Chapter Thirty-One: Kamak's Minesweeper

  He had just returned home, having not closed his eyes for thirty hours, and Jester, who had been sleeping fitfully, was about to lie down on the bed and take a good nap when his mother told him that the company had just received a letter addressed to him.

  When Jester asked where the letter was sent from, his drowsiness also disappeared almost instantly.

  The letter is from Kansas and the sender's name is John Carmack.

  Jester recalled the little boy he had inadvertently met in Los Angeles some time ago, and knew that he was the super genius John Carmack who had set up the task unintentionally.

  Let him design a very famous PC mini-game in history - Minesweeper.

  Then Jester suddenly woke up and didn't want to sleep anymore. He didn't let someone send the letter home, but drove to the company himself.

  When he received the letter sent by Kamak, he was a little surprised. Inside, it wasn't just a thin page and a floppy disk as he had thought, but rather a thick stack.

  Jester curiously tore open the envelope and pulled out the manuscript paper, which was dozens of pages thick and filled with line after line of code.

  Although Carmack's handwriting was not very good-looking, the code was written extremely neatly, with the entire code divided into three parts, carefully separated by staples. One part was for Apple, one part was for IBM/PC and their compatible machines, and the last part was for Commodore 64, which were currently the most popular personal computers.

  It wasn't until then that Jester realized John Carmack wouldn't actually submit code to a magazine, but instead sent it directly to him.

  This made him laugh and cry at the same time.

  Jester hurried back to the office, eager to see what John Carmack had come up with.

  Arriving at his own room, he opened his computer and used a drawing software to simply draw out the few pixel images needed for Minesweeper. Only then did Jester carefully flip through the program code written by Carmack about the 'Minesweeper' he had introduced before.

  From head to toe, Jester repeatedly flipped through it, nodding constantly as he read, with a look of surprise flashing in his eyes from time to time. After finishing reading, Jester couldn't help but sigh, Karmak was indeed much stronger than himself in programming.

  Jester has also gained some insight during this period. Originally, the owner of his own body was a pretty good programmer, but now he finds that even if he doesn't compare himself to legendary programmers like Karmark, he is still far inferior to those who specialize in programming and have just been recruited by the company.

  In fact, Jest had also considered how to write this simple little game before, but the program code he initially designed was much more complicated than Carmack's.

  To achieve the same goal of a program, looking at the complexity of the code can distinguish between a good and bad programmer.

  A good programmer completes a logic, his language is concise and clear.

  Kamark's code is simple, clear and extremely logical, with almost no redundant parts, it's simply a classic like a textbook.

  At the end of this " Minesweeper" program code, there is also a brief introduction written by Carmack, with a language that has a very Carmack-like arrogant and self-satisfied tone.

  "My future boss, Mr. Jest Lee, the first task you gave me is done. To be honest, this job was too simple and I didn't even break a sweat. I didn't even have the interest to use a computer to program it, but despite doing only paper programming, I think the code I wrote must be the most concise, efficient, and bug-free."

  And so bbb went on and on, praising himself profusely, until at the very end of the letter, Kamak wrote in large font: "Oh yeah, don't forget you promised me an Apple computer!"

  After finishing reading, Jester couldn't help but burst out laughing.

  He really didn't think that a genius programmer like Carmack would be interested in something as stupid as an Apple computer, aren't all the programmers nowadays looking down on Apple computers?

  Actually, Carmack felt strange when he watched "Doom Apocrypha", because these geniuses like Romero all started from Apple and later turned to PC programming research, but that was after Apple declined due to its closed system.

  He was working on Minesweeper, programming it on the Macintosh computer in his office based on the code Karmarkar had sent him. It was a simple matter of copying Karmarkar's code, and the only thing that required him to actually do something he hadn't done before were a few simple pixel icons.

  As for why Jobs would use a computer that only fools use, it's actually a very simple question. How do you get someone who is used to operating in the future to use DOS every day? There's no way to directly use Macintosh's mouse clicks.

  Although it's still far behind Win95 ten years later, let's bear with it for now.

  After finishing the "Minesweeper" program, Jester opened the game on his computer and started playing. To be honest, the playability of this game is still very high, and the rules are simple. However, Jester is not very good at it, and he can only play at a difficulty level of 40 mines. Even so, he often makes mistakes. At the highest level, he doesn't even dare to think about it, as it's too time-consuming and brain-draining.

