Nicolas Hadacek <hadacek@kde.org>
Michael McBride <mmcbride@ematic.org>
Developer: Nicolas Hadacek
Reviewer: Lauri Watts
Revision 2.00.10
Copyright © 2000 Nicolas Hadacek, Michael McBride
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
KMines is the KDE version of the classic minesweeper game.
Table of Contents
Introduction
KMines is the classic Minesweeper game. You must uncover all the empty cases without blowing on a mine.
When you uncover a case, a number appears: it indicates how many mines surround this case. If there is no number the neighbour cases are automatically uncovered. In your process of uncovering secure cases, it is very useful to put a flag on the cases which contain a mine.
How to play
You have to use the mouse and its three buttons (with two-buttoned mouses, clicking the middle button is generally achieved by simultaneously pressing the left and the right buttons) to uncover or to flag the cases. Here are the details :
The left button will uncover a case. If there is a bomb below that case, the bomb will explode, and the game will be over
If there is not a bomb under the case, a number will appear. That is the number of neighboring cases that do have bombs under them. Which ones you ask? Thats the point of the game.
For each box (excluding edge and cornerboxes), there are 8 neighboring boxes.
If none of the neighboring boxes has a bomb, then a blank will be shown under the case, and all neighboring boxes will be automatically uncovered.
Note
Left clicking a flagged case is secure and does nothing.
The right button will mark a case as containing a mine (draw a red flag) or, if the option is set, as being uncertain (draw a question mark). The uncertain tag can be useful when you are puzzled about the positions of mines.
The middle button will clear the surrounding cases if there is the right number of cases already flagged. It is very useful since it is much quicker than uncovering all individual cases.
Warning
If your flags are not properly positionned, you will explode on a bomb.
Pressing the yellow smiley will start a new game.
Note
These are the default settings. The mouse buttons can be reprogrammed. For more information, see the section entitled Game Options.
The KMines screen consists of:
A Box showing you the number of mines still left to be marked. Everytime you flag a bomb site, this number will decrease by one.
Note
This box does not determine if you are right or wrong, but only how many mines you need to theoretically mark before you are done with this game.
In this example, there are 10 mines to be marked.
A Yellow Smiley Face. Clicking this will start a new game. If you loose the game, it will become a frown.
The box on the right, shows how much time this round has taken. The shortest time for each level, gets to list their name as the high score.
The playing area. This will vary in size depending on the difficulty level of the game. In this example, it consists of 64 boxes. This is where you play the game.
A status line at the bottom of the window. In this example, it simply says Game stopped.
Game options
The options to KMines are set by selecting Settings->Configure KMines from the menubar. This will bring up a dialog box.
This dialog box is divided into four sections.
- Game
The first option, labelled Enable ? Mark, determines whether you can mark squares as “questionable”. If there is a mark in front of this option, then right clicking the mouse will first cause a case to be flaged. If you click again on the same square, the flag will change to a ?, to indicate you don't know if there is a bomb there or not. If you click again, the square will change back to blank.
If there is not a mark in front of this option, the first right mouse click will change the case to a red flag. The second will make it blank again, thus skipping the ? symbol.
The next option down, labelled Enable keyboard, determins if the keyboard shortcuts will work while playing the game.
Note
The only keyboard shortcuts affected, are those responsible for playing the game. Keyboard commands such as New Game, and Quit, still work, regardless of this option.
The last section of this tab, allows you to change the action of each of the three mouse buttons. Your options are:
- Reveal
This will reveal the contents of the case. If there is no bomb, then a number will appear. If there is a bomb under that case, then the bomb will explode, and the game will be over.
- Toggle Mark
Clicking with this button on a case, will mark/unmark with a redflag.
- Autoreveal
Clicking on a case with this button, will automatically reveal all neighboring cases, that are not marked with red flags. If one of those neighboring cases has a bomb under it, the bomb will explode, and the game will be over.
