Arbiter vs Clone

[KamilSaper]

I would like to know your opinions about Arbiter (Viennasweeper) vs Clone. Everybody agrees that these versions are faster than Clone, but is the difference really important? In fact I used to play for 2 months on Arbiter, but the scores I got werent much different than my Clone's ones. My Exp and Int records were made on Clone, so I dont really see the differece. And what do u think?

[EWQMinesweeper]

from my own experience what speaks for vsweep being faster than arbiter being faster than clone is that after the 1st 2 weeks of using vsweep i broke all my 3 time records and that i get a lot more sub20s on vsweep than on arbiter than on clone. also on arbiter i seem to get sub60s a lot easier than on clone and from my overall highscores only the ioe scores were done on clone.

what speaks against it is that though i got my 45 on arbiter my upk attempts on clone are always a lot faster (45 arbiter in 42 on clone in upk, 3,6 3BV/s on arbiter @ 3,7 on clone in upk)


i only prefer arbiter because i can start a new board much easier on it than on clone - in arbiter you don't have to click on the smilie but only on the area around it etc...

on the long term vsweep or arbiter don't give any advantage. the only reason why people improve when they change to these versions is because they like the new version better and therefore play more ms.

[KamilSaper]

ok [name removed], but the fact is that every time when u UPK, u get better score than in normal mode.
btw, isnt it easier to just click F2?

[EWQMinesweeper]

i meant upk-ing games you got some time ago and don't remember the path you used anymore. that way my upk time from 1st attempt should be as fast as the original game and not ~5-10% faster.



arbiter: options: preferences: game style: "clear board if completition is less than XY%" and "force new game start by timer"

[Timothy_N]

I don't really notice many differences between arbiter and clone, but the history log don't work for me on the clone so i guess i prefer arbiter.

[EWQMinesweeper]

arbiter has some very nice and useful 'features'...

about 8 months ago i wrote a bit about the 4 clones on the facebook minesweeper page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Minesweep ... topic=4315

[Timothy_N]

Is it possible to alter the size on any version?

[EWQMinesweeper]

viennasweeper has only the classic levels
arbiter is limited to 8-30*8-30
clone goes up to 50*50
and msx boards can be as big as your screen

[Timothy_N]

I meant can i just make it bigger without getting more squares? So the squares will be bigger too. Like you can do in the vista version.

[EWQMinesweeper]

as far as i know it is not possible

maybe with msx custom skins you can make it 1 or 2 pixel bigger squares but i don't know about a way to make the squares bigger by using a clone

you should ask that question in the guestbook...i am sure that someone knows a way

[Tommy]

Vienna for everything except density, Arbiter for that.

I haven't used the clone in ages, so I can't really compare.

@[name removed]:
You could give Vienna more mention in that post it is IMO the best clone from a technical perspective. History files being in csv format, you can do a lot of interesting things with it. The videos are stored in an archive, so they use disk space efficiently, and especially don't fragment. So your file browser won't hang for a couple of seconds just displaying the file list of a large video folder

Excel* (and OpenOffice) can import ViennaSweeper histories. So there is nothing stopping anyone from writing macros that do really interesting stuff with history files even if the builtin history tool doesn't have as many features as the other histories do.

(*excel has problems importing csv files in some countries, because it uses the system list seperator character, you might have to change that.)

At tournaments there were problems with the tournament software, but I can't remember seing the home edition fail.

The beginner leg/tournament modes helped me prepare for the wch to a great extent.

Vienna is a clone that should not be underestimated. Try it

[EWQMinesweeper]

@tommy: when the latest version of vsweep was relased i broke all my 3 time records on it within 2 weeks but overall i prefer arbiter a lot,

*because in arbiter you can start a new game not only by clicking on the yellow face of hitting f2 but also a click in the area above the boards does that

*because arbiter has more options for counters (maybe not as many as clone but still a lot of them)

*because arbiter has features such as 'force new game start if timer exceeds XY' and 'clear board if completition is less than XY%' - 2 very very useful features

*because arbiter vids can be watched with clone too -> UPK-ing nice arbiter boards with clone


i still use vsweep and clone every now and then but with arbiter sweeping just much more fun than with other clones for me

