Introduction

As you might think before you started reading, yes, MineSwee++ (pronounced like MineSwee-Plus Plus) does have something to do with MineSweeper, the famous game that came with Windows (back to Windows 3.1). More specifically, it is about the MineSweeper Flags game that you can play with your contacts with MSN Messenger 6/7 or Windows Live Messenger 8. The most significant difference is that, when you play with MineSwee++, you play with your computer, not a real human! Yep, [o], the # Middle Sea Humanoid Bot (er, I made this name :P), will be your opponent. MineSwee++ 2 has visualized interface and exciting sound effects, just as if you are playing the real MineSweeper Flags game. It comes with some adjustable parameters too.

Move cursor over the picture to enlarge it

Development Story

First of all, I must "thank" the MSN Messenger crew for they introduced us to this new kind of MineSweeper game. Minesweeper, the one comes with Windows, is the type of game that during playing, you should avoid "opening the cells" that have a mine under them - and you should open all the cells that have no mines under them as fast as possible. You lose the game if you open a cell that has a mine under it. MineSweeper Flags, the one comes with/since MSN Messenger 6 Fun & Games, is the type that when you play with your contact, you should try your best to find all the mines and open the cells with mines as much as possible. To win the game, you must "sweep" (to sweep a mine is to open and flag a cell with a mine) 26 mines - there are totally 51 mines spread randomly in the 16x16 "mine table".

Anyway, playing the games requires good logics and reasoning skills. In my first semester in 2nd year of senior high, I had to hand in a program, as my term project. When my teacher told us about this, I immediately decided to code MineSwee+ - the predecessor of MineSwee++. MineSwee+ was coded in C++ and had only text interface. Having written down many logics entries, I finally finished MineSwee+ and named the computer side [o], the # Middle Sea bot. To be clear-cut: [o], playing the game, thinks in quite the same way as I do, but he - or it - is much faster than I, or indeed any human beings.

After the semester was over, some of my classmates suggested that I re-do the program in Visual Basic, mainly for the purpose of giving it nice-looking graphic user interface. As the "core" of [o]'s thinking way had been done, MineSwee++, which would become the visualized version of MineSwee+, was soon coded and released to Messenger Plus! community. Some people say it isn't enough smart, but some say it kicks their ass - Anyhow, people do have fun playing with my program and that's what I am happy with :).

Improving [o] has always been what I wanted to do. In my sophomore year in college, I finally came up a new algorithm. Somehow, this time, the opportunity for me to implement it is again term project - now (Intel IA-32) Assembly. So, I implemented the new algorithm in Assembly and used MineSwee++ 2's C[o]re as my term project topic. My classmates said it kicked their ass! This gave me confidence that I could release the new version to the wild, so after some modification and improvement on the codes, I publicized the Preview Release of MineSwee++ 2 three years after the first version's release.

The Preview Release was still written in Visual Basic under which it grew gradually hard to maintain. Also it was not Vista-compatible. Therefore, I decided to re-make the whole user interface in C#. Due to such reconstruction, the new interface that resembled the original Minesweeper Flags more with difficulty control became available.