Sending Scores to the Minesweeper Rankings



1. Play an official version of Minesweeper:
	Clone 2007	Most popular version. Hundreds of options, graphs and video features. .MVF
	Arbiter 0.47	Most statistics. Hundreds of options, graphs and video features. .AVF
	Minesweeper X	Download and play. No install so you can play at work. .MVR
	Viennasweeper	Fast clone with special tournament features. .RMV

2. Your best scores will save on video automatically. To join you need good scores:
	World Ranking: Country Ranks: Active Ranking:	Scores add to less than 100 seconds. ( 5-20-74 = 99 seconds ) Scores are 6-35-99 or faster. Any finished Intermediate and Expert score. ( 12-45 or 52-346 )

3. Email your videos and information:
	Name Username Country Score dates	Your name Your online name, nick or pseudo. Country of citizenship The date for each record

4. You will receive an email telling you about the next update. You will also receive a password to upload videos, compete in the Active Ranking, and edit your Profile.

Ranking FAQS

Microsoft Minesweeper

Microsoft minesweeper is no longer allowed on the rankings except in special cases. There are many reasons. First, it uses a small number of boards that repeat. Players began using board cycles to play the same board multiple times. This is an example of Unfair Prior Knowledge. UPK is also a problem of Vista minesweeper, because you are allowed to play a game many times until you win. Another problem is that the original game uses an 8x8 Beginner grid with 10 mines, but starting with ME and XP, Microsoft changed it to a 9x9 grid with 10 mines. This makes Beginner much easier. All official versions use the original grid size. Finally, there are many cheats and solvers available, making it impossible to prove that your scores are real. The clock on Windows is often unreliable. All clones have security features to prevent cheating and make encrypted videos with decimal time.

3BV

3BV is the number of left clicks needed to win a game. It is a measure of board difficulty. Limits of 2-30-99 are used to stop very lucky games from joining the ranking. They still count as personal records, but the ranking attempts to rank skill, not luck. For example, many people have won Beginner games in 1 lucky click but this involves no skill.

UPK

Unfair Prior Knowledge is banned from the rankings. This includes practicing a board, manipulating board cycles or using memory exploits to read game information in advance. The player must only use information revealed by his clicks while the timer is running on a first attempt to solve the game.

Videos

All official versions of minesweeper save videos of your records automatically. They can be found in the folder you installed the game.

Clone and Arbiter automatically save many types of record, such as time, 3BV/s, IOE, RQP, IOS and NF versions of these stats. You can invent saving rules and choose folders and filenames for each rule. MSX saves time records on video but gives you the option to save all games or just games under a certain time limit for each level. Viennasweeper saves every game.

Decimal Time

The world ranking uses integers because decimal times became available only a few years ago. Decimal time is used to break ties (and there is also a separate decimal world ranking). All clones use decimal time.

Microsoft minesweeper starts the clock at 1 second on your first click. This confused programmers. As a result, MSX starts at 0.00, Arbiter starts at 0.00 but has an option to start at 1.00, and Clone starts at 1.00. Viennasweeper displays a clock starting at 1.00 but saves videos starting at 0.00. The debate was whether Winmine starts at 0 and rounds up, or if it actually starts at 1. As a result, the world ranking adds 1 second to MSX and Arbiter scores to compare them to the rest. Hopefully this problem will be solved with the next releases of the various clones.

Clone Videos from China

Clone videos made in China, Japan, Korea and countries using similar languages do not work on Western computers, and vice versa. To watch videos from these players, in Vista go to the Control Panel, select 'Clock, Language & Region', select 'Change the date, time, number format' and select a format such as 'Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R)'. You can then open Clone and watch these games. Not all computers come with a Chinese language set, so you might need to install it from Microsoft. You can find help at this website.