He had just returned home and hadn't been in a thirty hours. Jester, who had been sleeping well, was about to lie on the bed and have a good sleep when his mother told him that he had just received a letter from the company, which was sent to him.

When Jester asked where the letter was sent, most of his sleepiness disappeared in an instant.

The letter comes from Kansas, and the sender is John Carmack.

Jester remembered the little boy he accidentally met in Los Angeles some time ago, and learned that he was the task that John Carmack, the super talented man who was in the future, accidentally assigned.

Let him design a very famous PC game in history - mine sweeping.

Then, Jester woke up instantly and didn't want to sleep much. He didn't ask someone to send the letter to his home, but drove to the company himself.

When he got the letter Carmak sent him, he was a little surprised. It was not just a thin page of paper and a floppy disk as he thought, but a thick stack.

Jester was curious and tore open the envelope, took out the manuscript paper inside, and the thick dozens of pages were densely filled with lines of code.

Although Carmak's writing is not good-looking, the code is still written in extremely neatly. The entire code is divided into three parts, which are carefully separated by Carmak with a stapler. One is APPLE, the other is IBM/PC and their compatible machines, and the other is Cormodol 64, which are the three most popular personal computers.

Only then did Jester realize that John Carmack really thought he was submitting the article to the magazine and sending the code directly to himself, right?

This immediately made him feel a little amused.

Jester still returned to the office in a hurry. He wanted to see what John Carmack had done.

He came to his room, opened his computer, and used the drawing software to simply draw a few pixels for minesweeping. Then Jester carefully looked through the program code for the "mine-sweeping" written by Carmack about the "mine-sweeping" he introduced.

From beginning to end, Jester kept looking through several times, nodding while watching, and his eyes flashed with surprise from time to time. After reading, Jester couldn't help but sigh. Carmack was much better than himself in programming.

Jester also had some insights during this period. Originally, the owner of his own body was a good programming expert, but now he found that it was far from the legendary figures among programmers like Carmack, even those who specialize in programming who he had just recruited into the company.

In fact, Jester had considered how to write this simple little game before, but the program code he had originally envisioned was much more complicated than Carmack's.

To achieve the same purpose program, you can distinguish the level of a programmer based on the complexity of the code.

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

Carmack's code is simple, clear, and extremely logical, and there is almost no unnecessary part to find, just like a textbook.

At the end of this "Mine Sweeping" program code, there is also a short introduction written by Carmak. The language is very similar to the style of a middle school boy who feels invincible in the world.

"My future boss, Mr. Jester Lee, the first task you gave has been completed. To be honest, this work is too simple and I almost no effort. I don't even have the interest to program it with a computer. However, although I only did paper programming, I think the code I wrote must be the simplest and most efficient, and there will be no bedbugs, I..."

In this way, BLABLABLA said a lot of words to praise him. Finally, at the end of the letter, Kamake wrote in large font: "By the way, don't forget that you promised me Apple computer!"

After watching it, Jester couldn't help laughing.

He really didn't expect that a genius programmer like Carmack would be interested in fool computers like Apple. Didn't it mean that those programmers nowadays are disdainful of Apple computers?

In fact, when Jester was watching "DOOM Revelation", he was surprised by this. Geniuses such as Carmack and Romero all started with Apple machines. Although they later turned to the study of PC programming, it was after Apple weakened due to its closure.

He compared the code sent to him by Carmak and programmed the minesweeping game on the Macintosh computer in his office. In fact, this is a very simple thing. He just needs to copy Carmak's code. What he really needs to do is nothing more than what he has done before - a few simple pixel icons.

As for why Jester uses Apple computers that are always sprayed, only fools use, this is actually a very simple question. How do you make a person who is used to future operation methods use DOS every day? How can you click directly with the Macintosh mouse?

Although it is still far behind WIN95 ten years later, let's bear it for the time being.

After the programmatic "Mine Sweeping" was completed, Jace started playing on the computer. To be honest, the game "Mine Sweeping" is still very playable and the rules are very simple. However, Jacet is not very good at it, so he can only play 40 thunders. Even so, he often makes mistakes. He doesn't think about it at the highest level, which is too time and brain power.

However, the attraction of puzzle games like minesweeping lies in the IQ sense of accomplishment after completion, even if it is just the lowest level.

Jester loved playing minesweeping in his previous life. Sometimes when he was bored, he could even just do nothing and just play all night.

Although I have played it countless times before, this is the first time that Jester played "Mine Sweeping" he made himself. This is very similar to the later version of WIN3.1. In fact, he described Carmack according to the version of WIN3.1, which he was most familiar to.

There is a timing system, difficulty selection, customization, smiling face and crying face, and a hero list.

