> > I have added some features to make sure the level is solvable, and so 
> > that the player is never forced to resort to guessing.
> >
> > - A check is done to make sure that all tiles are accessible from the 
> > boundary, without crossing any tiles with mines. No diagonal moves are 
> > necessary.
> >
> > - Mines are never placed along the outer edge. This allows the player 
> > to uncover these tiles right away, which presents many more 
> > opportunities for locating mines by skill, rather than luck. 
> > Essentially this gives the player a lot more information at the start, 
> > which makes the level a lot easier; to compensate I have increased the 
> > number of mines.

The diagonal move check and the free outer edge have two effects that 
astonished me while playing this version a few times:

1. The ambiguos mine distributions are drastically reduced as the most 
likely situations did occur in the neighbourhood of the outer edge.

2. The knowledge of the reachability of all minefree fields helps in 
most remaining ambiguos distritbutions to decide which way to go. In 
fact I am able to solve about 90% of the generated difficult levels 
without using hints.

First I thought that the given outer edge makes the level too easy. But 
meanwhile I admit that by the increased number of mines and the greater 
reliability of a fair solution the level gives the player an optimal 
challenge. It is indeed worth playing it many times :-)

> > - I have added a hidden area, which has a mechanism to give hints. You 
> > hit the st-timeswitch, it traps you behind a door for 10 seconds, then 
> > it uncovers a random tile and lets you out.
> Ah yes, works great :-)
>
> Three minor things I still see:
> - The colours of the fields should be stated somewhere
>   in detail, in this dense mine field it might be important
>   to know the number behind "deep-red". I suggest a row
>   beside the playing area with the field-colors correspon-
>   ding to y-coordinate or something similar.
>   Whatever suits the design.
> - In the "reachable"-function, "m == 10*7" should instead
>   be something depending on the number of mines?
>   Otherwise I didn't understand this function.
> - I don't understand how you distribute the oxyds in the
>   end. They should be reachable as well---or the mines
>   have to be deactivated in the end.

Another suggestion from my side:

Sometimes it is annoying when the level restarts directly on a false 
move. It would be nice to be able to analyse ones own mistake. Let the 
marble resurrect, show the bombs and give the player a document to press 
Shift+F3 (or Ctrl A) to restart the level.

Greets,

Ronald