The Datafile PD-CD 4/DATAFILE_PDCD4.iso/games/3dmines/!CrazyMine/!Help

Text File | 1994-12-14 | 10KB | 260 lines

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            Crazy-paving minesweeper
               © A.W.Garrard 1994

Welcome to crazy paving minesweeper.

This software is public domain. It may be copied
freely, so long as all the files (including this
help file) are copied with it.

This was written as a piece of software to be
bundled with 3-D Minesweeper (also PD) and maybe
also some other variants on minesweeper. If you
have not tried 3DMine (which has had rather more
time devoted to it than this has), why not give
it a go?

Instructions
~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you are used to the traditional version of
minesweeper, this game will have few surprises.
Select clears cells, select flags/unflags cells,
and menu queries/unqueries cells. If you are not
familiar with minesweeper, the game will be
described below in more detail. This section
will concentrate on features specific to this
implementation.

To run Crazymine, double-click on the !CrazyMine
icon. If you are in a 16 colour mode, you will
be asked whether you would like to run the game
in your current mode. If, for some reason, you
find yourself unable to use the screen mode
to which the game defaults, simply start it from
a 16-colour mode and answer ‘Y’ to this query.
If you do not start from a 16 colour mode, as
default the game will start in mode 12, but once
you have chosen a screen mode for the game, it
will always start in that mode unless you again
choose to change it. To ensure that you will use
a mode which you can display, it is suggested
that the first time you play the game you run it
from a suitable 16-colour screen mode and choose
to run the game in that mode. If you usually use
the mode in which you want to run the game for
your desktop, you will not be asked whether you
want to change mode, so if you don't like being
asked, choose your desktop mode as the default
mode for the game. Note that large screen modes
require more to be drawn, so the game will be
slightly less responsive in a large mode.

You will next be asked whether you would like to
generate a new grid. Generating a grid is *SLOW*
even on quite fast machines. Try answering ‘N’
first - the game will then load a default grid.
If for some reason this file has got deleted,
the game will crash, so you will have to run it
again and this time choose ‘Y’. A 20-cell grid
takes over 30 seconds to generate on a Risc PC,
and the time is related in a cubic manner to the
number of cells, so for your first game it is
suggested that if you have to generate a grid,
choose one with only 10 or so cells.

The next thing the game does is to ask you how
many mines you would like to place in the grid.
If you are not used to minesweeper, try having
the number of mines equal to the square root of
the number of cells (or thereabouts); e.g. 3
mines on a 10 cell grid. If the number of mines
is less than the number of cells minus 4, you
have the option of forcing all the corner cells
to be safe. You must have at least one mine,
and cannot have more mines than there are cells.

The computer will then draw the grid and, after
a short pause, you will see a mouse pointer, and
a display will appear at the top of the screen
to tell you about the cell under the pointer and
let you know how many flags you have left. As
the mouse pointer is moved, the cell under the
pointer will be lit up brightly, and the cells
in contact with it will be lit up slightly less
brightly - since it is not always clear whether
two cells are connected, this feature was put in
in an attempt to help. Note that it isn't always
clear whether a cell is in the corner (which, if
you have corner cells forced to clear, may be
important). Sorry - that feature just makes the
game more interesting. :-)

Blue cells have not yet been uncovered. Green
cells have been cleared - if there are any mines
next to that cell, then the number of adjacent
mines will be written on the cell in red. If no
number is present, there are no adjacent mines.
There is no auto-clear feature - sorry for that.
Queried cells are a brownish-amber, and flagged
cells are red.

From then on, it's just like normal minesweeper.
If you win the game, a star will be displayed
telling you that you have won, and giving the
amount of time it took you to play. If you lose,
the display at the top of the screen will change
to tell you some details of how well you did,
and all the mines will be marked on the grid by
an ‘M’ - in flashing red if you have not flagged
them.

Press a mouse button to play again.

To quit the game, press <Esc> at any time, but
if you do so while a grid is being calculated
you should choose to generate a new grid next
time you play (or use an alternate file - see
below).

Minesweeper the game
~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~
Minesweeper is a game dating back at least to
the early days of microcomputers. The game is
played on a grid of cells, some of which contain
a ‘mine’ (there can only be one mine per cell).
You can clear a cell to find out its contents,
or flag a cell if you think it contains a mine.

The aim is to place flags on all the cells which
contain mines. If you clear a cell which has a
mine in it, you lose. If you clear a cell which
does not contain a mine, the cell will tell you
how many mines are in the cells adjacent to that
cell (including cells connected only corner-to-
corner). Optionally, the cells in the corner of
the grid may always be safe, so you have a safe
starting point. When you place all your flags,
if there are any mines left unflagged (i.e. you
have got a flag wrongly placed), you lose; but
before that point, you can unflag a cell which
you have flagged if you realise you have made a
mistake. You cannot clear a cell which contains
a flag.

This implementation also provides a query
facility - you can query as many cells as you
like (so long as they are not flagged or clear)
and unquery them again, and they are then
marked as such. This facility sometimes comes in
useful for working out which cells are mined in
more complex arrangements - the query makes no
difference to the game itself, and is only a
memory aid.

The best thing to do to get the hang of these
instructions is to set up a grid with only one
mine in it, and then try it out to see how the
program responds to your actions.

Note that some versions of minesweeper (not this
one) will automatically clear cells which are
adjacent to a cell which is cleared and has no
adjacent mines. Because the cells next to such
a cell do not contain a mine, it is always safe
to clear the cells around it, so the program
does it for you. If you are trying another
variation on minesweeper, you may find this
happening.

Using multiple saved grids
~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
The !CrazyMine directory contains a few files
which are updated when the program is run. For
this reason, these files should not be write
protected in any way - if you wish to ensure
there are no changes made, copy the program to
the RAMDisc before you run it).

‘Modefile’ keeps note of your preferred screen
mode (with A-series and Risc PC/RISC OS 3.5
style modes stored separately). If this is not
present, the game will default to mode 12,
which should be displayable on all monitors in
some form - note that this will also be the
case if <CPM$Path> is not set.

More important are the files entitled ‘points’
and ‘vertices’, which between them store the
grid. Points contains a list of all the points
used to define the cells, and vertices contains
the points which make up the boundaries of each
region. If these files are not present, or are
corrupt, you should choose to generate a new
grid when prompted at the start of the program.

However, since the program takes a long time to
generate new grids, it