Hacking Minesweeper to be IMPOSSIBLE

fun fact: now that i know how to play minesweeper, i really like it
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▶MUSIC USED
xyce - sea side blues (xyce.bandcamp....)
Kalachnikov - Mental delivrance
Graff - rain eater
bergsm„taren lever
BRD RinjaniSoft Products Universal
CORE - mr spock's cryo-bed
4-Mat - eternity
Maktone - class cracktro#15
BRD Keygen #4
xyce - jetstream (xyce.bandcamp....)

[@YoshiToMario]

I thank you, my friend, for making a version WE CAN ALL PLAY! You made me feel so much better about myself ;D

[@YoshiToMario]

I mean less 'play' more 'insta-lose'... but still, at least it's an even playing field! 😂

[@kkmac7247]

@@YoshiToMario lmao

[@GyroDragonaPlays]

I love the background on your PC desktop. Is there a place one could get that?

[@YoshiToMario]

@@GyroDragonaPlays Haha love to hear it! Yeah it's just one of the available options on 'Wallpaper Engine' on Steam :) If you've got it, search for 'Yoshi's Island' and you should definitely be able to find it!

[@NotJohnTanner]

@@YoshiToMario haha

[@Weckacore]

If I'm not mistaken, you've actually made the easiest second try minesweeper game. Game 1: lose and see it is all mines. Game 2: Flag every tile and win.

[@fugatehenry10]

You probably have limited flage but I don't remember. The question mark things are probably limited.

[@TinyDeskEngineer]

I thought you win minesweeper by revealing all of the empty tiles and the flags are just tools to help you remember which ones you know are mines

[@Weckacore]

@@TinyDeskEngineer I wonder if it checks the win state after you click, if it was just clicking every empty tile you'd win immediately.

[@weberman173]

@@TinyDeskEngineer you win by either revealing all empty tiles, or by having flagged every mine

[@sinom]

@@weberman173 no. Flagging every mine does not win the game, since then with only a few tiles left you could just start flagging randomly.

[@ShankMods]

Would love to see a modified version where the number of mines is unchanged, but your first click is always a mine. So it shifts/generates the map when you first click a tile to ensure you always fail on turn 1, the opposite of what it does now.

[@aonodensetsu]

that would actually be better as april fools since you could just say you removed the safety check and 'your luck's just really bad'

[@Brandon-ct8vo]

I recall playing that on some web browser parody site

[@simplybloxxed]

Aaand time to learn hex code I’ll trade you April fools minesweeper for a g boy Jkjk *unless?* Okay leave

[@nivekakninblarg8076]

The game was rigged from the start.

[@virtualpianosheets7143]

heheheh that would have been a funnier April fools joke. Someone should do that and just see how long people play it before quitting in frustration

[@ripmeep]

"we end up in this kind of limbo state where all the tiles are both mines and not mines" My man has created Quantum Minesweeper Processing

[@Jay-S04]

Schrodinger’s Mines?

[@ripmeep]

@@Jay-S04 😳😳😳

[@marcobonera838]

*pannenkoek music starts playing*

[@KarlaO711]

Whoa whoa this brings Schrödingers cat to a whole new level xD

[@joshscores3360]

Quantum Processing by Riot

[@goast_cuard]

Now all we need is minesweeper where every tile is safe, except the one you click on. Then then nobody will be safe

[@styno9295]

(don't give him any ideas)

[@General12th]

@@styno9295 (he's full of ideas and there's nothing you can do about it)

[@blokos_]

what about flags

[@antondellenback9778]

exactly, totally aggre

[@mrkoskos1]

An actually good Aprils Fools video, what a treat. Not just talking nonsense for some minutes.

[@mr_willybilly]

Indeed.

[@curtisplays21]

Indeed.

[@DiabloXL69]

Indeed

[@DiabloXL69]

Indeed

[@DiabloXL69]

Indeed

[@OriginalPatrickWilliams]

I would have liked to see if there was a way to hack it so ONLY the space you click on is a mine, every time you start a game.

