Minesweeper was the first game I had any significant success with, but I never had the chance to write an article about it. Not long ago, a game media asked me to do an interview about Minesweeper and listed a long list of questions. Looking at these questions, many past events can't help but come to mind...
Why don't I use these questions to tell you about minesweeper and me.
The charm of Minesweeper lies in its eternal uncertainty. Because you never know how it will end until the last square is opened. It may be smooth sailing all the way, but you end up guessing the wrong thing in the end; or it may be bumpy along the way, and suddenly the situation becomes clear. The same is true in our real life. The so-called achievements and setbacks are just a short fragment in the process of life.
China Minesweeper Network should be China’s first minesweeper website, and it was probably closed before 2007. The number of players participating in the rankings above is probably less than a hundred.
China Minesweeper is just a static ranking page without any interactive functions. Players can only contact the webmaster individually through email, and the webmaster will update the results regularly. Since there are no channels for communication between players, it is impossible to form a community. Therefore, it is impossible to eliminate the loneliness inevitably caused by playing niche games, and it is also difficult to find a sense of belonging on the website.
In my opinion, the closure of China Minesweeper Network is because the operation of the website completely relies on the time and energy investment of the webmaster, and there is no mechanism designed to allow Leiyou to participate. As a webmaster, you need to spend a lot of energy on video review, data entry and sorting work, and it is difficult to gain a sense of accomplishment from doing these mechanical tasks. After the initial enthusiasm faded, the webmaster invested less and less time, the frequency of updates gradually slowed down, and the eventual closure of the site was an inevitable result.
Although I was suspected by Ruan Xiaoer, the director of the Shenzhou Minesweeper website, he did not question it further after I sent the improved version of the cheating video. Until the Shenzhou Minesweeper Gateway Station, my cheating results were recognized. The reason why I chose to disclose my cheating experience after SUB50 was mainly to relieve my burden and face my friends calmly.
At present, the main cheating methods are acceleration, UPK (playing the same map multiple times) and software scanning.
Since mainstream minesweeper software has built-in clocks (anti-variation) and video encryption verification mechanisms (anti-tampering), the threshold for counterfeiting is very high. However, "the road is as high as the devil", and there are still a small number of software developers who have the ability to bypass these two mechanisms.
Domestic and foreign minesweeper websites analyze and judge videos through manual review. The movement method of software scanning is very mechanical and easy to identify; the mouse pressing time for accelerated recording is very short, which can be analyzed through mouse behavior diagram; only UPK cannot be checked by manual means in theory, but it relies heavily on the player himself actual level.
To be honest, my original intention of establishing Minesweeper Network was to show off my achievements. As for providing a communication platform for Lei friends and building a community, those were all ideas that came later.
In mid-2006, I played Gold Digging (a minesweeper battle game) on QQ Games and joined the MS Gold Digging Group family. There are many minesweeper enthusiasts in the family, and everyone hopes to record their achievements. So birdy (Ma Jing, one of the veterans of Minesweeper.com) and I manually maintained a very ugly web page ranking, and the people who joined the ranking were all family members.
After having more than a dozen people ranking, we found that manual maintenance of the rankings was too much work and easy to make mistakes. At that time, I happened to be responsible for website development in the company and had technical skills, so I came up with the idea of ????making my own ranking website. Following the example of the International Minesweeper Network, the prototype of saolei.net was created within a few days.
Mainly my definition, of course, with reference to the opinions of Lei friends. The purpose of setting up titles is to make masters appear more distinguished and to stimulate everyone to improve their performance. At that time, there were only a handful of high-end SUB60 people, so the high-end 60 seconds divided the world between humans and gods. At that time, my idea was that God’s world would have a Hall of Fame similar to the NBA, which would be the highest honor. Later, more and more people were in the SUB60 category, so the title Thunder Saint was designed for the SUB50 players.
However, now there are many people in SUB50 and even SUB40...
Due to the language barrier, the vast majority of domestic players have no access to the international minesweeper network. Many minesweepers searched for "minesweeper" on Baidu on a whim, and then found the minesweeper website, and then they really became interested. Minesweeper.com provides them with a platform for mutual communication, allowing many minesweepers who are obsessed with minesweeping to find a sense of belonging and existence. They watched the videos uploaded by the experts from the Minesweeper Network, learned from the experiences and experiences expressed by the experts, and formed groups in the group to improve their scores together...
