Thursday, May 18, 2006

Minesweeper Vs Minesweeper Flags

UPDATES!!!
I've just smashed my highscore for Minesweeper, the normal version. I scored a pretty impressive 133~ balabababa I'm lovin' it...
-end of updates-

I enjoy playing Minesweeper on my computer. I don't know if this will sound weird to people, but yea... I derive great joy in clicking those little boxes and seeing that I am not stepping on any minefield. And I love playing that game so much that I can just spend hours at it. Of course, after some time, the game can get a little boring, but the thought of beating my fastest time and being able to accomplish a difficult set of minefield pushes me to go on with the game.

Unlike most people, to achieve a faster time, I'm now accustomed, or should I say, this is my way of playing the game, that I do not put up flags, instead I just open boxes and leave the mines untouched and at the end of the game, all the unopened mines will automatically be flagged. I thought that saved me the time from putting up flags. Now, I cannot play to flag the mines because I'm so used to flagging the mines in my mind.

Minesweeper
It gives me great joy to see a screen as such.

I don't know why but it's like going through and ordeal and finally accomplishing it. But sometimes, I also find that that can be quite disappointing since much joy of playing Minesweeper is clearing the boxes and when you win the game comes to an end.

My fastest time.
minesweeper fastest times

I think my fastest time is pretty fast, although I must say that the fastest time in before my laptop crashed was faster, think it was in the 140s, probably 143 if I didn't remember wrongly. I'll be working towards that goal now. But most of the time one would need extremely good luck to achieve such a quick score. I hate it that I need to waste time opening up boxes one by one when I know that whole patch are 1s and 2s. Also sometimes there can be ambiguous boxes, the probability of bother boxes is 50-50, and I'm just unlucky to choose the wrong box.

That day I was chatting with Andrew again, and he reminded me of his project.

I remember him telling me of his project a couple of months ago. He was to clone this Minesweeper Flags game and write a whole thesis about that. I've never played Minesweeper Flags before, but I thought since I'm great at Minesweeper, Minesweeper Flags shouldn't be a problem for me.

I go back to that day, Andrew finally completed his project and submitted his paper. He gave me the link to read his paper. I got so gian-ed about wanting to play this Minesweeper Flags, but too bad, his MSN was not able to support Minesweeper Flags. So he gave me the link to download his version of Minesweeper Flags for me to play.

I lost pretty badly. Okay, I lost very badly.

His computer is so smart and fast that there wasn't anything I can do to prevent myself from losing that badly. And it also seemed that his computer is very lucky. After a couple of tries and getting the hang of it, I was still losing.

minesweeper flags defeat
This is one of the better losses.

Andrew then gave me another link to play another person's version of Minesweeper Flags saying that that computer is not as smart as his. So I tried that, the computer is still very smart but much slower that his computer, and not as lucky, so I managed to win. After conquering that I continued with trying to snatch a victory from Andrew's computer.

I thought of the time when I started playing Minesweeper. Of course I started with beginner first. And when I garnered a sub 10 score, I decided to push my limits and did the intermediate one. As you can see from my screenshot that I don't have a high score for my beginner and intermediate that's because after I conquered the beginners and intermediate I never again played it, and my laptop crashed, so I don't have the previous scores anymore. And I won't be playing them again, so it'll remain as such. Only the best to play with the best.

There's a longer story behind how I mastered the advanced version of Minesweeper. I started out with the advance template but I customed the bombs to make it have only 50 bombs. Only when I managed to conquer the 50 bombs then I added, 60 bombs, 70 bombs, 75, 80, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, then finally can I try the advanced 99 bomb version. It didn't take me too long to get the hang of the game and for me to continuously challenge myself.

I think this says a lot about me.

As for Andrew's game, it didn't take me more than a day to finally achieve my beloved victory.
minesweeper flags victory

I think playing a lot of Minesweeper helped me because sometimes I instinctively knew which were the bombs to flag and which were empty ones, which I should avoid, and which were the ones with only 1 or 2 marked.

I'm still not ready to share my tips on doing well in Minesweeper because it's not really that often that there's something I'm good in, so can please let me revel in my illusion that I'm the master of Minesweeper for the moment? wahaha~ Even Andrew hasn't won his computer yet, but of course I don't think he plays with that that often. If I'm him I'd be pretty sick of playing with that stupid game. lol~

And did I say I'm bored? Now you guys know what I've been busy with...

4 comments:

Poo said...

Wow, I didn't know you were such a Minesweeper fanatic! And to finish the expert game in 140+ seconds! =O

Anyway glad you found my game interesting. Next time I improve the AI somemore, I'll let you try again... =)

Doctorakos said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Doctorakos said...

I've always been trying to bit the expert mode under 2 minutes (120sec), about a month ago I've done it in 199sec and I was so damn happy xD I'm trying to find some kind of tact to bit it now under 100seconds which I thing is impossible, at least yet...

Doctorakos said...

I believe it can be done near 100sec cause there should definately be some bombs that are unnecessary to be flagged to continue. Keep in mind that timer goes on till all the number-boxes are opened and not until you find/flag all bombs lying