[@MattKC]

Wow I want to see that too now lol

[@nogoat]

Do you realise you just gave Matt a new idea for a video?

[@maggiethegamer1271]

@@MattKC Windows 93 has something like that.

[@zimboiii9025]

That's what I say expecting to see here actually; would be more suitable for an April fools joke as the average player wouldn't know it's a prank hahaha

[@ProgrammeerMeneer]

great idea now he must make it

[@Protofall]

I made a Minesweeper clone for the Dreamcast a few years ago with the goal of making it as faithful as possible to the Windows 2000/XP versions. I also realised a simple formula for the mines cap, I think it was a certain percentage of the board must be non-mines or something. However, there was one thing that I couldn't recreate faithfully because I didn't analyse the code, that is the initial mine placement. I actually went with the first method you said where I go over each tile left to right, top to bottom. I thought about the "Pick a random tile" option, but it just seemed bad, after all for a big board with lots of mines, wouldn't it fail a lot of placements? Its kind of funny to see that's exactly what they did. It was really cool to see some of the internals of the original game, nice video :)

[@_._shinonome_._]

I think it was height-1 × width-1. Like 9 by 9 is 81 but there is 64 mi es because 9-1 is 8 and 8×8 is 64

[@Protofall]

@@_._shinonome_._ Yeah sounds about right, its been ages since I did this so I can't really remember anymore

[@jetison333]

isn't going tile by tile like very bad? what if you reach the amount of mines your aiming for early? just have a no mines at the bottom? what if you don't reach enough mines? go back and do the other algorithm anyway?

[@Protofall]

​@@jetison333 I had a varying probability. Its "num mines left / num spaces left" so as I iterate over the grid, "num spaces left" always decreases by 1 and "num mines left" will only decrease by 1 if we happen to place a mine on that tile. So if it keeps failing to place mines, eventually the probability would near "1" and so its more likely to place a mine there. Same thing if it keeps placing them, it will near zero so it becomes less likely and eventually impossible. The fields looks very random so I was happy with this approach. I never got any cases where there were too few or too many mines, nor all the mines bunched together.

[@jetison333]

@@Protofall ah I see. I suppose that makes sense. I'm going to have to have a think about that as opposed to the other method as they might actually be equally random. Thanks for the answer :)

[@HughJeffreys]

Amazing! Thanks for sharing it too!

[@nadiajafar100]

How does this have 2 likes?

[@rxgtv]

now 5! sup hugh?

[@voidyt9939]

Hello, Hugh!

[@trucksarenoisy]

How did you get here lol

[@Sapleee]

Hugh! You’re here!

[@MarcusFigueras]

It would've been funny to make a version that specifically makes it so your first click is always a mine but the whole board still generates

[@catsarethebest36]

There is a funny parody project on Scratch which does exactly that Sadly I think that project got taken down

[@quintiax]

4:30 Schrödingers Mines

[@SanjaSleipnir]

Schrödingers Tiles 😼

[@jungletreepolandballanimat3593]

4:35 Schrödinger's tiles

[@cameodamaneo]

"No infinite loop, not even any noticeable slow down. Just..." *ad starts to play* NEW POWERFUL NERF ACTION!

[@rtlego1371]

Nothing better than waking up to a matkc vid

[@sinus4784]

yup

[@blackbird1665]

In germany it’s 4:30 pm now lol

[@sinus4784]

@@blackbird1665danish here 4pm as well my sleep schedule is just fucked

[@rtlego1371]

@@blackbird1665 Costa Rica pog

[@General12th]

Nothing better than waking up.

[@mattfeeder18]

The maximum number of mines in a 'normal' Minesweeper appears to be (h-1)*(w-1), where h and w are the height and width of the board size, respectively. (Haven't proven this, but seems to be the case from the examples you showed; Expert mode is 16*30, and 15*29=435.)