  But the appeal of this type of puzzle game lies in the sense of intellectual accomplishment one feels after completing it, even if it's just the lowest level.

  Jester was very fond of playing Minesweeper and sometimes when he was bored, he could play all night without doing anything else.

  Although I've played Minesweeper countless times before, this is the first time Jie has played a version he created himself. It's very similar to later versions; in fact, when I first described it to Carmack, I was describing this version, which is the one I'm most familiar with.

  There is a timing system, difficulty selection, customization, smiley and crying faces, as well as a hero leaderboard.

  Just as Jester was having a blast playing Minesweeper, he had forgotten that he hadn't slept in nearly forty hours and didn't even notice the knock at the door until Maxine walked in.

  He saw Jester frowning in front of the computer, deep in thought, as if doing something.

  He walked up with some curiosity and took a look at Jester's screen, which was a rectangle divided into many small grids. The grids were very small and had different colors marked with Arabic numerals such as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Jester kept clicking on these grids, occasionally tapping the keyboard, and a small flag would appear in the grid.

  Just as Mark Senn was wondering what the other side was doing, Jester finally inserted a small flag into one of the grids after deep thought, and then controlled the mouse to point to the remaining empty grids. After he pointed several times, suddenly a grid opened and a black dot appeared, seemingly a mine or something, and then the word "game over" appeared on the screen.

  Jester also showed a look of annoyance at the moment when that black thing that seemed to be a landmine appeared, and he cursed loudly in his mouth. At the same time, one of his palms heavily slapped on the table.

  "What is this?" Mark Senni's face was filled with curiosity.

  At this time, Jest discovered that someone had come to his side. The recent game failure also made Jest's sleepiness, which had not been slept for a long time, surge up. He was somewhat listless and yawned, explaining to Mark Sennett: "I just let people design a small game on the computer with a mouse, called 'Sweeping Mine', which is randomly distributed in some fixed matrices. Some mines are then found by the player."

  Then, Jester thought of Mark Sennet's careful explanation of the rules of Minesweeper, such as how the game has three levels of difficulty: ten mines, forty mines, and one hundred mines. The numbers represent 'the number of mines in the surrounding squares', then clicking twice with the mouse opens the square, and after selecting it by clicking once, pressing Enter again plants a red flag indicating that this is a mine.

  The current mouse does not have a two-key setting, only a single key, and there is no external shape based on the palm grip of later generations, just an ugly and stupid long rectangular box, so Jester had no choice but to temporarily use the Enter key to replace one of the keys on the original mouse to play this game.

  Mark Senna's eyes lit up after hearing this, he thought carefully about it in his mind and suddenly found that it was actually very interesting and tested a person's logical thinking ability.

  Just as he was about to ask Jester how he had thought of it, he saw that Jester was already yawning and heading towards the rest room on one side of his bedroom.

  This break room was also specially isolated by Jester, he knew that overtime until late at night was a common occurrence for game development, so he specially set up a break room to sleep directly in the office when it was too late.

  "You go ahead and play for now, don't wake me up unless it's something big, I really can't hold on anymore." As the wooden door of the rest room closed, Jester's voice also came out from inside, followed by the sound of his snores just a few seconds later.

  Mark Senyei could only shake his head in dismay, then sat down in Jester's seat and curiously started playing the game called "Minesweeper".

  Then...

  Jester yawned and struggled to get out of bed, the room was pitch black, he carefully moved to the wall and turned on the light, Jester looked down at his watch on his wrist, 3:20.

  "How long have I slept?" Jester was startled himself, he remembered that it wasn't even noon when he fell asleep.

  A faint sound came from outside the house.

  Jester, startled by the sound, shuddered and wondered if he was being robbed. As he thought about it, Jester quietly walked towards the door and quietly opened a crack in the door.

  The big lamp in his office was turned off, but the desk lamp was on, and the screen of that Macintosh computer was also shining brightly. In the dim light, Jester could see clearly that a blond-haired man was sitting in front of the computer, staring at the screen without blinking.

  Jester took a closer look and found that the blond man was Mark Senny.

  It wasn't until now that Jester remembered that Mark Sennett had come to find him before he went to sleep, and because he was too tired to do anything else, he handed over the freshly completed Minesweeper for him to play with.

  "He can't be serious about this, can he?"

