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Minesweeper w GreenfootTM

A quick and dirty implementation of the wellknown game "Minesweeper", which has been developed and created by means of Greenfoot basedTM on JAVATM.

Introduction
Minesweeper has been played for many billion times. It is a game with on additional costs, because it has been bundled with Microsoft WindowsTM operating systems starting with version 3.1. Its unbelievable popularity is based on the fact, that it has a challenge comparable to Sudoku. Both of these games are played against time and the constellation of actual data on screen gives you a hint, what to do next in order to solve the game. If you get an error with Sudoku it can be corrected, but this will be become more and more difficult with number of actions performed between initiation of error and its detection. On the other hand an error with Minesweeper causes the end of the game immediately, by igniting all of the mines in a sequence.

How to play - the algorithm


The original v ersion of game offers three levels: beginners, intermediates and experts. Beginners: 9x9 fileds and 10 mines Intermediate: 16x16 fields and 40 mines Experts: 16x30 fields and 99 mines

Imput device is the mouse. The goal is to click on all fields where are no mines. Unfortunatly the mines are hidden, so one thinks n the first run it's a matter of statistics, if you will loos your life or not, by clicking of one of the fields. But this is true only for the first few clicks. Now it is time to mention, that all of the field of the board are sourrounded by eight neighbouring fields. We call this environment of nine fields the area of a field. All covers of fields will be withdrawn, if you click on a field, where the complete area does not hold a mine. Now you see numbers, ranging from 1 to 8, at the boarders of the remaining hidden fields. These figures give you the amount of mines, which are in the hidden portion of an area. By combining the information of these numbers, it enables you to decide, which field does not hold a mine and therefore you can step on it (click on it) without danger and loosing your life. The goal is to do this as quick as possible. That means you are working against time. If you survive you get a ranking in the highscore list and the faster your solved the game the higher becomes your grade.

Limitations
Our implementation of the game has some limitations. This is due to the time shedule we had to adapt to develop and implement this game. 1. 2. 3. 4. there is only a beginners version - intermediate and expert levels are missing the board environment is fixed what scaling of objects concerns the counter for performance measurements of the player is still missing the highscore list is not implemented yet.

All of these function can be implemented later on - it's something to do by our students.

Additional information about Minesweeper


A lot of clones of the game Minesweeper do exist now. Minesweeper Clone, Minesweeper Arbiter, Minesweeper X or Viennasweeper are to be mentioned here. Minesweeper This site holds a lot of free games. One of them is an implementation of Minesweeper, which was writtten in JavaScript by Geir Landr. International highscore lists are distributed worldwide. The best performance is given by unbelievable less than 1 sec for beginners, 10,01 sec for intermediates and 36,70 sec for experts. (data derived from: gamesbasis) (group: Felix Kirchdorfer, Reinhold Glatz, Jrgen Strutzenberger, Herbert Newald)

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