[Kde-games-devel] Kmines

[Ethan Anderson]

Sorry, I don't mean to flood the mailing list, but I went back into
kmines again and realized I couldn't turn off 'i'm not sure' flags.

You don't know whether or not a mine is there?  You don't say!  That's
only every unrevealed space on the board!
...'im not sure' is but a wasted right click when I miss a space by
two pixels and flag the wrong one.

Also note that the vast majority of unsolvable maps end at the edges
of the map.  I propose an alternative to the game starting with a
random click from the user and having to try out perhaps a few maps to
make sure that he/she gets one where that space is a 0, if that is
indeed what's being done--
Give every map one extra line of spaces around the outside with no
mines, which begins revealed, and let the user solve in from there.
This should prevent the waste of generating and trying several maps
and really decrease the probability of a dead end game.  The very
first click is a click based on information from the board.  Another
anti-loss mechanism would be to have an AI-- if you click 'hint', and
the AI cannot determine a safe next move using every algorithm
applicable, it should flag a correct space for you without
disqualifying your high score.

I think I would love to write an AI for kmines in python under the
GPLv2+3.  That would be a great exercise for me.  Does kmines have an
AI interface?  It'd be handy to have a live gameplay demo via AI to
show people how to play and such also, with an AI terminal to describe
what it's doing and why..

Also, in kmines, 'easy' 'medium' and 'hard' doesn't make perfect
sense.  It's really just easy tiny, easy small, and easy kinda large.
Size is size; difficulty is not.

I'm also thinking, for artwork to remain 'fun', it should support 3
mines per space max, and switch to colors or (regular numbers -> color
inversion) for things above that.  I personally would be satisfied if
the game only supported 3 mines per space, because once you break away
from a max of 1, the code can scale up to pretty much whatever, if
someone wants it to later, with relatively minimal modification.
..I'm trying to figure out how I'd scale my radioactive and nuclear
theme idea to 3 mines per space...  perhaps merging them and just
calling it 'apocalypse' or something like that..