picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

hatten · 2010-04-12 14:40:33

The name reminds me of pikmin =p

schuay · 2010-04-12 19:13:27

hatten wrote:

The name reminds me of pikmin =p

I've never played that, honest

Status update: I'm addicted to Picross 3D.

hatten · 2010-04-13 10:01:04

Haha, me neither, although I have played super smash brothers brawl a lot

hatten · 2010-04-13 13:19:32

After having downloaded and played it a bunch I have a bug report and some gameplay questions.
the "statistics" are wrong if you have zero wins, or zero losses. I cannot specify more as I haven't found a way to reset the highscores and test yet.
gameplaywise, it was the first time I played picross, and it was pretty nice. It was easy to pick up and a really fun game.

I think it's a little weird that minesweeper and picross, while pretty similar, have entirely different punishments when you do something wrong. In picross you get more time, while in minesweeper you die. Yet the high scores are identical. The win/lose ratio at picross is always 100%, even if it takes 1m seconds, which it did for me once when I tested

I think it should be consistent between the games, or at least have an option to play easy or hard mode, where you die if you do something wrong in hard mode and get extra time in easy. And I think it should be the same with minesweeper.

EDIT: I haven't tried 'no hint mode yet', I'm off to do that now.
EDIT2: After trying no hint mode, I like picross even more I now think there should be three different modes, easy, where it corrects your mistakes and give you punishment time (or similar), normal, the same as the current no hint mode, and hard, where you die if you do something wrong. I think the same could be for minesweeper.

I would like drag functionality in minesweeper too, I have never seen it before in any other minesweeper game, but after having it in picross I want it in minesweeper too.

I cannot wait until you add more stuff, frequent updates is _not_ a problem!

EDIT3: In picross it would be cool if the white lines that point out your cursor would disappear if you moved the mouse away from the window.
And I want a fullscreen mode too!
EDIT4: I think it should be different high scores for the different game modes too.

Last edited by hatten (2010-04-13 14:07:40)

schuay · 2010-04-13 20:02:42

Thanks for testing and taking the time to write that up!

hatten wrote:

I think it's a little weird that minesweeper and picross, while pretty similar, have entirely different punishments when you do something wrong. In picross you get more time, while in minesweeper you die. Yet the high scores are identical. The win/lose ratio at picross is always 100%, even if it takes 1m seconds, which it did for me once when I tested

Yeah, showing 'Lost Games' in Picross doesn't make too much sense since there's no way to lose

The punishments are taken straight from the original games.
I'm not sure if 'game over on error' would work for picross, because you frequently get an ending with 2 possibilities (same as minesweeper). Minesweeper is fast paced, so it kinda works there. But I don't think it would be good for picross - at least not with randomly generated puzzles.
On the other hand, a 'minesweeper light' with time penalties instead of game over would probably work ok. It's not something on my urgent todo list but I'll keep it in mind.

hatten wrote:

I would like drag functionality in minesweeper too, I have never seen it before in any other minesweeper game, but after having it in picross I want it in minesweeper too.

Yep that sounds good. I also want to add keyboard controls to minesweeper - playing on a netbook with touchpad sucks.

hatten wrote:

EDIT3: In picross it would be cool if the white lines that point out your cursor would disappear if you moved the mouse away from the window.
And I want a fullscreen mode too!
EDIT4: I think it should be different high scores for the different game modes too.

Clear position highlight when unfocused - I'll look into that.
Fullscreen - also on my 'nice to have but not urgent' list
Highscores - since they're both time based games, these will be very similar. But I will remove the 'Lost' statistics from picross stats. A top 5 list is also coming for one of the next releases.
Percentages displayed as '1e2' at first game - fixed in my repository.

Apart from that, I'm thinking about adding Pause and Resume Game functions.
I've spoken to a few people about doing new graphics for the game, so that might be upcoming too (hopefully).

I've started using the github issues page to remind myself of upcoming tasks: http://github.com/schuay/picmi/issues

This should keep me busy for a while

ngoonee · 2010-04-13 23:02:01

The picross I play online (armour picross) gives 5 errors, after 5 you're considered to have 'lost' that puzzle.

schuay · 2010-04-19 21:10:52

ngoonee wrote:

The picross I play online (armour picross) gives 5 errors, after 5 you're considered to have 'lost' that puzzle.

