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Brainstorming: 3D Minesweeper?

Started by June 03, 2003 04:01 PM
27 comments, last by Oluseyi 21 years, 7 months ago
quote: Original post by ahw
Gee, I am sure there is more to be done than simply put a 2D grid on a 3D sphere...
I agree, which is what I''m trying to do. Did you read my description or did you focus on the demo LNK2001 linked to?

What you suggest, while very interesting and possibly something I will take you up on, once I snap out of this code slump and finish this off, is not minesweeper. A 3D maze game is... a 3D maze game. I''m doing this not to make "a fun game" but to explore what happens when a game with well-defined gameplay in two dimensions is extended into a third, equal dimension, and what adjustments may be necessary to maintain the fun factor. (Other games have made the leap into 3D, but they usually don''t treat all dimensions the same - you walk in two but jump in the third, for example. 3D minesweeper would be identical in every dimension, which singles it out for this study.)

Thanks for the contribution, though. Dissidence is necessary to achieve the best possible results.
Minesweeper is a great, quick-fix challenge. Most people, however, don''t seem to understand it. Putting is in 3D complicates it and makes it harder for the laymen to understand. I think, focusing on this point, is what is most important in the gameplay. If you''re in 3D and you''re looking dead-on at a "block", how do you know what is behind it?

An important aspect of the minesweeper game is that you can look at a numbered block and possibly know what is around it because you know which blocks are free, which aren''t and how many blocks surrounding contain bombs. Although I''m intrigued by the idea, I can''t get my mind around how the player sees the state of the block. In 3D you are limited to your perspective. In the original game, you have an easy top-down perspective.

How exactly does the player view the numbered block? How do they know what''s behind it? Are the blocks not solid and I can see beyond them?

The player would have to be able to see all the surrounding blocks. Are we using wire-frame graphics?

I envision a wireframe view but the blocks fade off into the distance. Still, blocks that are numbered must have a way to make it visually easy for the player to know which block the numver is refering too. Make numbered blocks solid with numbers on the side while other questionable blocks are transparent?

This is an idea that demands much design in gameplay. I''m trying to visualise it but I keep running into frustrating gameplay.

- Jay


[ Here, taste this ]
Quit screwin' around! - Brock Samson
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quote: Original post by Oluseyi
once I snap out of this code slump and finish this off, is not minesweeper. A 3D maze game is... a 3D maze game.

Are we talking about a psuedo-3D game? Still two dimensions but the player is in a Wolfenstein-like perspective?


- Jay


[ Here, taste this ]
Quit screwin' around! - Brock Samson
quote: Original post by coderx75
How exactly does the player view the numbered block? How do they know what''s behind it? Are the blocks not solid and I can see beyond them?

The player would have to be able to see all the surrounding blocks. Are we using wire-frame graphics?
Yep. Each cell is a wireframe cube with a smaller cube centered in it that indicates the number of mines around or is blank if there are none, shows either a flag or a question mark when right-clicked by the user and will show a mine texture if you mess up.

Later I may think about more graphical refinements like translucency or actual flag, question mark, mine and number models floating in the cell center.
Heres an idea: Once you extend the 2d squares into 3d cubes, then the complexity increases rapidly as you noted due to the extra adjacent cells. I''d guess that this would remove alot of the playability and skill, and introduce more of a random element.

So, how about changing from cubes to triangle-based pyramids? This way you get a regularly tesselated 3d shape, but with the much reduced complexity of each cell only having 4 neighbours.

This is probably quite a bit more tricky to code though, as you have to deal with two distinct cases for each grid cell instead of just the one. Would be interesting to see how it changed the gameplay vs. the square and cube based games..
quote: Original post by OrangyTang
So, how about changing from cubes to triangle-based pyramids? This way you get a regularly tesselated 3d shape, but with the much reduced complexity of each cell only having 4 neighbours.
Hmm, interesting. Maybe I''ll do that when (and if) I finish the cube-based one. You do realize that the most stable and aesthetically pleasing scenario is for the triangular pyramids to form a geosphere?

quote: This is probably quite a bit more tricky to code though, as you have to deal with two distinct cases for each grid cell instead of just the one.
How so? I can''t see any special cases using triangular pyramids.

quote: Would be interesting to see how it changed the gameplay vs. the square and cube based games...
Definitely. Great idea!
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clicky

has popular games(including minesweeper clone) in 2,3 and 4 dimensions. (represented in 2d only)

ed: clicky

[edited by - kuladus on June 8, 2003 12:17:03 PM]
quote: Original post by Oluseyi How so? I can''t see any special cases using triangular pyramids.


My bad, i don''t see any problems now i think about it properly, my mind was entangled with the 2d case of tesselating triangles i think.. Some sort of decent structure to point to adjacent cells and everything could be handled quite neatly.

I hadn''t realised that a geosphere would be the optimal configuration, and suits the game quite nicely (more so than a huge triangular pyramid that i was imagining). If i wasn''t so damn busy i''d take a crack at trying to code it myself.
Would it help to make a game winnable if the player was given the ability to get a hint, several times throughout the game.

Ie. That they have an item that they can put on a blank square, that can be used to reveal how many adjacent mines it has, or even to reveal directly whether there it is a mine.

These would be only usable once, and would help in situations where there the only way forward was guesswork (ie. in the end-game).
From following through the thread. I''d almost go with a geosphere if it was in 3d. Kinda like that game that was linked to... just add depth to it... a core to delve into. I think it would still be quite hard. But for me... i think it would be easier to work on peeling the orange(doing the outside part) before getting inside of it. Just a thought.

-DD

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