Unbeatable Challenge Mine sweeper room?

[Hololive Alternative]

I know mine sweeper challenges are so great but some of it are impossible to beat specially the 4 orbs and 5 orbs added , there is no tutorial also about it.

[Jacobella]

From 3+ mines it usually gets too ambiguous and only increases in severity

I guess the developers were stuck between
a) increasing the grid
b) finding some way to estimate the entropy of a given configuration and rejecting it under a certain threshold (potential stopping problem)
c) you can try as many times as you'd like

and went with c), it's a good enough solution, I guess

[Manxome]

Secret nigh-unstoppable minesweeper algorithm:



Find two numbers, A and B, with partially-overlapping detection areas. Mentally reduce both numbers by the number of adjacent mines you have already deduced. Suppose A >= B.

IF the number of unknown spaces that are adjacent to A but not adjacent to B is equal to the quantity (A - B)

THEN every unknown space adjacent to A, but not B, is a mine; AND every unknown space adjacent to B, but not A, is safe. (The spaces adjacent to both are still unknown.)


In college, I discovered that a computer program armed with essentially just this rule could consistently solve every solvable part of a harder-than-expert-level minesweeper board.

[LT2483]

Algorithms are good an all, but even they have to guess when every square has an equal chance of being a mine. Due to Dreamscaper's small field and high mine density, these equal chance guesses start to happen every board, and even multiple times per board.

At least you can retry as much as you need, but having to just make guesses until you get lucky beats the point of it being a puzzle. Not sure what the solution would be. Perhaps a bigger board?

[Hyperborea]

Untill now I've always managed to figure them all out, and were there no cases of having to be lucky. Even on the 4 to 6 orbs board. There were moments that I thought it had to be a gamble but when I counted everything it was never the case so maybe you overlook them as well sometimes just like I do ?

[LT2483]

Maybe overlooked a solution once or twice, but not most boards. Can't say I'm the best at minesweeper, but I'm just slow at solving it, not bad at it.

[Afterburner Studios]

It actually is possible (but pretty rare - maybe 10% of the time?) to have a puzzle where you have to make a guess between two seemingly possible "safe" tiles, so I will try to find some time to implement a solver that can throw away the ambiguous configurations in a future QoL update.

- Rob

[LT2483]

Huh, seems to happen more than 10% of the time. Regardless, having something that throws away luck based boards would be super nice.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by LT2483:

Algorithms are good an all, but even they have to guess when every square has an equal chance of being a mine.

If there's truly just not enough information, then yes, you will be forced to guess regardless of strategy.

But if you don't have a good algorithm, then you might mistakenly think that you are forced to guess even in situations where you are not. So in practice, a good algorithm can reduce the amount of guessing you "need" to do.



(I haven't been forced to guess yet, but my sample size is not huge. Also, I've only set the floor difficulty up to "hard" and not "nightmare"; the descriptions imply that hard vs. nightmare doesn't matter for puzzle difficulty, but I haven't verified that.)

[Tofystedeth]

Originally posted by Afterburner Studios:

It actually is possible (but pretty rare - maybe 10% of the time?) to have a puzzle where you have to make a guess between two seemingly possible "safe" tiles, so I will try to find some time to implement a solver that can throw away the ambiguous configurations in a future QoL update.

- Rob

Yeah, I've run into a few I thought might be non-deterministic and almost reported them, but when looking it over I found a solution that didn't require guessing. So far I've only found one actual one that had 2 valid solutions and ended up guessing the right one.
Ultimately I figured it wasn't worth complaining about since as far as I know there isn't a penalty for getting it wrong, because it just makes a new puzzle.

[Oriomo]

From what I've experienced, one gets unlimited tries, so I don't understand the issue. Maybe if you failed and weren't able to get the reward, I could see validity in making the boards more clear.

[Tofystedeth]

And then sometimes you get this puzzle :)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2573397997

[BadMedium]

Yall haven't played Demoncrawl and it shows.

Jokes aside, this is just a shameless plug for Demoncrawl. Never thought I'd play a minesweeper game in 2020, but if you ever want a fun little puzzle game to play during downtimes, this one is it.

How pleasantly surprised I was when I realized I would be able to put my newly-honed minesweeper skills to use in Dreamscaper.

[Tofystedeth]

Originally posted by BadMedium:

Yall haven't played Demoncrawl and it shows.

Jokes aside, this is just a shameless plug for Demoncrawl. Never thought I'd play a minesweeper game in 2020, but if you ever want a fun little puzzle game to play during downtimes, this one is it.

How pleasantly surprised I was when I realized I would be able to put my newly-honed minesweeper skills to use in Dreamscaper.

Oh no, someone made a minesweeper roguelike?
*grudgingly wishlists it.*

[Jacobella]

Originally posted by Tofystedeth:

Oh no, someone made a minesweeper roguelike?
*grudgingly wishlists it.*

lmao

[Leviathan]

I won't complain. This is like an easy version of Shiren minesweeper dungeons... only you don't have to go back to the start when you fail.