When I established the Minesweeper Network, one of the Chinese people in the top 100 of the International Minesweeper Network had one hand. You can count them all. Today, nearly half of the top 100 people in the international mine clearance ranking are Chinese, and I believe this number will continue to rise. Some time ago, Chinese players occupied the top 10 of the world's women's rankings, which became big news.
It was there at that time. Because the most critical equipment for mine clearance is the mouse and mouse pad, we often discuss in the group who uses what, and what the characteristics of different mice are. So I added these two items when designing my profile.
When I won first place in the country, Minesweeper did not exist yet. At that time, there was only one webpage ranking without a name, and there were about twenty or thirty people.
When setting up Minesweeper.com, I decided to use real-name registration. This was very advanced at the time, and many people chose to leave because they could not accept it, including some outstanding players. But I firmly believe that the real-name system will give players a stronger sense of belonging, bring them closer to each other, and help create a harmonious community atmosphere. In addition, it can restrain experts from opening too many trumpets to a certain extent.
Compared with other games, the interface of Minesweeper is simple to the point of being rudimentary. People who like to play minesweeper are difficult to be understood by the people around them, so they often feel lonely. With the emergence of Minesweeper, they finally "found the organization" and became loyal users one after another. So it didn’t take long for Minesweeper to complete its monopoly on users’ minds.
After all, Minesweeper is a niche game with very limited monetization capabilities. Lianzhong's online minesweeper operation went offline soon, and QQ Game's gold mining game didn't have many people playing it. In such an environment, no company or individual has the motivation to build a minesweeper website. Therefore, Minesweeper stopped updating its functions in 2008, and now it does not even have a competing product.
The international minesweeper network we are talking about now generally refers to the minesweeper ranking created by Damien. There are also many mine friends participating in the rankings on the China Mine Clearance Network. Since they are two independent websites after all, the rules and details of the two rankings and the scope of accepting videos will inevitably be different.
For the convenience of promotion and communication, the China Minesweeper Network only accepts videos generated by one of the most popular minesweeper software (formerly Clone, now Arbiter), while the International Minesweeper Network has a long history, even winmine Video recording results were recorded. Therefore, the results of the two rankings are destined to be incompatible.
In addition, the video evaluation standards adopted by China Minesweeper Network and International Minesweeper Network also differ in different periods (for example, the minimum intermediate level is 3bv, etc.), but the final standards tend to be the same. The minesweeper software Clone 0.97, which was once the most popular in China, was banned by the international network due to leakage of 3bv and other issues. However, it was the only official minesweeper software recognized by the minesweeper network at that time. It has been promoted for several years and has accumulated tens of thousands of videos. It is very popular. There is a mass base. After repeated discussions, the management team decided to overcome various difficulties and change the official software to Arbiter.
Although the International Mine Clearance Network has attracted mine friends from all over the world, most Chinese people still stay away from it due to language barriers. Despite this, Chinese Leiyou also accounts for nearly half of the seats in the TOP100, and there are many active players. Occasionally, there are international Internet experts (such as the world's number one Kamil) who are not willing to be lonely and come to our QQ group to join in the fun.
In order not to repeat the mistakes of the China Minesweeper Network, I designed the administrator role when I founded the Minesweeper Network to be responsible for daily video review, order maintenance of forums and QQ groups, and started from enthusiastic minesweepers. Open recruitment among friends. So far, the management team has maintained a size of about ten people, with regular replacements. The administrators who have resigned also continue to stay in the management group as veterans and help make decisions on some important matters.
Since I retired in 2008, I have no longer participated in the daily maintenance of the website. I only handle sporadic user uploads of avatars (I am really too lazy to develop this function) and regular administrator recruitment reviews. I will only step in to deal with major or unexpected incidents.
At the end of 2013, I wrote a prototype of a new version of Minesweeper while I was unemployed, but it was shelved soon after I started working. Since the website is in disrepair, friends with development capabilities (such as Guo Jinyang, Zhou Ke, etc.) used crawlers to capture videos and used Excel to make many interesting rankings. I would like to express my gratitude to them.
It is my personal naming, but these names have become history. Today's top players all think about the overall situation while ensuring local optimization operations. At present, the two main schools are the pure NF flow represented by Guo Weijia (only the left mouse button is used), and the comprehensive operation flow represented by Zhang Xianyao (the left and right buttons are used together).