[@MattKC]

Ahh I think you're right, I just tried a 30*24 playfield (the largest possible) and the mine count was 667 (29*23). I was wondering if it was some kind of percentage or fraction but I couldn't get anything consistent; your formula seems to be correct.

[@johndododoe1411]

@@MattKC Could it be patched to h*w-1, thus making the game an instant win. P.S. Has anyone tried restoring the original hard core version that wasn't in any windows release?

[@QuantumScratcher]

Which is why it's limited to 64 in beginner mode because 8^2=64

[@MattRoszak]

Woop, Ruffle got a shout-out! Super cool! Glad to see this cool tech is catching on. (I'm still making Flash games as a full time job in 2021!)

[@arciks11]

@Sharma Vivek It still is quite a few ways away from full compatibility but it's a start nevertheless.

[@financialchimes4546]

For an April Fools' version, it would have been funny if only the first tile you clicked was a mine.

[@ignazachenbach5406]

4:20 Schrödinger's Minefield

[@sill]

A day MattKC uploads is a happy day.

[@user-vy5hc9ud6l]

Yes

[@Audiojack_]

Dave from Dave's Garage (the ex-Microsoft programmer) just shouted you out on his video, where he made a QR code application in Assembly. Collaboration time?

[@DeviousMalcontent2]

Yeah I support this :D

[@El_Xattibi]

I'd like to play a version where all the tiles except one are mines, appropriately called "Russian Sweeper".

[@chrisdermentz]

That's fucking genius

[@UltimaDoombotMK1]

If you hit the mines your computer actually explodes

[@ewanb1086]

Most of the time when playing minesweeper that’s how it feels

[@shayyoung2177]

Might be neat to recode it to always force a bomb to be on the opening move. Having a full grid of bombs shows the player that they had no moves to begin with. Where as spawning bombs could lead them on to think they're just really unlucky. 😅

[@firearmnightcore3054]

4:31 so it was schrodinger's mine?

[@RealCatWeekly]

Exactly what I thought

[@aleksanderwolski3187]

I would make it so there is only 1 mine, but whenever you press you hit this mine.

[@thebigbirb]

LMAO you have no idea how funny it is when i got an ad right at 8:25 after he clicked🤣

[@phillipmcmahon5949]

the moving mario background, how does one get hold of that?

[@odeldodelhorst7549]

with "wallpaper engine". Its a few Euro on Steam and let you let .gif and videos as "Dynamic" backgrounds. One of the best pruchaset ive ever made

[@tarsverschelde]

Perhaps it is also possible with rainmeter (free and open source desktop customization tool).

[@odeldodelhorst7549]

@@tarsverschelde maybe. Ive never heard of this tool.

[@ananttiwari1337]

@Sharma Vivek Lively is great

[@phillipmcmahon5949]

@@odeldodelhorst7549 thanks a lot. I have that already, will search for that background.

[@ButtKraken01]

Love the explanation of how you figure out what assembly language is doing!

[@johndododoe1411]

Well it's a skill some of us have had for years. I remember doing that to CP/M 2.2 back in the day, learning cool hidden file management features for the CP/M file system that inspired so many successors.

[@sparce206]

This was really interesting!! Thank you for the download! :)

[@Pokeman_official1]

1 day ago?

[@samuel-wankenobi]

@@Pokeman_official1 member gets it early

[@adamking2580]

Imagine another version of unwinable minesweeper that always move a mine to the first tile you click.

[@ex-fiend5062]

You know, since there's a function in the game that moves mines away from the first time you click a tile, it would be possible to reverse it, wouldn't it? To move away clear spaces and move a mine where you first click. That way, there could only be one mine and you would hit it every single game first click no matter what, would make for a funnier prank than every tile being a mine.

[@DualDesertEagle]

I think the smarter move would've been to make it so that the first-click-is-safe thing was reversed to the-first-click-kills-u-everytime but with the number of mines still being whatever the user entered or the limit for each window size. That way people would at first think that they were just incredibly unfortunate to have clicked on a mine with their first click and then the realization would slowly set in that they would *_ALWAYS_* end up clicking on mines on the first click no matter how many times they tried. Just filling the whole playing field with mines makes it obvious immediatly that the game was tampered with.

