A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection.
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@LiseAndreasen that's up to the downstream maintainer of whichever phone app you have in mind. I don't maintain any of the phone ports personally.
@simontatham
Oh, okay. Yeah, there's an extra name, you're right. -
@simontatham I got confused by the hat adjacency test, because it turns out that points as well as edges count - so the new "Highlight adjacent" preference is essential
but isn't it highlighting unselected tiles, rather than flags?
I think that the rest of the name "... when clicking on a clue" is technically accurate but perhaps a touch distracting, and it might be nice if it highlighted even on an unselected tile, just to show the patterns better ...@yojimbo @simontatham yeah, I noticed the 5 in the triangles screenshot and was confused until I considered that's true for the square grid counting diagonals too
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@yojimbo @simontatham yeah, I noticed the 5 in the triangles screenshot and was confused until I considered that's true for the square grid counting diagonals too
@LionsPhil @yojimbo the contributor of this patch mentioned that he did _try_ adding a mode in which only adjacency along tile edges counted, and vertex-only adjacency was ignored. But he judged that the gameplay became too boring, and didn't even bother sending me the code.
The Honeycomb grid has this property already, because there _are_ no pairs of tiles that only touch at a vertex – tiles share an edge or don't touch at all. And indeed I think that is the most boring of the new modes. So I believe him!
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@simontatham
Thanks! So much fun!I got this very peculiar distribution..
Does it have something to do with it trying to generate a unique solution?@ra yes, that's an occasional failure mode of the grid generator at high mine densities. It's _technically_ still a uniquely soluble grid with the right number of mines, but also, not exactly what you wanted! You'd have seen the same phenomenon before this patch if you'd turned up the mine density in an ordinary square grid.
I've never managed to figure out exactly how to change the generation strategy to avoid this happening, although I keep thinking it _ought_ to be possible.
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@simontatham How about US congressional districts?
@kgjenkins worse still, how about the map of Liechtenstein, many of whose administrative divisions have exclaves separate from the main part, so that the adjacency graph isn't even planar!
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@garthy those settings specify a "cyclic" mode, in which the top of the grid is considered to wrap round to the bottom. So that 2 clue is not just adjacent to the single closed cell shown in your picture, but also to some cells at the bottom of the grid.
If you click on the 2 cell as if you were going to clear around it, it will show all the cell's closed neighbours temporarily.
@simontatham @garthy Would it make sense to draw half tiles mirroring the opposite tile in cyclic mode, to make it more obvious?
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A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!
I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.
Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.
@simontatham Saw this on my timeline, thought "this is cool, imagine this on Simon Tatham's app", then saw who posted
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@simontatham @garthy Would it make sense to draw half tiles mirroring the opposite tile in cyclic mode, to make it more obvious?
@jernej__s @garthy that's an interesting UI thought. It might be more difficult in the other two cyclic modes, though, because the triangular cyclic grid has straight edges at top and bottom, and the square cyclic grid has straight edges everywhere!
But I agree it would be nice to have _some_ visual indication that you're playing a cyclic grid, if only for people who have forgotten which option they selected from the menu. (Alas, real work sometimes temporarily distracts people from the important business of playing puzzle games.)
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@jernej__s @garthy that's an interesting UI thought. It might be more difficult in the other two cyclic modes, though, because the triangular cyclic grid has straight edges at top and bottom, and the square cyclic grid has straight edges everywhere!
But I agree it would be nice to have _some_ visual indication that you're playing a cyclic grid, if only for people who have forgotten which option they selected from the menu. (Alas, real work sometimes temporarily distracts people from the important business of playing puzzle games.)
@simontatham @garthy I chose honeycomb because it's IMHO the hardest to show in this way – I'd say square is much simpler:
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@simontatham @garthy I chose honeycomb because it's IMHO the hardest to show in this way – I'd say square is much simpler:
@simontatham @garthy Oh, and speaking of UI, might be a good idea to pop up a "Generating" message when setting up larger grids, otherwise the browser looks like it froze for a few seconds.
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@RealGene ah, yes, sorry about that. Nobody who knows how to make ordinary web JS phone-friendly has yet offered to help with that.
Normally I advise mobile users to use the dedicated phone ports instead. But of course that doesn't help with a new feature released only a few hours ago.
But @bjh21 has a "helpful" suggestion for this situation
https://wandering.shop/@bjh21/114761456605196277@simontatham @RealGene @bjh21 is the source available somewhere? I would like to submit patch for long-click as right-click
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@simontatham @RealGene @bjh21 is the source available somewhere? I would like to submit patch for long-click as right-click
@gkrnours @RealGene @bjh21 yes, all the source code is in a git repository whose URL is on the main puzzles page. Unfortunately the online gitweb browser is currently down (because otherwise it got DDoSed by AI scraper bots), but it should still be possible to clone the repo.
To build the Javascript version you need Emscripten, which is conveniently (at least from my point of view) available as a Docker image.
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A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!
I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.
Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.
@simontatham In high school I spent waay too much time on a similar desktop variant. I stopped when I saw different tilings when I closed my eyes in school... -
A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!
I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.
Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.
@simontatham is source code available ?
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@simontatham is source code available ?
@Mindiell yes, the git repository is on the main web page.
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@Mindiell yes, the git repository is on the main web page.
@simontatham nice, thx, I'll see if I can port this fun game
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@gkrnours @RealGene @bjh21 yes, all the source code is in a git repository whose URL is on the main puzzles page. Unfortunately the online gitweb browser is currently down (because otherwise it got DDoSed by AI scraper bots), but it should still be possible to clone the repo.
To build the Javascript version you need Emscripten, which is conveniently (at least from my point of view) available as a Docker image.
@simontatham @RealGene @bjh21 thanks for the pointers (pun intended).
I don't think I'll be able to help. The codebase is really far from what I'm used.
I did manage to compile it and play on my machine, the hat pattern feel fun and playful while these specter really do hate me
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A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!
I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.
Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.
@simontatham
Nice! I'll try and see if it works in my Plan 9 port. -
A couple of weeks ago I showed a preview of a new mode for Mines, in my puzzle collection. I'm pleased to say that the new Mines is now completed and live! You can now play Minesweeper on a wide range of tilings in your browser
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mines.html
or download a desktop version from the parent page which supports the same set of grids.As well as the support for lots of grid types, there's also a new user preference (off by default) to make it easier to play on them. When you click on a clue square to potentially clear around it, the existing flags adjacent to the square light up, to make it easier to count them and work out how many more mines you're still expecting. Particularly useful in the hat tiling, where it's easy to mistake exactly what is adjacent to what!
I expect different people will prefer different grids. Personally I think the triangular grid is particularly tricky and puzzly; the hexagonal honeycomb makes a gentle introduction; the Cairo, Floret and Kites tilings are a nice set in between those extremes; and of course the aperiodic tilings are there to keep you on your toes and ready for anything.
Many thanks to Anders Höglund for this excellent piece of work.
@simontatham wow!
