Specifically, this reply by damien:
Since defining what a valid clone is is non-trivial (basically, we want to copy the original winmine, but only up to XP, and without cheats), we should talk about that.thefinerminer wrote:Curtis has always been good at making MSX do what the original Minesweeper game does. IMHO, our job is not to gradually create a new game by making little changes to the gameplay, and it is definitely not our goal to copy everything the non-original programmers change in new Microsoft releases. The original game lets you shift-leftclick to chord (as did earlier games that Minesweeper copied this feature from), so I see no problem with this.
Btw, IMHO adding video recording and stats is totally separate from gameplay, and is OK.
Some thoughts:
1. I realise we did not copy bugs from the original (all bugs were accidental timer problems though, not gameplay rules).
2. Ranking rules (3bv limits etc) are not minesweeper game rules. (Rodrigo put 3bv limits in Clone, but he wanted to do this so all Clone games qualify for the ranking).
3. We removed the XYZZY cheat from the original. IMHO this is same as #2. I think it is OK for clones to have this cheat, but they need a way to prove it was not used (eg if cheat is used video is marked as Cheat) so scores can be accepted on the ranking. I would actually prefer this instead of not having it.
Also, it has been a while since the last heated discussion

Let me take a stab at what I'd consider a sensible definition, without any claim of completeness:
Let a classic winmine be a winmine version before XP (and including XP, aside from beginner dimensions).
A valid clone must
- display no more information than a classic winmine during the game, unless the added information is purely quantitative in nature (for example, more digits in the timer)
- may not reveal any information about the board, aside from uncovered squares (no cheats)
- may not implement input methods not present in a classic winmine, and may not deviate in terms of gameplay. Exceptions here are
-- issues related to window focus
-- edge cases that are extremely unlikely to happen in normal gameplay (?) (incomplete)
--- the rationale here is that it might be extremely hard to exactly replicate all of winmine's quirks. See http://www.minesweeper.info/wiki/Cartoo ... weeper_Art
--- this does not apply to things like the arbiter click bug - that happened in normal gameplay way too often. We definitely need to find a clear definition here!
-- existing positional input methods may be interpreted differently. However, the distance covered may not depend on the initial position of the cursor.
--- clonemakers may wish to get raw mouse input in order to eliminate acceleration, and allow for mouse precision tuning that is better than that built into windows (or X on linux). For one, the windows implementation sucks, for another, this would potentially allow consistent mouse behaviour between platforms.
Problems with my list that I already see:
- arbiter's "beep after XY seconds", or should that even be legal?
- arbiter's "clip cursor to board" COULD violate my last point. However, what if a fullscreen implementation comes along that simply doesn't have a region of the screen that isn't part of the board?
Thoughts? Inspiration?