[@b-1battledroid674]

5:18 Truth is, the game was rigged from the start

[@nixel1324]

My favorite cereal: "Oops! All mines!"

[@ArtdesTests]

I miss the "Subscribe to MattKC" outro. Don't mind me

[@thatithat3071]

It'd be a lot funnier if instead of turning every tile into mines, instead turning whatever tile was clicked into a mine.

[@jmx641]

I have memories on it and clicking the boxes .

[@MisterVercetti]

"We end up in this kind of limbo state where all the tiles are both mines and not mines." So basically, just by screwing around, you inadvertently created Schrodinger's Minesweeper. Lovely.

[@Emulation_Inflation]

Idk why but I watch all of your videos at least 3 times. I find them relaxing in the mornings 🌄.

[@Micha-Hil]

3:31 bubble wrap

[@scorch527]

This is what KZbin is supposed to be for, a completely pointless and silly idea turned into an entertaining video. Well done as always!

[@Orincaby]

4:32 Schrodinger's mines

[@Max-qe7ko]

I was about to write this comment 🤣

[@awogbob]

I always think your video concept will be so boring but your explanation and innocent curiosity is so engaging. Hacking assembly code is just the beginning. Excited for what's next!

[@onizuka2345]

"Educated guesses and luck" IS Minesweeper

[@und4287]

Another excellent episode of "MattKC messes with old games"

[@WhirlwindQuest]

You know its a great day when mattkc uploads

[@Simmlex]

8:05 I watched this like five times already and I can't stop laughing XD

[@velu.9864]

8:17 WAIT WHATS HIS WALLPAPER I WANT IT HELP PLS

[@StayStill23]

Wallpaper name: yoshi's island

[@eno88]

Gonna try this out fast, while it's still April 1st

[@chrisakaschulbus4903]

I love april fools videos that actually have some intelligent content instead of just some bait or trolling. Thank you very much! ^^

[@alpha.wintermute]

I'm not a real programmer (tm) but this is an interesting window into reverse engineering/rom hacking. Starting from first principles and reading assembly, then climbing your way through to find context based on available resources/tools until you recognize what the program itself is doing

[@Vedant9710]

Ah yes, Minesweeper - The Definitive Edition!

[@Supersayainpikmin]

Oh god, I haven't thought about YoshiToMario in years, I used to dig his Let's Plays for a short while beck in 2012! Great video, btw! Maybe next year you can find a way for their to only be one mine on the board but it's always the first click...: D

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

You should port this to the Wii and utilize motion controls somehow. Maybe something like try to keep the Wiimote steady or the game ends.

[@TheSleepyCraftsman]

You created Schrodinger's mine.

[@segsfault]

How many mines do you want? Matt: Yes

[@StdntOfTheWrld]

It's Schrodinger's Minesweeper!

[@starykana5966]

Old mattkc: video's every two weeks New mattkc: f*** IT video's every month

[@durmiss]

LMAOOO AT 3:32 WHEN HE SAID "just" I GET AN AND LMAO

[@Mojojojo9001]

This just gave me a great idea... can you make it so the first space you click is always a mine, but every other space isn't a mine?

[@RayPerigo]

Lovely. This takes me back to goofing around in my highschool programming class. Not as hardcore as reverse engineering x86 assembly, but I did mess with the teacher as often as I could. My piece de resistance was removing the window decoration and adding a "Close" button on a project that was positioned semi-randomly compared to the mouse cursor after the main program completed. 16 year old me was proud.

[@VaderTater]

I love your wallpaper

[@carlmusic]

Didn’t expect to stumble upon Schrödingers Mine lmao

[@minivolt4520]

fun fact: windows vista/7 games have built in cheats, you can enable them with resource hacker or with the windows games tweaker by door2windows

[@nothing-mm8ui]

minesweeper but there is one NUKE in any random square

[@ddvx_kris]

this guy could work for a cool assembly programmer but he hacking minesweeper and show it for us. respect

[@nopupils261]

What has to happen to a person to become so evil?

