Mine Hunt v1.2 By Nathan Mates

Documentation

The object of Mine Hunt is simple. You are located at the upper-left
corner of a minefield and the only help you have is a barely functional
mine detector. Your mine detector can only sense how many mines are
adjacent to your current square, including diagonals. For help during
the game, press the "?" key.

Installation:

Mine Hunt is a NDA, so place the minehunt file of your choice in the
*/System/Desk.Accs folder on your startup disk and reboot, or use a DA
installer (there are several available) to load it after booting.

Playing the Game:

To move, use the numeric keypad to move around. For example, "6" moves
right, "8" moves up, and "9" moves diagonally up and right. Since I am
a fan of the "inverted-T" key layout, the "5" key performs the same
function as the "2" key. If the open-apple key is held down while
pressing a number, the player will move as far as possible in that
direction selected without running off of the minefield, or into a
mine.

Your position is shown as a white circle inside a green square, and the
winning square is a checkerboard. Squares you have stepped on are
turned green to aid your search. You receive one point for each square
you safely enter.

The game ends when you either reach safety at the bottom-right corner
of the minefield, or you step on a mine. In either case, all the buried
mines are revealed to you. To play another game, press Control-X, or
the <Clear> key on the numeric keypad.

If you want to finish a game early, press the return key (or enter key
on the numeric keypad). If you could have legally reached the end
square, you win, and otherwise you die on the square you are standing
on.

The Apple IIGS can be an ally in your passage... If AI (Artificial
Intelligence) is activated, and in the version of the game in progress,
the computer will scan the board at every step, and try to identify
what is in each square. If it can find a clear, safe square, it is
"stepped on," and if it finds a mine, it will display it as a dark
circle inside the square, but the mine is still dangerous.

Help:

Pressing open-apple-? will bring up the help dialog, which gives a
summary of the commands.

Parameters:

Pressing Open-Apple-A will display the parameters dialog. The dialog
and its items are exactly the same as regular IIGS dialog boxes; look
them up in a manual if you have trouble.

The first two check boxes are "automatic win" and "nice start."
Automatic win, will take you to the end square automatically when all
of the safe squares are located, otherwise you will have to move to the
final (Bottom-Right) square. Nice Start, when engaged, prevents the
computer from putting a mine adjacent to the starting square.

You can also type in the number of mines to be created on the field.
This number can range from 1 to 99; if anything else is entered, the
program will default to 20 mines.

The computer's help to you, or AI, has several parameters that can be
turned on or off. The first, "Gives Points" is for purists (or
masochists) who like their score to represent their own work, as it
controls whether free squares found by AI are counted as points towards
your score. Since Automatic Win uses your score, Automatic Winning
won't work when Give Points is off

The next parameter, "Clears 'Near 0s'" is the only automatic scanner
usually active. This scanner "steps on" all the squares around a square
with no mines nearby, but does not look for mines.

"Simple Field Scan" is the same as "Clears Near 0s," but it also looks
for mines, and will display them if it can find them.

The "Extra Mine Finder" uses another algorithm to locate mines. In a
nutshell, if the difference in the number of mines between two adjacent
squares equals the number of new square(s) adjacent to the next square,
then all of the new square(s) must be mines.

"Multi-Space Logic" looks for a few unknown squares adjacent to a
number of other squares and attempts to see if, when taken as a block,
they can be used to look for free and mined squares.

All of these parameters take effect immediately, except for the number
of mines and "Nice Start," which wait until the next game to be started
before they take effect.

Mouse Control:

With the mouse, one can move about the minefield simply by clicking on
the next square to move to, which must be adjacent to any previously
visited square. Clicking above the minefield will bring up the
parameters box, and clicking below the minefield will bring up the help
box. Once the game is over, another game can be started by clicking in
the minefield.

Pitfalls:

Mine Hunt requires the QuickDraw II Auxiliary toolset to be activated
for drawing its graphics while it runs, so it may not work with several
programs. To date, the only program that I know it does not work with
that is SoundSmith. Mine Hunt runs perfectly from the Finder, and
almost all other programs that allow the use of desk accessories.

Version History:

Mine Hunt first showed up on my Hewlett Packard HP48SX Solve Equation
Library Card, Version A, and was totally re-written for the Apple IIGS
by Nathan Mates, Spring 1991. The current version of MineHunt is 1.2,
and since earlier versions were never distributed widely, forget about
them!

Coming Features: (maybe, maybe not. Send something to encourage them!)

Selectable sizes for the minefield to limits of screen. (A lot bigger
in 640 mode)

Animation/better graphics? (as soon as someone can draw them).

Sound? Once I get sound Rez info, I may be able to do this, but I don't
have a digitizer. (Therefore support your local programmer by sending
him sounds and info on Rezes)

If you would like to see any features, more parameters, etc., simply
drop me a line and I'll try and keep you other GS-maniacs happy.

About the programmer:

Starting September 1992, I, Nathan Mates, will be a freshman at Caltech
university. As Caltech is a phenomenal university, it also costs a bit,
so any donations ($, Disks, other programs) to help defray the costs of
my time helping the Apple II community from within this prestigious
university.

Copyright, etc:

The original idea for the minehunt game comes from the Solve Equation
Library Application Card for the Hewlett Packard 48SX calculator. All
rights reserved by the Hewlett Packard company are still in effect.

Mine Hunt was totally re-written for the Apple IIGS by Nathan Mates
using the ORCA/M assembler. This program is freeware, and can be
distributed at no cost as long as the MINEHUNT file, its Icon (alone or
as part of an Icon file for my programs) and this documentation are
copied without modification, and this copyright notice remains in
effect. I will, however, accept any donations of either money or
freeware without problem.

I warrant this software for nothing, and since college work comes
first, I may not be able to provide immediate technical support.

Nathan Mates

My mailing address (good all year): MSC #850, Caltech Pasadena, CA
91126-0001

Apple II Infinitum!!!

(For those of you who don't know Latin, "Apple II Forever")