Runs under 32 bit Windows (95,98,NT,ME,2000,XP,2003...) on any computer that can run it. A mouse or other pointing device is required. Having at least 65k (16bit) colors is highly recommended. Resolution of 1024X768 is required for the biggest boards. 640X480 is enough for playing board that are not bigger than the expert board (30X16), which is more than most people can cope with (excluding the author). A web browser is required to view this help file. If the browser supports frames, even better.
Mine Explorer is a perfectly logical computer board game. The game is a computer simulation of an area full of landmines that you must discover as fast as possible without actually stepping on one.
It all started about six years ago as a highschool project of programming in Pascal. Bonifacius was almost simplest possible implementation of Mine Explorer, but it still earned the author and one of his schoolmates who actually had nothing to do with it an A.
It continued as a practice in Delphi programming and soon became a game worth playing. At first it seemed like just another implementation of Minesweeper, a better one of course, but still same old game. The invention of the holes give it a new life. The recursive opening of fields around a numbered field made it run much faster, so the timer now shows tenths of seconds instead of seconds to prevent score ties. 3D rendering of the buttons made it look better. So the Mine Explorer was born. It could be also named Bonifacius 99.
On the edge of one of the smaller galaxies there is a tiny sun. Around this dwarf of a sun orbit nine planets. The forth planet is not much different from the others, but is by a strange coincidence the only planet in the universe where the process of evolution produced a species that has devastating effect on its environment, although it appears that it actually has some basic intelligence.
This species has delusions of being the most advanced species in the evolution of the planet, but is in fact the most degenerated species in the universe except possibly the fourteen-headed flying cucumbers of the planet Chundgha XIII, which spend their entire life flying around in circles around their tails which are actually roots trying to pick up rocks on the ground beside them which they think they need but really don't need and never succeed.
The species calls itself human despite the fact it is just the opposite of humane, even to itself. It is a barbaric species, destructive to its environment and itself. As soon as humans became aware of themselves, they for some inexplicable reason got the idea that they are better than the other animals and even plants on the planet. They think the other living beings and even dead things are there only for them to exploit. They call their planet Earth because it's full of dirth. They call their sun Sun (original, isn't it?) and their galaxy the Milky Way.
Like most of the Earth creatures a human has only four legs, two of which can be used as kind of a primitive hands and only one head. On its heas it has two eyes which are used to detect a small portion of the spectrum of the electromagnetic waves which enables them a kind of primitive vision. On the side of its head it has two funny shaped organs called ears which should enable the creatures to fly, but are by a strange coincidence mostly used for detecting sound. It has only one mouth which makes its lunch much longer.
If they never stopped living in caves, hunting animals and picking plants, their planet would still be a paradise. But no, they had to invent agriculture. They burned down the forests to make room to plant the plants they like, they enslaved (domesticated as they call it) the animals which they liked eating, and if those were too wild, they hunted them like there was a limitless supply of them and killed the animals that ate the animals which they ate. Soon most of the species on the planet were on the edge of extinction and many became extinct.
The population of humans is increasing exponentially, when they fill one area, they expand to the neighbouring areas like a flood. Soon the whole planet will become infected by them. And since they are just about to discover lonf-distance space travel, the whole universe is in danger.
The human species in not dangerous to itself only because it destroys its environment and consequently itself, but is also a direct danger to its members. Throughout its history, groups of individuals with some common characteristics killed groups of individuals with some other common characteristics to gain their land or just because they didn't like them. They called this war, although the whole remaining universe knows that war is supposed to be fought by two or more generals on connected computers as a real-time strategy. The war by the human definition could be a very barbaric mechanism for controlling the population, but because the winners of each war raped the woman of the losers, the consequence of war was ussually an increase in the population.
They invented weapons to help kill the opponent faster. They invented better and better weapons for killing more and more humans and innocent members of the other species. Now they even have the power to destroy the entire planet, but fortunately (for them) don't dare to use them, because that would mean the end of the world for them, too.
Somewhere along the way this species invented landmines. A landmine is a primitive and very barbaric device, that explodes when someone or something sets it off someway (by stepping on or off it, tripping over a wire, crossing a laser beam). This device kills or just cripples anything that sets it off, even the friends of the one, who set it. Most of the victims of these landmines are innocent, like children and members of the other species.
