XMineSweeper

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• Download demo project - 144 Kb

Introduction

The XMineSweeper is a simulation for the famous 'MineSweeper' game by Microsoft which is shipped with its Windows operating system.

It is a light game that can help you spend some minutes with fun, far from coding problems.

Benefits

I know it sounds silly to make the MineSweeper which is already developed for best outputs by the software gurus at Microsoft, but it was first an assignment for joining a job in a firm (without mentioning its name, Sakhr).

But after development, it was really fun, and it made me learn some practical skills.

Features

Using the resources bitmap files from the original MineSweeper (%windir%\System32\winmine.exe) for drawing with GDI, I tried to make it look like the original by drawing 3D-like lines (by drawing white line on one side, and a gray one on the other side to make it feels like the effect of light and shadow).

The CMineSweeper Class

Here comes the main class for the game which manages the sequence of the game (this is how we learn the Game Engine from game developers). The class responds to user clicks, checks for mines, and draws the output for the 'Device Context' passed to it.

void CMineSweeper::Draw(CDC *pDC);

The draw function is essential for rendering the game to the CDC object passed to it. This design avoids the problem of flicker, by calling this function in the WM_PAINT message, and also call it when we need to update the view for the user.

Handle both right and left mouse button down

Handling the middle mouse button down is straight (ON_WM_MBUTTONUP()), but to handle both right-left mouse buttons down, you have to add a small check for the other button using the API function GetKeyState() which is used by game developers when they can't wait for the message to be sent, rather they go checking for it by themselves.