Just when Jester was having a little fun playing minesweeping in this world, and even forgot that he hadn't been asleep for nearly forty hours, and even noticed the knock on the door, Maxene pushed the door and walked in.

He saw Jester frowning in front of the computer, thinking hard, as if he was doing something.

He then walked forward curiously, looked at Jester's screen. There was a rectangle on the screen, divided into many grids. The grid was very small, and the words 1, 2, 3, 4 and other Arabic numerals were marked in different colors. Jester was constantly clicking on these grids. Sometimes he tickled the keyboard from time to time and inserted a small flag on the grid.

Just as Mark Seney was wondering what the other party was doing, after careful consideration, Jester finally put a small flag on a grid again, and then controlled the mouse to point the remaining empty grid dots. After he clicked a few, a black dot suddenly appeared after one grid opened, which seemed to be a mine or something. Then, he looked at the words GAMEOVER appeared on the screen.

Jester also showed an annoyed look at the moment when the black thing that seemed to be a mine appeared, and cursed fiercely. At the same time, he slapped a heavy palm on the table.

"What is this?" Mark Seney had curiosity on her face.

At this time, Jester discovered that someone had come to him. The failure of the game just now made Jester's sleepiness that had not been asleep for a long time surge. He yawned listlessly and explained to Mark Seney: "I just designed a small game I played with a mouse on the computer, called "Mine Sweeping", which is to randomly distribute some landmines in some fixed matrices, and then let the players find these mines."

Then, Jester thought about Mark Seney and carefully explained the rules of mine sweeping. For example, the game is divided into three difficulties: ten thunders, forty thunders, and one hundred thunders. Those numbers represent "there are landmines that digits are marked in the horizontal and vertical grid around this grid with numbers". Then, click the mouse twice to open the grid, click and press Enter to insert the red flag that identifies this mine.

The mouse has no two-key settings yet. It only has a single button, and there is no such appearance as later generations based on the shape of the palm. It is just a small rectangular box that is ugly and stupid, so Jester has no choice but to let Enter to temporarily replace a button on the original mouse to play this game.

After hearing this, Mark Seney's eyes lit up. He thought about this gameplay carefully in his mind, and suddenly realized that it was very interesting and a test of a person's logical ability.

When he was about to ask Jester what he thought of, he saw Jester yawning towards the lounge on the side of his room.

This lounge was also specially isolated by Jester. He knew that it was common for game development and working overtime until late at night, so he specially set up a lounge and slept in the office when overtime was too late.

"You can play with it yourself first. Don't wake me up in advance. I really can't hold on." While closing the wooden door in the lounge, Jester's voice also came out of the lounge. Then, just a few seconds later, Jester's snoring was heard.

Mark Seney could only shake his head helplessly, then sat in Jester's seat, and curiously played this game called "Mine Sweeping".

Then……

Jester struggled to get up from the bed while yawning. The room was pitch black. He moved carefully to the wall and turned on the light. Jester looked down at the watch on his wrist at 3:20.

"I've been sleeping for so long?" Jester himself was shocked. He remembered that it was not yet noon when he slept.

A slight sound came from outside the room.

When Jester heard the sound, he was so scared that he was trembling. It was not that he had been thieves. While thinking, Jester quietly walked towards the door and quietly opened a crack in the door.

The headlights in his office were turned off, but the lamp on the desk was on, and the screen of the Macintosh computer was also lit. With the glimmer, Jester could clearly see a blond man sitting in front of the computer staring at the screen without blinking.

Jester looked carefully and found that the blonde man was Mark Seney.

At this time, Jester remembered that Mark Seney came to him before he went to bed. Because he was too tired and wanted to sleep, he gave him the "Mine-Sweeping" he had just finished and asked him to play and watch it first.

"He has really been playing around until now, right?"

Jester does not doubt the charm of the game "Mine Sweeping". This game has become popular all over the world since two Microsoft engineers made and installed on WIN3.1 in 1992. I wonder how many people have worked hard for this small puzzle game. There seems to be countless secrets hidden in the small rules.

Even in the era when entertainment products he was in full swing, minesweeping was never out of date. I wonder how many people turned on the minesweeping included in the WIN system when they were bored. They could play until they could not stop until they could find all the landmines.

This is different from the venting pleasure brought by the brainless gun ball game. The sense of accomplishment brought by this puzzle and decryption game after completion is indescribable and timeless.

Jester walked to Mark Seney, and just as Mark Seney ended the game, he was playing the one with the highest difficulty of 100 thunders.

He also saw Jester. He looked at Jester with sincere admiration, gave a thumbs up, and said sincerely: "You are simply a genius, so simple, but how did you think of such a fun game?"

