MINEFIELD -- A Game for the Apple II

Program and Manual (C) 2001 by Aaron Heiss (heiss@pdx.edu)


Introduction

Minefield is a solitaire game of skill and luck.  Scattered randomly about in a
rectangular field are a number of mines.  The player must uncover all of the
squares without mines in them.  Uncovering a square with a mine loses the game. 
The other squares may contain either nothing at all, or a number showing how many
adjacent squares have mines.


System Requirements and Launching

This program runs under ProDOS, but other than that, has no requirements at all. 
It should run on a 48K system, and it should have no problems with Apples earlier
than the //e.  Note, however, that it has thus far been tested only on my Apple
//c, so I cannot personally verify it running on anything else.  Reports from
users (like yourself!) would be appreciated!

The program itself is a SYS file, and can be run from any selector, launcher or
shell.  Once launched, it will display a title screen.  Press any key to proceed
to the configuration screen.  Hitting RESET at any time when the program is
running will return to this title screen.


The Configuration Screen

In this screen there are three "sliders" and two "buttons."  You move from one
button to the other using the left and right arrow keys, and you move from one
slider to the next, or to and from the buttons, using either the up and down
arrow keys or the 'A' and 'Z' keys.  The left and right arrow keys also alter the
setting of any given slider when that slider is selected, and the RETURN key
"presses" a selected button.  All other keys have no effect.

The values of the width and height sliders should be obvious enough: they adjust
the width and height (respectively) of the minefield.  The other slider is a
little more complicated, however.  "Difficulty" is represented on the screen as a
level number, but it actually represents another number, by which the total area
of the minefield is divided to produce the number of mines.  In theory, this
should provide the same level of difficulty for differently sized minefields,
although there are some additional subtle differences.  The factors are as
follows:

         Difficulty   Factor
       -----------------------
             1         12.5
             2         10
             3          8
             4          6.5
             5          5
             6          4
             7          3.15
             8          2.5
             9          2

The meanings of the buttons should also be obvious: pressing PLAY starts the game
with the current settings, and selecting QUIT ends the program, returning you to
the environment from which you launched it.


Playing the Game

The playfield is, at first, a grid of unselected squares (represented by ':' in
the game).  Play controls are fairly simple.  You move around in the minefield by
using all four arrow keys, or a combination of the left and right arrows and the
'A' and 'Z' keys (useful for those who want to play this game on an Apple ][
Plus!).

Pressing the space bar reveals the contents of a square to be either a mine
('*'), which causes you to lose the game, a number from 1 to 8, which corresponds
to the number of mines adjacent to the square, or an empty square, which means
that there are no mines adjacent to the square.  Selecting an empty square causes
all non-mine squares in its vicinity to also be selected.  A count is kept at the
bottom of the screen of the total number of squares remaining to be uncovered,
and it decrements with every selection.  When this counter equals the number of
mines in the game, you will have won!

Pressing RETURN toggles an unselected square between its selectable state (the
regular ':') and a mark ('#'), which you can use to indicate that you think that
there is a mine under that square.  For your convenience, the counter at the
bottom of the screen decrements with each additional mark; however, this does not
indicate that you have actually marked a real mine, just that you have put
another mark on the screen.  You can put more marks on the screen than there are
mines to mark and nothing will happen in the game, aside from the counter rolling
over to 999.  Removing a mark will similarly increment the counter.

Pressing ESC pauses the game.  This will switch to a different screen (otherwise
you might cheat and plan ahead while the clock is halted!) where you will have
two more buttons: RESUME and ABORT.  They are selected with the right and left
arrows, and activated by the RETURN key.  RESUME returns you to the point at
which you paused the game, and ABORT ends the game prematurely, first revealing
the entire minefield (in case you were curious) and then, after you press any
key, returning you to the configuration screen.


Final Notes and Fine Print

That is about all that there is to tell about how to run this program.  If you
are not familiar with games of this type, you may at first be frustrated by it;
however, it is quite addictive once you get the hang of it.  There are numerous
strategy guides online if you need help.

Although this program is finished, you should note that I do plan on developing
another version of it.  The new version will feature double hi-res graphics and
proportional joystick control, and will probably run only on Apples with 65c02
(or compatible) processors.  It will likely be some time from now (January 2001)
before I start work on it, though.

If you have any comments or suggestions, I would be happy to read them.

This program is distributed as Freeware.  That means that although it is
copyrighted, you can own, copy, distribute and use it however you like, provided
that you 1) do not distribute it in anything other than unmodified form, and 2)
you include this document (also unmodified) with it in the same package.  It may
not be distributed commercially without my explicit permission.