[@LitteralBeans]

I love mine sweeper. It's such a fun and easy game.

[@connorconnor1631]

7:20 nop

[@Bry10022]

Windows 93 (when it still worked, but does not work correctly) had a minesweeper mode that the first click was ALWAYS a mine (but not the impossible mode) called "Troll mode"…

[@jenbooob]

Id be interested in seeing a more subtly impossible version, something like it forcibly shifts a mine to be under the spot you click after a certain point

[@coyraig8332]

One time at summer camp I did minesweeper and was so pumped that my not-fast self could help in a relay race. I was not only disappointed that it was on easy, but I was surprised that people were surprised I finished it in under a minute

[@ponali.mememaker]

that gag you described also happened in windows 93, it just didn't look like there were mines everywhere, but you were always losing. it was called "troll mode"

[@boxman139]

Me when I opened minesweeper for the first time: "The numbers, Mason what do they mean?????"

[@link1565V2]

When I was young and had no idea how to play, I used to just press the buttons. But one day I managed to get the sunglasses smiley and had no idea what I'd done.

[@Omlet221]

It would be even more evil if you had a normal amount of mines but just replaced the first place the person clicked with a mine so it seems like they are just getting super unlucky every time

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

"we end up in this kind of limbo state where all the tiles are both mines and not mines" So.... Quantum Minesweeper?

[@Terminarch]

Huh. It's kinda weird how well I was able to follow along with this after playing TIS-100. The registers and math are legit!

[@broder3294]

i still wonder who made the chiptune music or is there any link for it... oh well it's nice having a MattKC video for april fools tho

[@Asdayasman]

It isn't him, but look up _ensnare_.

[@chachachaudhary391]

This is a certified minesweeper moment

[@DurradonXylles]

This is a great troll, Matt, but I think what would make it better is if you could hack Minesweeper so that it appears that all of the standard rules and mine limits are in play, but the game generates all but the last mine on the playfield and whatever space the player clicks on is _always_ a mine (basically turning the mechanisms Microsoft put into place with the game on its head). This way it makes it appear that the player is having the worst run of luck ever playing Minesweeper.

[@AsekiBekovy]

this

[@michaellundgren6949]

It should have a tag line "Oops, all mines!"

[@hisho2255]

I need that yoshi island desktop screen.

[@TheLoveMario]

Winmine? More like Losemine

[@pyrojack8230]

God dude I never knew how to play it until I taught myself through sheer bored energy so I could play with all my friends at work

[@TheGuy45]

I think this could've been better if it generated a mine blob where you clicked so you would spend a while clicking around until you realized that it's impossible

[@Nickwilde7755]

My man’s optimized minesweeper to make it impossible

[@jordanbecker5692]

Now that was fun to watch. Nice job!

[@gp3328]

Matt, can I just say thank you for recommending Olive, it helped me with my videos.

[@OtakuWrath]

Okay that was awesome.

[@thaguy2145]

The minute you said just and paused an advertisement came up with fit perfectly with your vid congratulations for the vid man

[@georgechios1227]

what an enticing idea

[@hubbletrubble7875]

The most convincing luckbased one would be one that's normal and safe on the first click, but the second click is always a mine

[@ryan-levy]

MattKC presents to you: *Oops, All Mines!*

[@danielschultz6177]

I don’t know one single thing about coding, this was still entertaining as H E double hockey sticks!

[@TheBcoolGuy]

It already is. I can't beat it.

[@Lethaltail]

“Some friends!” [one friend]

[@Tigrou7777]

1:00 the max number of mines you can get is simply (width - 1) x (height - 1)

[@mineturte]

BABE WAKE UP NEW MATTKC VIDEO JUST DROPPED

[@TheLegoproduc]

"it's all mines?"... "has always been"

[@danielolivera6852]

The man the myth the legend