# The &kmines; Handbook

Nicolas
Hadacek

    hadacek@kde.org

Michael
McBride

    mmcbride@ematic.org

Nicolas
Hadacek

    hadacek@kde.org

Developer
Lauri
Watts

    lauri@kde.org

Reviewer
2000
Nicolas Hadacek, Michael McBride
&FDLNotice;
2001-02-03
2.00.10

&kmines; is the &kde; version of the classic minesweeper game.

KDE
game
minesweeper

## 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.

  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.

  If your flags are not properly positionned, you will explode on a bomb.

- Pressing the yellow smiley will start a new game.

These are the default settings. The mouse buttons can be reprogrammed. For more information, see the section entitled Game Options.

### The &kmines; Screen

The &kmines; Screen
The &kmines; Screen

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.

  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.

&kmines; Preferences
&kmines; Preferences

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.

  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.

### Game Menu

The Game menu consists of 5 options.

&Ctrl;N Game New

  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.

&Ctrl;H Game Show Highscores

  This shows you the high score (the shortest time) for each difficulty level.

&Ctrl;Q Game Quit

  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.

  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.menu.documentation;

### Default Key Bindings

The following tables show you the default key bindings.

#### 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

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &kmines;

&install.intro.documentation;

### Compilation and Installation

&install.compile.documentation;