11 years and a new – and open source – client!

It’s been 11 years since the first version of Minesweeper Flags Extreme went online. Yes, that’s right. The first site launched in 2008-03-01 after six months of intensive development. Now, 11 years later, I’m working on yet another new client that will hopefully be the best of the best. This time the client is also open-sourced so that if you are a developer, feel free to help out! The code is hosted at https://github.com/Zomis/minesweeper-flags-client and is available to play at https://play.minesweeperflags.net

It’s ugly but it works – Finally a new client!

After a long time of promising a new client, it has finally arrived. This time made with HTML5 instead of that old monster called Adobe Flash.

The main reason for why this happened now is that after a recent server switch, the old Flash client was no longer able to connect to Multiplayer.

If you used the old client, then some differences you will notice in the new client are:

  • It is currently only possible to login with a random guest name. Some other login options should be added within a few weeks.
  • Chat feature does not exist in lobby or within games. It might come back, maybe not. I’d recommend using other applications to chat instead for now.
  • It doesn’t look very nice. This is being worked on and it will be improved continuously.
  • Expander Rule is always on, this is because only multiplayer is available. If you notice the board being reset or if it looks like the board is being reset at the start of the game, that is the “expander rule”. It makes the game more fair as it avoids unlucky beginnings.
  • There might be bugs. Bugs will be fixed and new version will be deployed continuously.
  • It does not have any local play. If you want Local Play, there are plans to make that in the future but it needs to be integrated into the existing statistics first.
  • It does not have an editor. If you want an editor then you will just have to ask me about it and maybe I will make a new one in the future.
  • It does not have a list of replays. If you want to see replays you can go to http://stats.minesweeperflags.net (which also need to be updated since the server change).

Some differences that you might not notice right now are:

  • The code is better
  • It is much easier to deploy a new version of the client (Thank you, Jenkins!)
  • It is even very easy to deploy multiple versions of the client to test various things at the same time (each development branch gets its own deployment place)
  • It will make it easier to make a new version of the Android client, and even a client for iOS in the future!

New plugins and new AI on the #Server!

Server updates:
- New Plugins: SmallerBoard10 and SmallerBoard12. For games on smaller boards (10×10 or 12×12). Bomb explodes a smaller area as well. (Because of the client, it still looks big before you actually use it)
- The better AIs requires the opponent to have at least (AI rating – 800) rating to play. For example, AI Nightmare has 3200. So you need at least 3200 – 800 = 2400 rating to play Nightmare.
- New AI: #AI_Mirror (since AI_Mirror does not have rating, you need to have 2500 rating to play it). This is only the first version of AI_Mirror. Balancing it is not easy. It can be really slow if you play in a special way. It will show information about how you play and give you a “Estimated rating” depending on how well you play (estimated rating will never be more than 2500).

Updates to Minesweeper Multiplayer Server and Statistics Server

Changes to Minesweeper Flags Extreme Multiplayer Server include:
- Improved performance

Click here to play Minesweeper Flags Extreme now!

Changes to Minesweeper Flags Statistics Server include:
- Added images and text for sharing games, replays and maps on Facebook
- Added scores to replay view
- Added “Tagged Gamelist” query mode

Check out the Minesweeper Flags Statistics here!

Minesweeper Flags Extreme goes Java and dot net

For almost six years I have been working on the Minesweper Flags Extreme project but there has been a huge amount of development during the past six months.

The first version of AI Nightmare appeared only three months ago, and even though it is still not finished there are only a handful of people in the world who manage to win more than 50% of the games.

To expand the site I’ve acquired the domain minesweeperflags.net.

A few months ago I also launched a new statistics page dedicated to Minesweeper Flags Extreme, which can be located at http://stats.minesweeperflags.net (or stats.zomis.net if you’re lazy). The stats domain is running a Java web application on an Apache Tomcat server.

And in case you wondered, the Minesweeper Flags Extreme project is far from being “finished”. Who knew so many things can be done with the simple Minesweeper?

Go and play Minesweeper Flags Extreme now!