What's the best way to draw a minesweeper field

[Nazgulled]

Right now, I have to do the minesweeper game for a college project... I don't have a problem (for now) in coding the game and such cause I've already code it in visual basic a few years ago and I can always see my code in VB...

Anyway, I'm doing this in C and in text/console mode without the support of any graphics mode... What I need, is suggestions on the best way to design the minefield, the mines, the numbers and the spaces, what's the best way to represent all this "graphicaly"? In other words, with ascii characters only...

[Adak]

Right now, I have to do the minesweeper game for a college project... I don't have a problem (for now) in coding the game and such cause I've already code it in visual basic a few years ago and I can always see my code in VB...

Anyway, I'm doing this in C and in text/console mode without the support of any graphics mode... What I need, is suggestions on the best way to design the minefield, the mines, the numbers and the spaces, what's the best way to represent all this "graphicaly"? In other words, with ascii characters only...

You can still do a lot with colors (background and foreground) in console mode. ASCII 175, 176 & 177 are the three that I've used the most for this. They give a nice texture to an otherwise blank and blah, square.

A red asterisk * makes a nice bomb, I think. A complimentary or contrasting color can be used for the border of the minefield and something to differentiate the different numbers of mines adjacent to an uncovered square, is good.

You'll want to use the windows Goto(x,y) function, of course. (not to be confused with the conio.h function of goto(x,y) ).

Making your squares 5 chars wide and 3 high, and adjusting the font in the console properties, makes your squares , well, square, and then it's easy to center a number, a bomb, whatever, inside the square.

A great project - have fun.

Adak