Fortunately some of this pathetic creatures finally noticed the obvious. What they are doing to their planet and themselves is suicidal. If they don't do something about it, they will destroy themselves. If they do, then they will have to change the way they do thing and will become harmless to the rest of the universe.
So you see, there is still hope for this planet and our entire universe. And we don't actually have to do anything about it, except having some fun with this virtual landmine exploring game.
The playing board is divided into square fields, each of which may contain a mine. Your job is to discover all the mines in the shortest time possible without opening the fields that contain them. The elapsed time in tenths of seconds is shown on the right side of the main window.
There are two ways of winning this game:
At the beginning of the game each of the fields is either covered ()
or a hole (
). The
holes can not be uncovered or flagged and can not contain a mine.
Click with your left mouse button on the covered fields you wish to
open. Uncovering reveals either a mine (),
or an empty field (
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
).
If it is a mine (),
the game is over, you lose a leg in the explosion and the game is lost. All the
mines in the minefield get shown (
)
so you can see where they actually are.
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If it is not a mine, it shows the number of mines (if any) contained in the
8 or less (5 at edge, 3 in the corner) neighbouring fields (the N, NW, W, SW, S, SE,
E and NE neighbours). EG: of the 8 fields surrounding the field labeled "3"on
the right, 3 contain mines and your job is to find out, which 3 actually contain
mines. If the number of surrounding mines is zero ()
all the neighbouring fields get opened automatically in the same fashion, this
helps you concentrate on the logic of the game by removing the totally obvious
tasks.
Click your right mouse button to flag ()
or should I say pin the fields which by your oppinion must contain mines. You
can only flag opened field (
).
If you accidently flagged the wrong field, you can unflag it by clicking on it
with the right mouse button again. The number of mines left to flag is shown on
the left side of the main window, but only if you haven't flagged any fields that
don't contain mines. This number gives you some indication of your progress.
Click your left or middle mouse button on the numbered empty fields
(,
,
,
,
,
,
,
)
to open all the unflagged fields around them. Of course this only works if the
exact number of fields surrounding the field in question has already been flagged, regardless of
whether you actually flagged the right field or not.
If you flagged the wrong fields neigbouring a field and then clicked on it,
the other neigbouring fields get opened, including the ones containing mines,
you lose and the color of the flags of the wrongly flagged fields changes to green
() so you can see
where the mistake was made.
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Clicking on the field with the number 3 in the position on the right causes all the empty field around it to open.
If the fields opened in this fashion also have the exact number of neighbouring mines flagged, their neigbours automatically get opened in the same fashion. So clicking on the number 2 would have in the previous example the exactly same effect as clicking on the number 3. This greatly increases the game speed.
The holes () can
help you finish a game faster by decreasing the number of fields needed to be
opened, especially on a smaller board. They can also help you in finding out where
the mines are. On the other hand they decrease the total number of fields which
may contain mines and thus make them more likely to encounter by random opening
of fields. They can also prevent you from determining whether some field is a
mine or not, especially on a larger board.
The basic strategy is:
To decrease the time consider the following:
New (F2) - starts new game.
Options (F3) - lets you change the game options.
High Scores (F4) - shows you the best mine explorers and their times.
Exit (Alt-F4) - exits the game.
Help (F1) - displays this hypertext help file.
About (F5) - shows the about box.
The items on the toolbar correspond to the items in the menu in the order in which they appear above.
Game type - select the type of game you want to play. Width and height of the field, the number of mines and holes change accordingly. Select custom if you want to set these parameters yourself, but remember that the highscores are not saved if you play a custom game.
With holes - check this if you want to play on a field with holes. This doesn't have any effect if you selected a custom game.
The following four controls let you change the game parameters if you selected a custom game and just show you what they are otherwise.
Width - width of the playing board
Height - height of the playing board
Mines - number of mines in the playing board
Holes - number of holes in the playing board
Mine Explorer was created by Marko Kavcic - the Flying Dog Fish.
At the time of the game creation he was slowly finishing the study of Computer and Information Science at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenija.
Visit the author's homepage Flying Dog Fish's Web Exhibit for more info and some other games and fun stuff.
Email any positive or negative comments about the game to: flyingdogfish@yahoo.com.