Hm yeah Picross 3D has a similar system.
With random puzzles it doesn't make too much sense though. Besides, whenever I make an error I usually start over anyways

2 more releases today (as usual a hasty release followed by some more changes ):

picmi-1.1.5

Display top 5 games in current category
Fix floating point format error (thanks hatten)
Don't show lost games statistics for picross

picmi-1.1.6

Games can now be paused by pressing the p key
Keyboard controls added to minesweeper (similar to picross controls, see README or 'picmi -h')

hatten · 2010-05-15 15:09:32

Okay, I downloaded 1.1.8 from aur:
1. Playing 5*5 in minesweeper produces an unreadable score list (you don't see all of it)
2. Remove the fading. When playing small minesweepers that end in ~2 seconds I don't want to wait 5 seconds until I can start a new one
3. It's good that you got different highscores for different presets, but if one chooses a preset and then changes the parameters one is still on the same high score. (I have 1s on easy picross )
4. Either make the controls changeable, or add wasd and hjkl as movement keys. I'm unsure if shift/control should be changed.
5. If you start over as soon as you make an error, wouldn't it be the same with losing as fast as you get an error? I'm still not convinced that there is no reason to have a checkbox for instant game over if you do wrong in picross.
6. In the help, linebreaks mess it up. Under the settings tab "there" and "time" got their own rows.
7. I think a few parts of the layout should be changed, mostly to make fast restarts easy. But I'll wait with specific stuff until you got new graphics incase you'll change the general layout.
8.

Picross is a number logic game

Minesweeper is a single-player video game

I see that you copied directly from wikipedia, and that makes it looks really weird. So picross isn't single-player? And minesweeper isn't a logic game? I might try and write up some nice descriptions if I feel for it.

and lastly
9. Make it possible to play in a terminal ;D

Otherwise great game(s), but it's not perfect yet

schuay · 2010-05-15 21:12:21

Hi hatten,

thanks for the continued feedback!

I've been incredibly busy playing dungeon crawl stone soup, which is one of the reasons why there haven't been any major (or minor) updates to picmi lately. Still havent gotten further than level 14 or so, damn 8 headed hydras...

Anyway, I won't forget about the points you made, but I'm not sure how soon I will be able to get some work done. I'd be happy about any contributions, improved game descriptions sound great

schuay · 2010-05-19 16:04:03

A couple of the easier points have been fixed in 1.1.9:

picmi-1.1.9

* fade in at game over can be aborted early by pressing any key
* 'r' can be pressed at game over screen (or during fade in) to
restart game with identical settings
* fixed bug which made high score table not respect difficulty
* sane limits for difficulty/board size in settings form
* further minor changes

Oh, and at the moment it doesn't look like I will be getting new gfx content soon

Again, if anybody wants to design tiles (or write game descriptions or write code), I'd be happy to integrate any meaningful contributions to picmi.

Last edited by schuay (2010-05-19 16:12:12)

schuay · 2010-06-21 18:22:31

Finally got around to adding some more control options (including vim keys ).
I've also been playing around with a perfect puzzle algorithm. Had tons of trouble with it. It's still way too slow, but I'm throwing it out there now. To be improved soon (hopefully).

boost-libs dependency added for threading support, which means only testing repo users can upgrade to this at the moment.

picmi-1.2.0

* minesweeper perfect puzzle algorithm implemented:
puzzles can now (optionally) be guaranteed solvable.
the generator is still slow and will hopefully be improved
in the next few releases.
requires boost::thread.
* mine density limit raised to 35%
* new minesweeper difficulty preset "very hard"
* more tweaks on game over screen
* added more control options: arrow keys, numpad keys,
wasd keys, or hjklbnyu keys

schuay · 2011-04-01 15:54:32

Hi guys,

1.3.1 adds unlimited undo to picross.
Finally a decent way to complete those undeterministic puzzles

schuay · 2012-02-03 23:51:25

I've been playing around a bit with larger tile sizes and new fonts: http://ompldr.org/vY200YQ

Do you prefer the new look or the way it is now (see screenshots in the first post)?

By the way, feel free to post some high scores!
Try getting under 1 minute 30 seconds on a 15x10 picross field, default difficulty and no hints mode

Arch Linux

#26 2010-04-12 14:40:33

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#27 2010-04-12 19:13:27

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#28 2010-04-13 10:01:04

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#29 2010-04-13 13:19:32

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#30 2010-04-13 20:02:42

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#31 2010-04-13 23:02:01

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#32 2010-04-19 21:10:52

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#33 2010-05-15 15:09:32

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#34 2010-05-15 21:12:21

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#35 2010-05-19 16:04:03

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#36 2010-06-21 18:22:31

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#37 2011-04-01 15:54:32

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

#38 2012-02-03 23:51:25

Re: picmi - a picross and minesweeper clone

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