minesweeper help

[Torero]

I found those two addresses, however, when I looked at the hex editor I couldn't read the conversion...

I thought that would equal to 17 in the "long" type value.

I was prepared to search 17 in shorts and other type of data, if it didn't find 17 in long, is that right to go?

how do I read the hex editor from there?

[L. Spiro]

0x11 (shown as 11 00 00 00 in the Hex Editor) is 17.

Use the Real-Time Expression Evaluator or the Converter (Ctrl-L) if you need to convert between number systems.
Or you can click on the “11” itself in the Hex Editor and look in the Helper window (Conversions tab). It would have shown you 17 in nearly every field.


L. Spiro

[Torero]

Get The Board Tiles
View the 0x01005334 address in the Hex Editor again.
The board height was right there, and the chances are good that the board array (the tiles on the playing field) are there too.
As mentioned, the Hex Editor will highlight bytes that change, so use this to our advantage.
Go to Minesweeper, Game/New (or press the smiley face).
This makes a new game with a new board array. If anything changed in our Hex Editor, it will be related to this change in our game.

Looking back at the Hex Editor shows that indeed several bytes have changed just below 0x01005334.
Guess what. We just found the board array already.
Further investigation reveals that it starts on 0x01005361.

Decode The Mine Array
This is quite simple and doesn’t even need its own section.
After playing with things a bit, you will find that mines have the highest bit set (they appear as values 0x80 and above in the Hex Editor).
In other words, if ([Square] & 0x80) returns non-zero, there is a mine there, and we don’t want to click it











how does the board array look like, and how did you recognize it amongst all of these crazy numbers ?

[L. Spiro]

You can’t view a set of memory and say it is an array unless you can spot some kind of pattern in the values, and even then it is merely a guess.

You recognize arrays based on intuition and having an idea already about how the data should look before you even look at the Hex Editor.

It can’t be taught; it comes with experience and understanding of how data sets work in memory.


L. Spiro