GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 679596
Cells freeze sometimes when clearing after clicking on them
Last modified: 2013-08-18 00:02:30 UTC
Hello. I've got a problem with gnomine and i've tried on several distros like fedora (4 different machines) and Ubuntu, so I think it is not a distro-specific issue. It's quite anoying. When I click on a cell, i expect it to clear as usual (if there's no mine, of course), but, sometimes, it freezes on the process of clearing. It happens when I select a cell with a flag, and then press both left & right mouse buttons, to clear all non-mine surrounding cells at the same time. I attach a desktop-recording of the app remarking the cells that have frozen, almost every time it happens.It's recorded with gtk-recordMyDesktop app, and is in ogg format, in spite of having .ogv extension. Regards Yalbivax
I've had trouble uploading the recording, because it was bigger than the limit of 1 MB. I attach a download URL for the file: http://yalbivax.net63.net/gnomine.tar.gz
This is a very real problem, and here is the nature of it, so far as I've been able to determine: Yes, it affects multiple platforms (Ubuntu and Fedora) as well as from within various desktops (LXDE, XFCE, Gnome3, Unity, KDE). Background: As you mentioned, you're clicking both right and left mouse buttons to clear extra squares around a numbered square that has had all its corresponding flags marked. In this case, clicking both buttons simultaneously is supposed to be the same as clicking with the middle button. This behaviour is the correct expected behaviour of the game for decades in the Windows versions, even though it isn't well documented in the help. The KDE version (KMines) also functions this way, and the help documents the behaviour as operating with the middle button, although it works with simultaneous right and left buttons as well. With gnomine, however, it appears as though they've implemented this behaviour using a left-button click instead of a middle-button click, and if you attempt to use simultaneous right+left buttons, this is when strange things happen. Specifically, there are two ways in which it will always reproduce: Having started a game and marked the appropriate number of mines around a numbered square, position the mouse over that square, and do the following as if you were trying to clear the remaining unmarked squares: a) Click and hold the right mouse button, click and hold the left mouse button, release the right mouse button, release the left mouse button. OR b) Click and hold the left mouse button, click and release the right mouse button, release the left mouse button. Doing either a) or b) will produce the following result: The remaining squares that would have been uncovered will appear as though they've been uncovered and are blank. (Even though they probably aren't really blank. As the original description puts it, they "freeze while clearing".) Note: This can lead to a condition (if the player isn't paying attention) where all the squares will appear to have been cleared or marked, however the timer keeps ticking. If subsequently, a redraw is initiated (either by minimizing and then restoring the window, or by temporarily putting another window over the game window), the squares which appeared to have been cleared and blank will go back to appearing uncleared. I would personally prefer that the clearing of extra surrounding squares be implemented with middle-click or left+right simultaneous clicks as is common in other implementations of this game, however even if developers choose to stick with this action generated by a left-click, the following should still be done: 1) Fix this bug. 2) Document the clearing of surrounding squares in the help.
Created attachment 227430 [details] screenshot of a game appearing finished, though it isn't Superficially, this game looks finished. However, if you look at the 5th square on the top row, you'll see that it appears blank and cleared, even though it is next to a bomb and therefore should show a "1". Once you click that blank square, the "1" will appear, and the game will be finished.
Created attachment 236213 [details] [review] Middle Click and Auto-Flag. This is a possible duplicate of bug 677247. The patch in the above bug fixed the multiple click cell freeze issue caused when "a) Click and hold the right mouse button, click and hold the left mouse button, release the right mouse button, release the left mouse button." There was previously a auto-flag option missing from the preference menu, this is added in the attached patch. When auto flag is enabled, clicking on a revealed square with a number will flag and reveal surrounding squares. The attached patch also adds a middle click (Shift+Left) option for clicking on flags which will open all the immediate squares that are not flagged surrounding the clicked flag (Keyboard support included with Shift+Space/Enter).
Review of attachment 236213 [details] [review]: Isaac, can you split this into three separate patches, and attach them to three separate bugs? We like to keep commits as small and isolated as is reasonable. It looks like you could even make three separate bugs for them, but if one of the patches would end up depending on another you could attach those one after the other to the same bug. Thanks and sorry again for the huge delay!
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but we are happy to tell you that the problem has already been fixed. It should be solved in the next software version. You may want to check for a software upgrade. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 677247 ***