As long as the computer configuration is not so stuck that the mouse cannot move, it has nothing to do with the performance. The mouse and mouse pad, at least before SUB60, may not have a particularly big impact on the performance. If you want to go further after SUB60, you will have certain requirements for the positioning accuracy, speed and stability of the mouse, and even the key travel and feel of the keys. Junk mice tend to drop frames when moving at high speeds. The long keystrokes are not suitable for quick combos. Long-term use of non-ergonomically designed mice can also cause hand discomfort.
Of course available. However, the goal of modifying the resolution and adjusting the mouse speed is not to increase the speed, but to improve the accuracy of the operation.
When we play shooting games, it is often difficult to aim when shooting distant targets, but after opening the scope of a sniper rifle, we can achieve high-precision shooting. The interface of the Minesweeper game seems too small on the current 1080P resolution screen. After the screen resolution is reduced, the Minesweeper interface will be displayed larger, making it easier to observe and operate the mouse positioning.
We can often move the mouse from the far left to the far right of the screen with a single wave. However, in the Minesweeper game interface, from the far left to the far right, the mouse may only need to move a small distance. arrive. If the mouse speed is not slowed down, it means that the hand has to move and fine-tune repeatedly in a small range, which makes it difficult to achieve precise positioning and operation, and it is very easy to get tired.
Of course, setting a new record depends on luck, even starting a game depends on luck. Because most situations require at least two inevitable guesses.
Most of the time recording must be completed in situations with a smaller 3BV (a parameter to evaluate the difficulty of the situation). On the contrary, most 3BV/s (a parameter that evaluates a player's operational efficiency) records must be completed in a situation with a larger 3BV.
The so-called luck is just being prepared when the opportunity comes. If you are not strong enough, even if you encounter a good situation, it will only be wasted. If the strength is in place, as long as you spend enough time playing the game, good games will always come.
Minesweeper is a very old game with no music or sound effects and extremely crude graphics. Although many people have played Minesweeper, it is only because Windows has it installed by default. People who love to play minesweeper are often just pursuing the feeling of constantly pushing their limits. Compared with gorgeous sensory stimulation, they may yearn for pure spiritual experience.
In Minesweeper, there is no step-by-step teaching like in today’s games. Instead, you are directly faced with a real dangerous world, and you need to explore and summarize the rules and gameplay of the game by yourself. Most people will choose to give up in this boring process. Those who persist in the end are those who are curious, willing to ponder, good at thinking, and patient.
The number one in the world at the time is also the current number one in the world: Kamil.
After SUB50, it becomes increasingly difficult to break records. After SUB40 in February 2008, I didn’t get any results for a month in a row, which made me very discouraged. A lot of time is invested, and most of the rewards are disappointment. I could choose to invest more time and energy in fighting, but the investment-output ratio of doing so is too low.
At that time, I had already started playing Rubik's Cube and got top ten in the 2007 Guangzhou Open. Investing time can lead to visible and significant improvements, so that continuous positive feedback is naturally far more attractive than continuous negative feedback from Minesweeper.
So I gradually turned my energy to the Rubik's Cube and gave up on minesweeping.
In 2007, I organized the first Lei Friends gathering in China in Shanghai (the base camp of the MS gold mining group). Nearly 30 Lei friends attended, including four or five who came from other places. Leiyou. A group of people waited in the Internet cafe to clear mines, attracting many curious spectators. Compared with clearing mines alone in front of the computer, it feels quite exciting to have people watching the live PK. The cheers after a successful start, the swearing when a good start was missed... the atmosphere was unprecedentedly warm.
In 2010, I participated in the recording of Jiangsu Satellite TV's "Always Ready" program and was invited to perform minesweeping live. I hadn't played for two years at that time, and it took me a week to suddenly regain my feel. In order to ensure the effect of the program, a custom mode of 80 thunders (standard 99 thunders) was adopted on site, and it was successful in the first time.
In Beijing after 2013, I also participated in two or three small-scale gatherings of Lei friends, but the focus of everyone's attention has become the current Lei Emperor Guo Weijia. Watching the energetic young people push the waves ahead in the Yangtze River, I couldn't help but feel an inexplicable feeling in my heart. Is that jealousy? Is it envy? Or joy?
I know that I have created a history worth talking about, but a person's era will always pass. The key is whether he leaves anything useful to others.
Since I switched my laptop to a MAC, I basically said goodbye to Minesweeper. The last time I played was probably at a Lei Friends gathering in Beijing, and my score was probably in the early 60s. I installed a Minesweeper APP on my phone and occasionally click on it to play.
