A long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth I was following an academic career. That got subverted but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Apart from graduate courses in compilers, I got to teach everything from computer architecture to assembly language programming to an introductory computing course for social science students.
When teaching assembly language (in which I was lucky enough to be able to use the M68000, a dream of a processor), one of the samples I used to illustrate a number of topics like multi-dimensional arrays, recursion and function pointers, was a Mine Sweeper game. I recently dug it out and turned in into Python just for the heck of it.
So here it is. There are no fancy graphics, the field is just printed out as a 2D array of ASCII characters. To enter a move you use coordinates using a number for the row and letter for the column. E.g. 1C is the first row, third column (rows are numbered from 1, not 0). You can plant a flag (or clear it) by preceding your move with a ‘-’.
At some point I might look at using PyQt or something to turn it into a mouse-driven more attractive looking game. But the interesting stuff is the recursive traversal of the board.
#!python
import random
DIMENSION = 8
MINES = 4
EXPOSED = 0x10
FLAG = 0x20
MINE = 0x40
exposed = 0
def traverse(field, r, c, fn):
for row in [r-1, r, r+1]:
if 0 <= row < DIMENSION:
for col in [c-1, c, c+1]:
if 0 <= col < DIMENSION and (row != r or col != c) and
not field[row][col] & EXPOSED:
fn(field, r, c, row, col)
def check_neighbor(field, r, c, row, col):
field[r][c] += 1 if field[row][col] & MINE else 0
def init_field():
field = [[0] * DIMENSION for i in range(0, DIMENSION)]
# Place mines.
m = MINES
while m:
r = random.randrange(DIMENSION)
c = random.randrange(DIMENSION)
if field[r][c] != MINE:
m -= 1
field[r][c] = MINE
# Compute neighbor scores
for r in range(0, DIMENSION):
for c in range(0, DIMENSION):
if field[r][c] != MINE:
traverse(field, r, c, check_neighbor)
return field
def recursive_expose(field, r, c, row, col):
global exposed
cell = field[row][col]
if cell < 0x10: # Not a mine, flag or exposed
exposed += 1
field[row][col] |= EXPOSED
if cell == 0:
traverse(field, row, col, recursive_expose);
def expose(field, r, c):
recursive_expose(field, 0, 0, r, c)
return field[r][c] & MINE
def print_field(field):
print(' ' + ''.join([chr(65 + i) for i in range(0, DIMENSION)]))
for r in range(0, DIMENSION):
cells = []
for c in range(0, DIMENSION):
if field[r][c] & FLAG:
cells.append('F') # no newline
elif field[r][c] & EXPOSED:
cells.append('*' if field[r][c] & MINE else chr(ord('0') + (field[r][c] & 0xf)))
else:
cells.append('#')
print('%02d ' % (r + 1) + ''.join(cells))
field = init_field()
result = "CLEAR"
while exposed < (DIMENSION * DIMENSION - MINES):
print_field(field)
move = raw_input("Move?")
r = int(move[:-1])
c = ord(move[-1]) - 65
if r < 0:
field[-r - 1][c] ^= FLAG
elif expose(field, r - 1, c):
result = "BOOM!"
break
print_field(field)
print(result)