  Jester has no doubt about the charm of Minesweeper, which has been popular all over the world since it was created by two Microsoft engineers in 1992. Who knows how many people have racked their brains for this little puzzle game? The simple rules seem to hide countless secrets.

  Even in the era of endless entertainment products before him, Minesweeper was never out of date. I don't know how many people opened the Minesweeper that came with the Windows system when they were bored and played it until they forgot to eat and drink, refusing to give up until all the mines were found.

  This is different from the kind of pleasure brought by brainless car gun ball games, which is a kind of accomplishment that cannot be expressed in words and never goes out of style.

  Jester walked up beside Mark Sennett just as he finished a game of the hardest level, 100 mines.

  He also saw Jester, and with genuine admiration, he looked at Jester, stretched out a big thumb, and sincerely said: "You're simply a genius, such a simple but fun game, how did you come up with it?"

  Jester smiled and didn't answer, just saying: "This game isn't bad, right?"

  "It's not just good! It's absolutely perfect, I couldn't stop playing from the start, I started playing as soon as I woke up and haven't stopped until now." Mark Senny seemed to be still in a state of excitement even after playing for a whole day.

  As they spoke, he started a new game again, still with the highest difficulty of 100 mines.

  It has to be said that Mark Sennett learned it quite quickly, and the rules of Minesweeper are also very simple and easy to understand. Jester watched as his opponent continued to search for mines in the rectangular array, while Mark's speed at sweeping mines was already much faster than his own after playing for over a decade...

  Jester asked curiously: "Mark, how fast can you play this highest difficulty level?"

  Mark Sen said "wait a minute", opened the program's built-in Minesweeper leaderboard, looked at the records on it and said: "Three minutes zero six seconds."

  Jester sighed and said that it was already rare for a beginner to be so fast, especially when there was no minesweeper formula and everything had to be inferred by oneself.

  By reasoning alone, such speed is rarely seen. Of course, Jester knew that the world record holder for Minesweeper was Polish Kamil Murański, who in 2012 received Guinness World Record certification for all ten records in Minesweeper, among which his highest difficulty of 99 mines took just over thirty seconds, while medium difficulty forty mines took only eight seconds.

  However, Jiest initially didn't memorize the formula either, and he couldn't possibly have this speed, not even close to Mark Seni. He thinks that if you remember the formula and then play, it's no longer fun, it just becomes a competition of speed and hand speed.

  Playing games is for fun, and this point is the most important thing for Jester, whether in his past life or this life.

  If you're not happy, what's the point of going out and having fun?

  Isn't this putting the cart before the horse?

  As Mark Senyi was about to finish this round, Jester said: "You go to that rest room and sleep for a while, I'll discuss the promotion of this game with you tomorrow morning. In my opinion, Minesweeper is most suitable for running on computers. In fact, it's a game designed specifically for mice."

  Mark Senny nodded in agreement after hearing that, and since Jester had said so, he also felt a bit tired, so he called out and walked towards the rest room where Jester was.

  As Mark Sennett closed the door of the rest room, Jester also sat down and was thinking about how to promote "Sweepers".

  It's possible to sell it directly as a floppy disk, but the sales of PC games have always been low in this era. It's also hard to promote it to the fullest extent. The best way is to learn from Microsoft back then and bundle the game with the computer system for comprehensive promotion.

  The problem is, I don't use computers myself.

  Jester thought, going to IBM is definitely not an option. Now that IBM is a large and prosperous company, its PC business is also booming. Even if they took a liking to his game, they would only offer a condescending price.

  And Apple...

  Jester shook his head again, this was purely personal reasons, he didn't like Apple, in his previous life he was sprayed by those high-end fruit powder, so he had an instinctive dislike for the company. Since they were reborn, naturally they would do whatever made them happy, who would be reborn and still make themselves uncomfortable? But it can't be denied that now, in the field of personal computers, Apple is indeed unparalleled.

  Jobs is awesome, but so what? There are many awesome people in the world, but Jester's hatred for Apple's arrogance won't change.

  All that's left are IBM compatibles, and Jester knows that in the future personal computer war, the ultimate winner won't be the current financially powerful and ambitious blue giant IBM, nor will it be Apple, which is currently booming and seems to be rising rapidly. Instead, it will be those small manufacturers who are not yet favored by everyone and can only make a living by assembling compatible IBM PC machines.

  For example, Dell is now just a garage enterprise.

