Suggestion: Density mode Tournament at /r/Minesweeper
Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 11:25 pm
http://www.reddit.com/r/Minesweeper/com ... mpetition/
be there or be square (or a hexagon)Back in the day when #minesweeper used to be a busy chat room we had all kinds of different challenges such as 100 Beginner, 25 Intermediate or 10 Expert board marathons, the classic 3 hour 5 Int plus 5 exp tournaments and one of my favourites: Density Mode tournaments.
The rules were simple:
The goal was to win an 8x8 Beginner board with as many mines as possible
Participants could choose the amount of mines they were trying for
The first completed board by any single player set the bar for the rest. They would announce in the chat room that they had completed a board and how many mines it had.
All other players now had 10 minutes to complete a board with at least 1 mine more.
The player holding the lead was not allowed (or at least encouraged) to play during this time and usually used this time to upload a screenshot of their completed board.
The competition continued until the leading player's number of mines owuld not be beaten within 10 minutes after the completion of the board was announced
This kind of competition usually took around an hour. The great advantage of this competition mode is that all participants have a chance to win until the very end and faster players have almost no advantage over slower players. (During the 3h 5x5 tournaments you could precisely predict the final standings based on participants' high scores)
Since 10 minutes and 8x8 board are obviously not suitable outsides chat rooms and actual on-site tournaments I suggest the following rules:*
Board size: 30 width, 24 height
Time interval in which the leading player's board has to be beaten by at least 1 mine: 1 week starting from the moment the last completed board was posted
Starting number of mines: 150 (Expert level mine density)
When you hold the lead you are not allowed to post a better game than your own. You have to wait until someone beats you before you may submit again.
Try to improve the leading score by only a small number of mines. This way more players get a chance to hold the lead and the whole competition lasts longer.
How to post scores:
Post a screenshot of your completed board and include the exact time (hh:mm and timezone) at the time of posting it.
To prevent cheating (editing of screenshot or using and old screenshot of someone else) I suggest participants use Minesweeper Arbiter and add a 6-digit number as replay/player name. Whoever posts a new leading score replaces the 6-digit number with a new random one which the other participants are asked to use at the end of the player name. For the first game this number would be 010832
Additional note: Since screenshots are easy to manipulate and the rankings at minesweeper.info require video evidence anyways I suggest that you save the replays of your best games. It would be nice to watch a replay of the game that eventually wins the competition.