- Toggle flag
Clicking with this button on a case, will flag/unflag with a question mark.
- Toggle ? mark
Clicking with this button on a case, will mark/unmark with a question mark.
- Appearance
The top option, entitled case size, determines the size of each of the squares in the playing area. By default, they are set small. You can increase the size, if you are working on a very high resolution monitor.
The rest of this page is concerned with colors. To adjust, simply click the color button beside each description, and select the new color.
- Highscores
Here you can change your Nickname and add a cute Comment about yourself, to show in the high score table. You can also enable the World-wide highscores enabled checkbox, and share your skill at KMines across the world with an online high score server.
- Custom Game
Finally, if you are not finding the existing configurations challenging enough, you can set up a custom game here. Use the sliders to change the Width, Height, and the percentage of the board covered with Mines. The default game has 20 percent of the board covered, so there is plenty of room to make the game harder.
- Saving your changes
Once your changes are complete, click OK to make them permenant.
If you want to abandon your changes, click Cancel to abort the changes.
If you click on Default, the default settings will be restored. Click OK to make these default changes permenant, or edit the settings some more.
Commands/Keyboard Shortcuts
The following sections briefly describe each menubar option.
The Game menu consists of 5 options.
- Game->New (Ctrl+N)
Starts a new game.
- Game->Choose Level
Lets you set the difficulty level from a submenu.
There are three default levels of difficulty: Easy (64 boxes, 10 mines), Normal (256 boxes, 40 mines), and Expert (480 boxes, 99 mines). There is also a Custom... level settings.
If you select Custom..., then the settings you have configured in the Configure KMines dialog will be used.
- Game->Pause
Pauses the game. This will hide the board (no cheating), and give you a button to press when you want to continue this game.
- Game->Show Highscores (Ctrl+H)
This shows you the high score (the shortest time) for each difficulty level.
- Game->Quit (Ctrl+Q)
Quits KMines
Settings Menu
- Settings->Show Menubar
If there is a check in front of this option, then the menubar will be visible. Selecting this option, hides the menubar.
Note
To restore a hidden menubar, click outside the game play area, with the right mouse button. This will bring up a small submenu. Simply select Show Menubar from this submenu, and the menubar will be visible again.
- Settings->Configure Shortcuts
Allows you to change the keyboard shortcuts for KMines
- Settings->Configure KMines
Allows you to adjust game options. For more detailed information, see the section entitled Game Options.
Help Menu
- Help->KMines Handbook (F1)
Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the KMines help pages. (this document).
- Help->What's This? (Shift+F1)
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within KMines will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
- Help->Report Bug...
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.
- Help->About KMines
This will display version and author information.
- Help->About KDE
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
Default Key Bindings
The following tables show you the default key bindings.
Table 4.1. Menu bindings
| Key Combo | Action |
|---|---|
| Arrows | Move cursor in playing area. |
| Ctrl | Automatically reveal all surrounding cases not marked by a flag. |
| Ctrl+N | New Game |
| Ctrl+P | Pause Game |
| Ctrl+P | Print Game |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit KMines |
| F1 | Help Contents |
| Shift+F1 | Whats This Help |
| Shift | Reveal Mine. |
| Space | Mark Mine |
These key bindings can be changed by selecting Settings->Configure Key Bindings from the menubar.
Credits and License
KMines
Program copyright 1996-2000 Nicolas Hadacek <hadacek@kde.org>
Documentation copyright 2000 Nicolas Hadacek <hadacek@kde.org>
Documentation updated for KDE 2.0 by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Installation
KMines is part of the KDE project http://www.kde.org/.
KMines can be found in the kdegames package on ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/, the main FTP site of the KDE project.
Compilation and Installation
In order to compile and install KMines on your system, type the following in the base directory of the KMines distribution:
% ./configure % make % make install
Since KMines uses autoconf and automake you should have no trouble compiling it. Should you run into problems please report them to the KDE mailing lists.