What kind of features would you want out of a minesweeper level creator? I'm currently in the process of making one, and I'd love some feedback/ideas.
I used it to create the puzzles I've been posting over the past two weeks. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I wanted to give an early look and get some feedback.
Three safe cells can be deduced here.
The Color Groups have their own separate mine count. On this puzzle, there are 3 mines in the green cells. The mine count of the non-colored other cells is 5, and is separate. So the total mine count is 10, if you add them all up.
On a Triangle Grid, cells count all adjacent neighbors, including on corners. So the 1 at (9,3) counts 7 cells surrounding it, including the yellow and green cell to it's left. See here.
I'll update this post with the solution tomorrow at 9AM EST. Enjoy!
Check out Friday's puzzle here.
For anyone wondering how I made these, it's a game I've been working on over the past year. I'll make a formal post at another time, but I finally got a store page up, so I figured I'd link it.
Edit: Added explanation of triangle grid.
There is one mine that can be deduced here.
The Color Groups have their own separate mine count. On this puzzle, there are 2 mines in the red cells. The mine count of the other cells is not given.
The Zone Clues only count the cells they indicate. So the 1 at (5,2) only counts it's diagonally adjacent cells.
I'll post the solution with Monday's puzzle at 9AM EST. Enjoy!
Check out Yesterday's puzzle here.
I'm a big fan of minesweeper puzzle games, like Tametsi and Hexcells, and wanted to take a crack at creating some puzzles myself. The first post I made last week got a decent amount of activity, so I thought it might be fun to do some daily posts. These posts have been getting less and less activity with each post though, even with just one week of doing it. Maybe the puzzle quality isn't up to snuff, people aren't interested in doing these types of puzzles on reddit, or some other reason. I'm not trying to spam this sub reddit with a bunch of posts no one is interested in. So, unless there's some quiet group that's enjoying these, but not posting, who wants me to continue, I'm going to stop the daily posts on here. I may continue on the Minesweeper Community Discord though(on the puzzles channel).
I'll still post the puzzle I prepared for Monday though, then maybe just occasionally post puzzles here if I think they're good enough. Thanks for everyone who participated!
Edit: Accidentally mentioned two safe cells, instead of the one mine at the start of the post(copied from yesterday). The title and picture were correct tho. Sorry about that!
There are two safe cells that can be deduced here.
The Color Groups have their own separate mine count. On this puzzle, there are 2 mines in the green cells. The mine count of the other cells is not given.
There are two safe cells that can be deduced here.
The Color Groups have their own separate mine count. On this puzzle, there are 2 mines in the blue cells. The mine count of the other cells is not given.
I'll post the solution with tomorrow's puzzle at 9AM EST. Enjoy!
Only one cell can be proven a mine. We'll see if this one is a bit harder than yesterdays. Maybe the grid type can throw some people off.
For those unfamiliar with Triangle Grids, clues count all the cells they touch, even at corner to corner. So the 3 at (7,4) touches 8 covered cells, as shown in the second image.
Only one mine can be proven from this picture. This puzzle started a bit easier, but I adjusted it to make it a bit more difficult. We'll see if I stump anyone. You guys solved the past puzzles kind of quick.
The Ray Clues (Arrows) count the number of mines in that direction. So the 1 with the arrow pointing to the right at (4,2) counts the two cells to it's right, (5,2) and (6,2), and not the diagonal down adjacent cell (5,3).
Enjoy!
After getting a good amount of interest in yesterday's post I decided to post another puzzle today. This one has a few ways to tackle it, so maybe it's easier. We'll see.
I'm not committing to daily weekday posts or anything, but we'll see. Let me know if you'd like to see more of these. Enjoy!
Curious to see how/if people will be able to solve this. I'll post the answer at a later time. Enjoy!
Edit:
Playing a bunch of different minesweeper games, there's certain features some have implemented that I would categorize as convenience/quality of life things. I'm wondering if there's any consensus on if any of these types of features dilute the game, make it worse, or would count as cheating. I'll just list them out in no particular order.
Clue Adjacency Highlight: Just a standard highlight of cells adjacent to a clue. A lot of minesweeper versions have this, and you can just click/right click a clue to highlight it's touching cells. It can help less experienced players learn adjacency.
Quick Reveal: Some minesweeper version take it a step further, and if a clue has all mines accounted for, you can trigger a quick reveal to reveal all remaining adjacent cells. Pretty convenient, but for sure makes playing quicker.
Clue Countdown: This is a big one. I've only seen this in a few versions, but they have it so the clue numbers count down as you add flags. So if you add all the flags around a clue, it will appear as a 0, making it easy to spot and reveal remaining neighbors(especially when combined with Quick Reveal). I'm wondering if this is more of a preference, or it's a sort of cheat.
Quick Flag: I've only seen this in one game, but the way it works is you can trigger a quick flag on a clue cell, and it will flag all adjacent neighbors. It's useful if the remaining neighbors equal the remaining mines, so it can save clicks. Not sure if it's the same affect as Quick Reveal, or more/less.
Auto-Reveal/Flag Obvious: I've also only seen this in one game, but maybe I missed some. When the mines equal the remaining cells, it will just auto flag them. I guess the thought is that it's easy enough you shouldn't have to waste your time. I personally feel this one is too far though.
My main concern is if people are playing competitively, for leaderboard positions. If any of these conveniences are available, does it lessen the competition? Would it be required to use them all to be competitive, and would there need to be a mode that disables some/all of these?
I'm very interested in what the community has to say on this matter.
Edit:
I messed up, and forgot to include the first step.
Here it is.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xMn2Ny4CKZ9DLzQvLfFpTTnJtKms0fpz/view?usp=sharing
Original Post:
So, I'm trying to create a version of minesweeper with a solver that can not only tell you the next move, but also explain it clearly with steps. It currently has about 8 different rules it searches for, with their own explanations. I'm also working on it detecting different minesweeper variants, like column/row clues and ? clues(as you can see).
Basically, I'm looking at some feedback from the experts here for how clear it is(at least in this instance).
Any feedback would be appreciated. Also, I'm not ready to have anyone test it directly yet, but if anyone is interested let me know, and I'll send out more info when it's ready.