  It was these people who, when IBM showed its greedy claws to swallow the entire market, united as one and formed a compatible machine alliance. Not only did they beat the blue giant IBM to the point where it could no longer take care of itself, but also knocked Apple, which refused to open up its closed environment, into the abyss. If Steve Jobs hadn't come back again, Apple would have probably become just a historical symbol, only seen in encyclopedias.

  Jester knew this history, he thought he should seize it, although the future PC market profit is low, because the prices of accessories are transparent, these scoundrels can no longer fleece people, but now it's not like that, now the PC market is just stupid money coming fast.

  It's an era where whoever dares to vastly underestimate American IQ will make a fortune.

  For example, when Dell talked about his entrepreneurial experience, he said bluntly that at the time, he rented a room on the top floor of a building and posted small ads. He only needed to install a hard drive for each person who came here, and he could get $100. Making money was as easy as picking it up. In less than a month, his sales exceeded $500,000, with a net profit of over $200,000, all relying on himself alone.

  So Michael Dell found that even if he graduated from college and got a real job, he wouldn't make as much money as he was making now.

  So he dropped out of school without hesitation.

  He recalled that Dell's sales exceeded $70 million in 1986, and he was named the "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the United States Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs.

  Thinking of Michael Dell struggling in his garage in Texas now, he wouldn't refuse his own investment, would he?

  Of course, he wouldn't refuse, after all, the first thing Dell did after becoming famous was financing.

  Jester thought so.

  Then Jester started to worry again, he had thought of acquiring Mirage Studios to get the rights to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" before, but now he didn't have time to do it, and now he had the idea of investing in Dell, but he was really busy, should he set up a venture capital fund to do this?

  Moreover, he has countless things he wants to do in his mind, but after all, one person's energy is limited and cannot be implemented one by one.

  It seems that this investment fund has to be done now.

  Jester jotted down the idea on a piece of paper on his desk, he had been so busy lately that he often inadvertently forgot many important things.

  When he was wiping the paper, he also saw the design of the level map of the first level of "Super Mario" that he had not finished that day. On it, in addition to floating bricks of different types, various mushrooms and monsters, and various explanations, there was also Mario's big nose, wearing a red hat, wearing red and blue suspenders, with a distinctive mustache logo.

  Jester suddenly discovered a problem that he had never noticed before, which was that what he drew on the blueprint was actually Mario!

  But the problem is that this image was already set by Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo in '81 and has been used in three games, two Donkey Kongs, and even a Mario game, which sold 1.6 million copies in Japan.

  At this point, Jester angrily crumpled up the originally well-drawn setting diagram and threw it into the trash can, silently cursing himself as a stupid cunt.

  Jester wanted to redesign a character, but his mind was filled with Mario's image, and Shigeru Miyamoto's original idea for designing this character kept flashing back in his mind - an appearance that stood out like a landmark, and colors that made it easy to express movements. The problem was that Mario's image was too deeply ingrained in his mind, no matter how he thought, only Mario's image fit Miyamoto's setting.

  So, Miyamoto's original design was scrapped and Joust wanted to create a character that was both friendly-looking and easily distinguishable. However, after drawing several drafts, including some classic game and comic book characters, such as handsome, cute, and menacing ones, none of them fit the era's characteristics better than Mario's original image.

  Perhaps it's because Mario's image is too timely, after all, from his own childhood, this image has accompanied him for a full twenty years, which is an absolutely unforgettable memory.

  Jester could only think like this.

  Although Jester knows that Mario was able to succeed because of the gameplay of this game, it laid the foundation for what a great game should do and guided countless designers who were still in confusion, and also made countless children have the idea of "I spent more than $50 to bring a Super Nintendo back home! It's awesome!", rather than how classic this character is. The classic of this character is built on the success of this game.

  But in Jester's eyes, Super Mario is a game that can never be forgotten in the history of games. It is a perfect and flawless work, every aspect of which is perfect and flawless. Since he wants to make this game, he absolutely cannot allow himself to do worse than the original version. As a person who loves electronic games and wants to revive the industry, he will not allow himself to desecrate this truly divine work in any sense.

  One must go beyond it!

  Jester took a deep breath and could only helplessly throw away the almost used-up painting brush in his hand, gazing through the window at the distant sky that had already started to turn white, with the golden sun slowly rising: "Let's wait for now and find professional painters who haven't been influenced by Mario's image."