Jester smiled and didn't answer, just said, "This game is not bad."

"It's not just not bad! It's simply perfect. I can't stop when I get started. I've started playing since you started sleeping until now." Although Mark Seney played for a whole day, he was obviously still in an excited state.

While he was talking, he started a new game, still one hundred thunders with the highest difficulty.

I have to say that Mark Seney learned very quickly, and the rules and gameplay of "Mine Sweeping" are also quite simple and easy to understand. Jester watched the other party constantly searching for landmines in a rectangular array, and Mark Seney's minesweeping speed was much faster than that of his own who had been playing for more than ten years...

Jester asked curiously: "Mark, how fast do you play this most difficult one?"

Mark Seney said, waited, clicked on the mine-sweeping hero list that was included in the program, looked at the records above, and said, "Three minutes and six seconds."

After hearing this, Jester sighed, it is rare for beginners to be able to be so fast, especially when there is no mine-sweeping pattern and it depends entirely on one's own reasoning.

It is rare to rely solely on reasoning. Of course, Jester knew that the world record holder of minesweeping was Pole Camille Mulanski. He obtained the Guinness World Record certification for minesweeping records in 2012. He monopolized all ten records of minesweeping, among which, the highest difficulty of 99 thunders was a little more than thirty seconds, while the speed of 40 thunders with intermediate difficulty was only 8 seconds.

However, Jester never remembered the fixed pattern at the beginning, and he could not have such speed. Even Mark Seni was far inferior to that of him. He felt that if he remembered the fixed pattern, he would not have that kind of fun to play the fixed pattern. It was purely a competition between speed and hand speed.

Playing games is for happiness, and this is the most important thing for Jester, both in the previous life and in this life.

If you are not happy, why do you do it?

Isn’t this just putting the cart before the horse?

Seeing Mark Seney almost finished the game again, Jester said, "You can sleep in my lounge for a while. I will discuss the promotion of this game with you tomorrow morning. In my opinion, the most suitable platform for Minesweeping is the computer. In fact, this is a game that I specially designed for the mouse."

After hearing this, Mark Seney nodded in agreement. He felt a little tired after passing Jester's words, so he said hello and walked towards Jester's lounge.

After Mark Seney closed the lounge door, Jester also sat down, thinking about how to promote "Mine Sweeping".

It is natural to make it into a floppy disk and sell it directly, but the sales of PC games in this era have always been low, and it is difficult to promote it to the maximum extent. The best way is to learn from Microsoft back then, install this game in the computer system, and do comprehensive promotion.

The problem is, I don't make a computer myself.

Jester thought, it would be impossible to go to IBM. Now IBM is big and its PC business is booming. Even if they like their own games, they will definitely only give a charity price.

And Apple...

Jester shook his head again. This was purely a personal reason. He didn't like Apple. In his previous life, he was criticized by those tall Apple fans, so he had an instinctive disgust towards Apple. Since they were all reborn, they naturally had happiness. How could they be reborn? They still felt uncomfortable for themselves. But it is undeniable that Apple is indeed in the field of personal computers.

Jobs is good, but so what? There are so many people in the world who are good at it, but Jester hates apples' urine properties and will not change.

Then there is only IBM's compatible phone left. Jester knew that in the future personal computer war, the final winner was neither IBM, who is rich now, has the ambition to swallow mountains and rivers, and wants to monopolize the entire market, nor Apple, which is now in the limelight and seems to be rising rapidly, but those small manufacturers who are not favored by everyone and are just living by assembling computers that are compatible with IBM's PC DOC system.

For example, it is still just a garage company, Dell.

These people will unite to form a compatible machine alliance when IBM reveals their greedy minions to swallow up the entire market. Not only will the Blue Giant IBM be unable to take care of itself, but it will also penetrate Apple, which is unwilling to let go of its closed environment. If it weren't for Steve Jobs to come out again, Apple may only become a historical symbol and can only be seen in those encyclopedias.

Jester knew this history and felt that he should grasp it. Although the future profits of the PC market are very low, because the prices of accessories are transparent, and these unscrupulous merchants can no longer slaughter people, but this is not the case now. The current PC market is just a person who is stupid and comes with a lot of money.

This is an era when anyone who can boldly underestimate the IQ of Americans can make a lot of money.

For example, when Dell talked about his entrepreneurial journey, he said bluntly that he rented a room on a top floor and posted a small advertisement. He only needed to install a hard drive for everyone who came here to get one hundred dollars. Making money was like picking up. Within a month, his turnover was more than 50,000 US dollars, and his net profit exceeded 20,000 US dollars, and he was the only one.
To be continued...