Somewhat OT... Computer playing Minesweeper

[Heiko Wundram]

Am Donnerstag, 15. Juli 2004 01:54 schrieb Scott David Daniels:
> Here improvement is possible.  You want the move that has the greatest
> expected useful information (where "Boom" is very un-useful information).
> Your algorithm may be taking a number low-risk gambles with low payoff.
> One measure of payoff might be "how many squares are revealed?"

Hmm... I thought about this today, and I came up with an improvement: out of 
the squares which have the least probability of having a mine, select one 
which is closest to a discovered field (so that in the common case you have 
some kind of interaction between an existing square and a square which was 
just discovered). This didn't improve runtime as far as I can tell...

> You also don't track "how many undiscovered mines are out there" -- that
> might provide answers to collapse consistent states.

I do track that. And consistent means not only that the discovered fields fit, 
but also that there are no more mines selected than are available on the 
field... So the number of states I track is certainly not more than there are 
squares available...

Heiko.