Version 5.05 (02 Jul 2003)

Flag Day is a RISC OS desktop implementation of the popular game of Minesweeper.

Game summary

Click SELECT on a tile to uncover it; click ADJUST on a tile to place a flag on it. Flagged tiles may not be uncovered until the flag is removed (by clicking ADJUST on it again).

If you uncover all the safe tiles on the board, you win.

If you uncover a mine, you lose.

Under normal circumstances, the four corners of the game board will not contain mines, thus giving you a few safe starting points for your mine hunt.

In most cases it's possible to work out where the mines are located by logical deduction, but occasionally you may come across a situation where you are forced to guess. For such impossible situations, a hinting system is provided: choose the Hint option from the game menu, and Flag Day will either reveal or flag the next tile you click, depending on whether or not it contains a mine. Use the hints sparingly: you are only allowed one hint for every 50 mines in the board.

When starting a new game, you can use the New game options window to choose your skill level or set up a custom-sized board. You can also alter the amount of the custom board to be covered by mines, as a percentage, but note that you will only be eligible for entry into the best times table if you use the default coverage value of 20%.

Notes:

1. Closing or iconising the board window will pause the game. Click the icon bar icon (or choose Continue... from the icon bar menu) to resume from where you left off.
2. When no game is in progress, clicking the top strip of icons in the board window (containing the percentage completed and timer information) acts as a shortcut for starting a new game with the existing board settings.
3. Flag Day supports interactive help extensively.

Game options

• Game behaviour section:
  • Auto-turn blanks: This option (normally enabled) causes Flag Day to reveal adjacent blank tiles automatically if you click on a tile which is not adjacent to any mines.
  • Search and Flag modes: Normally, clicking SELECT uncovers a tile and clicking ADJUST places and removes flags. Flag Day has an alternative interface method, however, which may be enabled by turning on this option. In the alternative method, the ADJUST button toggles between Search and Flag modes, while the SELECT button both uncovers tiles and places flags, depending on the current mode. This alternative method is slower to use but safer, because it's less easy to uncover tiles accidentally.
  • Uncertainty markers: Uncertainty markers are like flags except that they do not prevent you from uncovering tiles. If this option is enabled, an uncertainty marker will appear on a tile after you remove a flag from it; you must click again with ADJUST to remove all markings from the tile. The uncertainty markers are intended as visual reminders on tiles whose contents you are unsure about.
  • Show mines at end: When you lose a game, Flag Day normally reveals the positions of all the mines in the board; disabling this option prevents it from doing so. (If this option is disabled, then the Show mines option on the game menu becomes available, and performs the same function.)
  • Show times at end: If enabled, this option causes the Best times window to be opened on the screen at the end of every game. The Best times window contains a status icon showing whether the last game was won or lost.
  • Auto-save best times: If enabled, Flag Day will save the table of best times to disc every time a new entry is made into it. If this option is disabled, you must save the best times manually by clicking the Save button in the window.

• New game setup section:
  • Safe corners: If enabled, Flag Day will ensure that a mine never appears in a corner square when creating a new game.
  • Safe edges: If enabled, Flag Day ensures that mines never apper along any of the four edges of the board, not counting the corners (which are governed by the previous option). Note that the use of this option creates a greater mine density within the body of the board. Since this can have a significant impact on how the game plays, you are not allowed to enter your score into the best times table if you use the Safe edges option.

  As a convenient short-cut, the above two options are duplicated in the New game setup window.

• Graphics pop-up menu:
  • The Graphics pop-up menu allows you to choose the game graphics that Flag Day will use. Several sets are provided, and you can see information about each by pointing at its name in the Graphics menu with interactive help enabled. It is also possible to design your own graphics sets (see below).
• Appearance section:
  • Sound: If disabled, Flag Day will cease generating sounds. Note that this has no effect on audio output from other RISC OS applications.
  • Magnify tiles: If enabled, the tiles on the board will be enlarged to quadruple size, making them easier to see and click. This is especially useful for small graphics sets.
  • Grey/alternative tiles: Some of the sets of graphics supplied with Flag Day have alternative versions, either offering a grey-scale equivalent to the colour graphics or a design variant. For example, the Crossword graphics (which normally use numbers) feature alternative designs with letters. Turning this option on will display the alternative set.
  • Style Guide compliant: Usually, Flag Day takes on the normal appearance of a regular RISC OS application. However, if its compliance with the RISC OS application design guidelines is disabled, Flag Day will use a set of graphics in its windows that are visually in keeping with its default board graphics.

Graphics

b & i	blank (unturned) tile, and inverted version
0	empty tiles (no surrounding mines)
1 to 8	numbered tiles for the associated number of surrounding mines
m & n	mine and exploded mine
f	flag
u & w	uncertainty marker, and inverted version

The graphics can be of any size and colour depth, but note:

1. All the individual graphics must be the same size as each other;
2. All the sprites must use the same number of colours;
3. If any of the sprites has a palette, then you should ensure that every other sprite has an identical palette, too.

The alternative/grey-scale graphics are optional. If present, the alternative sprites should use the same names as the main sprites, but with gs prefixing the single-character name: gsb, gsi, gs0 and so on.

The alternative graphics must be the same size as the main graphics, but may use a different colour-depth (if fewer colours are needed, for example). However, the alternative tiles must all be the same colour depth as each other, and should all have the same palette (if a palette is present).

Note that Flag Day treats its alternative graphics slightly differently than the main ones:

1. The normal versions of the flag and uncertainty marker graphics will always be used, even if the alternative graphics have been selected, unless the computer's desktop is set to use only 2 or 4 colours. (This is to provide a clear contrast between the grey tiles and the coloured flag markers.)
2. Flag Day assumes that the alternative graphics have been optimised for use in screen modes with few colours, so it will always use the alternative graphics in screen modes with only 2 or 4 colours.

It is possible to provide interactive help text for your new graphics, for when the pointer is held over their entry in the Graphics menu with interactive help enabled. To add such information, it is necessary to edit Flag Day's Messages file. Load it into a suitable text editor (such as Edit) and move the caret to the end of the file. You will see that the last few entries take the form:

Help_Menu_Graphics_<filename>:<help-text>

Simply add a new line to the Messages file in the above format, replacing the <filename> section with the actual name of the sprites file you have added.

Note that the help text itself can only be a maximum of 235 characters long. If you exceed this length, Flag Day will inform you of the fact when you attempt to view your help text.

When saving the updated Messages file, please ensure that it ends with a carriage return (i.e. the caret can appear on a blank line at the end of the file).