Minesweeper clone that plays without an OS!
Bootsweeper is a boot sector program, which means that if you put it in the 512 byte region that is specified as the boot sector in your storage medium then instead of running a bootloader to load your operating system, it runs this minesweeper game. That does mean that everything in this program is fit into 512 bytes--the data and all of the code have to fit into 512 bytes. It is written in 16 bit real mode assembly, and should work on any *86 processor (although it's only been tested on 386 and up it should work on 286 and perhaps even 8086 if there were BIOSes that support it [I have no knowledge on whether or not this is the case]). If you'd like to test it on untested hardware/processors, definitely let me know your results.
The game features stunning 16 color text mode graphics, colored numbers, cursor wraparound, empty square floodfill, the ability to toggle whether a mine is flagged or not, a time-seeded xorshift random number generator for endless board regeneration, complete board reveal on loss, and so much more! (Disclaimer: Not actually that much more)
In order to run the program, you must have the qemu, bochs, or DOSBox emulator installed (if you want to use a different emulator, feel free to configure that on your own). To run with qemu, simply use make and the program will compile and run! To run with bochs, use make bochsmine and then type c into the bottom input on the debug window. For DOSBox, run dosboxmine and then in the DOSBox command prompt, mount your host system directory as the C drive, go to the C drive, and boot mine.bin.
NOTE: In order to get arrow keys support on DOSBox (on my linux system), I needed to change usescancodes to false in ~/.dosbox/dosbox-0.74-3.conf (replace 0.74-3 with your version number).
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| R | Restart game (Generate New Board) |
| F | Toggle Flag on tile |
| Arrow Keys | Move cursor |
| Any other key | Uncover tile |
https://github.com/io12/bootmine
This is another minesweeper clone in the bootsector, it's got some interesting differences to this version (being 40x25, a slightly easier difficulty, it makes use of rdtsc), please check it out!
https://github.com/nanochess/bootOS
This is a program that runs other boot sector programs, and at the bottom of the readme there is a list of other boot sector games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UzTf0Qo37A
Great video on boot sector games