[KamilSaper]

At home I play on Clone as much as possible - It's the most common version so if I get a world records its easy for others to watch I like it's colour and nice history file.
At school I play Int on MSX, beacuse I cant install clone there and it generates sub30 3bv boards on int - in fact I'd rather get 6s on sub30 than a legit 8
At school I play Exp on Arbiter - I realise that it's faster than CLone but I hate difference between time on counters window and the real time, I dont like it's pop-up window and colour, so as long as possible I choose Clone.
I dont play on Viennasweeper at all because of a few reasons: 1. I like having my stats in 1 place, so if I have most of them on CLone's and Arbiter's history files, I dont want to start a new one. 2. It doesn't have a nice pop-up window - as everybody knows Im used to record avi vid during playing, that my vids end with pop-up window. No pop-up = no nice vid later = I dont feel it as my record. 3. Some conservative players might not accept this newest version, so I play on CLone.
I also dont see any big difference between scores I get on different versions, so I dont care if some version is faster.

[Tommy]

At home I play on Clone as much as possible - It's the most common version so if I get a world records its easy for others to watch

Problem is, you NEED the clone to watch those vids, the clone can play arbiter vids as well, so in fact the people that can watch clone vids are a subset of the people that can watch arbiter vids. And people without clone have no alternative whatsoever, so they can't watch them at all.

[EWQMinesweeper]

brings back the 'old' issue that a programm tio watch replays from all versions with only 1 programm would be very fine...

[Tommy]

either that, or a unified video format, viennasweeper uses a great format that is safe, small, and trivial to implement.

[Cryslon]

How can i learn more about vienna's (and others) format?

[Tommy]

Ask the developers (I'm not saying that they will necessarily respond, but you can give that a try, and I don't know who else really knows a lot about them).

[Cryslon]

either that, or a unified video format, viennasweeper uses a great format that is safe, small, and trivial to implement.

Ask the developers.

Well. You're advertising vienna's format as "safe" and "trivial to implement".

What's "trivial to implement" ? Does there exist full description of this format, or only the Mighty Developer knows how it works? Does its' safeness base only on number of people understanding format?

[Tommy]

Well, having the spec it is trivial to implement. though I'm not sure I'm allowed to pass it on, but you can ask christoph if you want.

It is safe because it defines a place for a checksum. The way this checksum is calculated depends utterly on the programmer of the clone in question. All other aspects of the file remain the same though.

Therefore, only the clone that generated the video will be able to _validate_ it. However, every clone that can deal with the format can play it.

Of course, that makes the format as secure as the checksum itself. But the _potential_ is pretty big.

You might argue that this is security by obscurity, but as any clone is an application running _on the client_, you will never eliminate the problem that with enough effort you can crack ANY clone's video file encryption algorithm. There is no such thing as a completely safe clone/video format.

[RonnyDeWinter]

My Clone is cursed, my 3BVs are at least 10% slower than on Arbiter, but the 3BVs on LC blasts are the same. I'veonly solved 1 exp board on Vienna and it was immediatly a time record, but I hated having a record on Vienna, so i never used it again. Therefor I'm using Arbiter now....I miss the stats and UPK options of Clone though.

[KamilSaper]

I play Exp on Clone because on exp I always play slower, and Int on MSX, because:
1. As well as ronny I dont like Vienna and on arbiter I cant write my name in text under video
2. It generates all 3bv boards.
3. Clone is defitely too slow on beg and int, so I resigned playing on it.

[RonnyDeWinter]

Still @#$@$ cursed. I don't understand why i keep trying Clone every single day.......each time thinking....."it can't be THAT bad"...."your clone records so are outdated, it must be easy to break them"........."it's not really slower, it's just all in your head".......and each day I'm totally pissed again after those 20 minutes, having solved only with crap times, crap speeds and crap blasts. If I didn't need it for replaying vids, I would have ritually burnt my Clone by now.

Example:

[KamilSaper]

lol, awesome movie I dont really see a difference on exp between clones, but on beg its really noticable (3bv/s clone: 8,026 and 8,096, 3bv/s arbiter: 8,59 and 8,69 -> I played much more on clone)