Yes. I once analyzed the difference between "upgraded online games" and "competitive online games" in detail in the article "What should I do if my children are "addicted" to games?" To put it simply, games that do not have the concepts of "end" and "victory" are generally the former; while games that are played in rounds are generally the latter.
Playing upgrade-based online games, as long as you invest a lot of time and money, you can reach a high level, get good equipment, and steadily gain a sense of accomplishment. The whole process is as mechanical as chopping wood, and the progress of the game can be calculated completely... However, it is the virtual character in the game that ultimately gets improved, not the player himself.
Playing competitive online games is different. Investing a lot of time can increase proficiency, and investing a lot of money can improve the game experience, but it may not be possible to win and gain a stable sense of accomplishment. During the game, you are always faced with different choices, and you always have the opportunity to influence the direction of the game. What is improved in competitive games is the player's own operation and thinking abilities, and these abilities can always be transferred to other games or even other fields.
The competitive games that I have spent a lot of time playing include: CS, StarCraft and DOTA, and I have recently been playing Honor of Kings.
Since the mouse is used very frequently (N clicks per second) when clearing mines, the mouse micro switch is prone to malfunction. First, the copper contact points in the micro switch are easily oxidized, causing a single click to become a double click. It needs to be disassembled and scraped off the oxide layer with a knife. It won’t be long after that before it needs to be dealt with again. Over time, the fretting feel will become poor and must be replaced.
My original IE3.0 mouse, which had been with me for three years in the CS era, started to have double-click problems within half a year of playing Minesweeper. IE3.0 has five micro switches (left button, right button, scroll wheel button and two side buttons). I demolished the east wall to make up for the west wall. In the end, they all died heroically...
Me He is a person who refuses to admit defeat. After an explosion occurs during mine sweep, I will quickly start another round; if the results are not satisfactory after sweeping away, I will immediately start another round. I remember one day, I decided to turn on a SUB45 and go to bed, but it didn't turn on at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night. I decided to come back for half an hour, but it didn't turn on. I tried for another hour, but it still didn't turn on... In the end, I stayed up all night, and it didn't turn on. Couldn't get it out.
During the days when I was playing Minesweeper, I was already comfortable at work, and I didn’t fall in love. In my spare time, apart from developing the Minesweeper website and watching anime, I basically devoted all of my spare time to Minesweeper. I was too young at that time and had no concept of time planning. But if I hadn't invested so much time, I wouldn't have achieved anything in mine clearance.
Step by step from a minesweeper rookie to the second in the world, I understand a truth: as long as you make unremitting efforts, you can achieve the ultimate in a certain field.
The experience of mine clearance gave me strong self-confidence when entering other fields. I did not set an upper limit for myself. "Nothing is impossible, only things I dare not do" became my motto.
In addition, I have further knowledge and understanding of the two concepts of "success" and "failure".
Playing Minesweeper requires many attempts before you can succeed once. It is a pity to blow up one round, but it is not considered a failure, it is just a setback. As long as you keep practicing, improve your skills, and patiently wait for the opportunity, you will surely reach new heights. If we choose to give up because of other people's negative reviews or dissatisfaction, that is the real failure.
Setting a new record is gratifying, but it is by no means the end of success, but just a new starting point, because records are meant to be broken. "Success" is just an evaluation given by others based on their own conditions after you have achieved staged results. We should never consider ourselves "successful" at any time. This will make you complacent and lose your fighting spirit, stopping you from moving forward.
Of course, many Lei friends later became Demon friends.
I hate the word "persistence" because nothing is accomplished by "persistence". If we do something day after day, year after year, it must be because it makes us happy and makes us feel valuable and meaningful. What’s the point of “keep doing it” when it no longer makes us happy or makes us feel of little value?
Minesweeping is an important stop in the life of every minesweeper. Here we gain the excitement of adventure, the joy of growth and the recognition of our own efforts. But no one can stay at a certain station forever. One day they will have to embark on a new journey and start a new adventure. Of course, we will hide those passionate years deep in our hearts forever.
There are too many, I will only name one: Zhang Ye. This is a very enthusiastic senior mine friend. He posted the first post on Minesweeper.com. Whenever there is any problem with the website, he will notify me immediately. There was a time when he reported bugs to me every day and became a professional tester of the website. He also often made various functional suggestions and repeatedly urged me to continue developing the new version of the website. I am proud that Minesweeper has such loyal users, and at the same time I am ashamed of myself for finding various reasons to delay website development.