Keysweeper
Welcome to Keysweeper, a prototype made during the week from Dec 30, 2018 to Jan 5, 2019.
In this game, you're basically just playing the old pre-installed favorite, Minesweeper, but instead of clicking on the boxes, you type the letter corresponding to the key you want to check for bombs. I chose this prototype this week because I wanted to learn about remappable controls in order to make more accessible games.
Now, this game itself doesn't involve any--quite the opposite really--but it does have a necessary ingredient: reading arbitrary input and mapping it to the correct game actions. That is, there's not a giant switch statement in the game checking for which key, but rather a very general method that figures it out then dispatches the right state changes.
If you're curious how I chose to implement the input, check out the source code below! It's a GameMaker-dependent solution, but the general idea can be applied in any environment where you can check "any key" events and then see the specific keys by some other means. If you use GameMaker, just import the objKeyListener from this project and add one to your room!
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Comments
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I strongly suggest that you generate the field AFTER the first press, so that the first press is always safe. (I had first press deaths twice in a row, and this never happens in the original Minesweeper)
You should've included the numbers too! The area is too narrow so winning or losing is mostly down to luck at this point.
That's fair! Thanks for the feedback!
it's still fun though, I played for a little while :)
lucky i found this game. this game need bigger area (maybe shift + A will go somewhere so we could get bigger keysweeper :D)
Thanks for playing! I agree the small play area is a bit of a problem. On the next pass on this one I'll definitely consider your idea. Also thanks for posting the vid! Super valuable cor seeing how other people play!
Could you add flagging to the game? maybe shift+the key to flag it. besides that, this is totally a cool game!
Solid idea! Thanks for that! If it's pretty easy to get in, I should be able to add it on the weekend. If not, might have to wait a bit longer. I've been trying to be strict about putting these down at the end of each week and continuing with the next prototype.
Thanks for playing!
Seems like a pretty neat thing. I haven't looked yet at how you did this, but I have found something of an issue: the ' key (the one to the right of ;) expects English keyboard layout and doesn't respond to international keyboard, which is what I usually use.
I suspect you'll keep running into issues like that, whatever is causing this one, but it might be a good idea to keep it in mind for what you'll next use this for. :3
Hope you can put the input thing to good use.
Thanks for the feedback!
And totally--a major limitation in this prototype is that it's tightly coupled to the US-en QWERTY layout. For the future, I'm curious: were you pressing the key on your keyboard marked with the ' character on it, or pressing the key to the right of the ; key? If the second, does your ' key work to trigger the key in-game?
Thanks again!