General questions

[Tudwell]

The last "general questions and suggestions" thread generated a lot of great discussion, but it got uncomfortably big.

I'm going to start fresh with a new thread. If you have a question, go ahead and ask it. You don't need to wade through the other thread to make sure you're the first person to ask it; I don't mind answering a repeat.

The old thread has been around for over a year, since launch; I implemented a lot of great suggestions from those comments. As of now, though, I think Tametsi has all of the features it needs -- maybe not everything one could possibly ask for, but everything I want it to have.

That said, I'm not forbidding suggestions here -- just be forewarned that I will probably not implement anything new unless it's a bug fix or an accessibility issue.

[Tudwell]

Thanks!

[Neoviper]

What's your best minesweeper time?

[Tudwell]

If you're asking me, I have no idea; I don't enjoy doing puzzles for speed. I am still reasonably quick, since I've had a lot of practice.

[Marson]

I know you don't have any plans to do any updates, which I completely understand, but if you do ever decide to revisit it, I'd love to be able to remap the erase function. I have hand tremors and when I press the mouse wheel to erase a line, I often change the line width as well.

I'm now working on the bonus levels so I'm a bit deep into the game at this point, but in a way it also makes my next request a bit more pertinent. I'd love it if the game saved the drawings we made for each level. I often have to come back to revisit the puzzles, which means redoing all my mapping work each time.

Regardless, I love Tametsi! Thank you for such a great game.

[Tudwell]

Hi Marson,

The changes you're suggesting are both reasonable, but a bit more involved than they might seem. I definitely won't be able to address the request to save drawings any time soon (sorry!).

On the other hand, your problem with the erase function might be an accessibility issue. I say "might" because the middle mouse == erase was added late in development as just an extra way to erase. The standard way is to select the checkerboard pattern as either the left or right "color". Another way (only documented in the tips that scroll on the title screen) is to hold either Shift or Ctrl and draw; both of those will invoke the eraser.

Do any of these alternatives work for you? I would prefer not to dig back into the input code, but I don't want to leave you without a working option.

[Marson]

I missed seeing the Ctrl/Shift option. I just gave it a try and it makes for a workable second choice. Thanks for the quick response!

[Cenon]

what a time/brain consumer this game has been to me!

If you ever decide to an update after all, I'd love to have a rewind button to hide those spots that I opened by misclick or with faulty logic. That means I wouldn't have to reset the whole map if trying to truly solve the puzzle.

[Tudwell]

Thanks for the suggestion, Cenon. I'm currently only planning to update the game to remedy accessibility issues or bugs, but I think your idea is something a lot of people would appreciate. I will add this to my short list of things to change if I ever do decide to update.

[Tricky Joe]

Hi Tudwell. I finally finished the last puzzle today -- what a terrific experience!

The drawing mode is such a good idea, and I hope other games follow your lead. I was interested to read above that I could erase with shift, ctrl or middle-click, which I too missed in the tips.

A common thing I did was to explore N paths at once, usually setting a colour to left-click and erase to right-click. I'd work through outcomes from an initial assumption, then switch to a new left-click colour and work through from a new assumption. Sometimes I'd realise I missed an outcome, or would clumsily draw over some existing notations, and would want to revert to an earlier colour -- and I'd usually end up with a similar-but-different colour which made it slightly harder to grok. Have you considered a recent-colours list alongside the colour picker, to hold the last (say) 6 or so colours for easy re-selection? (It's too late for me but might be useful for other solvers!)

I'll also echo the request for an undo button. If I mis-click or mis-think, I tend to take a screenshot and rebuild, and then have a try at thinking harder. Of course the fact that I hit a mine has told me I need to think harder, but apart from that I don't take the reveal of the mine as a fact, and carefully work to establish it before I'll mark it. Hence the screenshot and rebuild: I've adhered to the spirit of the no-guessing rules even though I've made a mistake. (However I realise this is not enforceable so adding "undo" may make the game appear too easily cheatable to some players.)

Thanks very much for many, many hours of fun and hard logic.

[Tudwell]

Thanks for the feedback. The "recent colors" idea is a good one, but I probably won't implement it in Tametsi -- it is something I will keep in mind for the future, though.

I also probably won't be implementing an undo; it wasn't something I planned to have when designing Tametsi, and while it's not a terribly difficult feature, it brings back design problems that I want to put behind me for this project:
- Does undo revert "perfect so far" status? (I would expect some negative feedback on either side of this decision).
- Is one undo sufficient, or should it remember every board state all the way back?
- Should it persist if we close a puzzle?
- Where does it go in the UI? Can it be disabled in the launcher?
Anyway, it's not a bad idea, it's just something I don't want to change right now. If I make another similar game, I will have to reconsider how to handle undo and the mistake tracker.

I am really glad to hear that you enjoyed the game, though, and thank you for taking the time to play through to the end and share your thoughts.

[Tricky Joe]

Understood -- you're right that "undo" has many problems, and my screenshot-based workaround was fine for me. And the colour-picker wasn't exactly a burden.

Cheers.

[Sören]

Are the levels made "by hand" or is there a mathematical concept behind it to enforce that a puzzle is always solvable in a unique way without guessing?

[Tudwell]

A few of the early levels were made entirely by hand, but I mostly chose the layouts and features (pre-revealed tiles, column hints, colors), and used a solver to generate the puzzles. My solver assigns a difficulty score, and the puzzle gets randomly adjusted, while the solver accepts changes that lead to harder/more interesting puzzles. If it can't solve a puzzle -- either because the puzzle is truly unsolvable or because the solver is too weak -- then it rejects that version.

Most of the puzzles went through several hours of this, and multiple revisions, before they made it into the game. However, the solver could also be used as just a check -- it doesn't also need to be involved in puzzle generation.

I played through a lot of puzzles during this process that were just okay, but not great; that's part of the reason I decided not to include a random puzzle generator in the game. It's also just too slow if you're looking for difficult puzzles.

[Sören]

Thank you for the fast and detailed answer!

[屁眼火辣辣]

hi, when i recommend this game to my frds, they said its hard to search in store, so i tried myself, turns out it is hard to search "Tamesti"