Big Changes

A few weeks ago we decided to give up trying to learn Flash--it was taking up too much time better spent actually getting something done--and switched to C++ with the OpenGL library. We're thinking this should go a lot smoother, as we both are pretty comfortable with C++, and we were just using OpenGL last semester.

Alan, reinvigorated by the switch, immediately threw together the UI. I think it looks pretty good.


Click on the image for a closer look!

Alan tells me the highlighting and legal move checking are working, including jumps. The states aren't done yet, though. Alan is motivated and getting things done!

Meanwhile, I am plugging away at the AI component. Now that Alan's got a significant bit of coding done, that will help me write something that actually, you know, makes sense.


--jess

Catching Up

Note: All images are thumb-nails; please click for higher resolutions.

We procrastinated a bit getting this blog up and running. Here's what's been going on for the last few weeks:

Week of May 16

At this point we weren't sure if we wanted to do a board game or a card game. We knew that if it was a board game, we were going to develop an AI opponent; if we went with a card game, we were likely only going to facilitate two human players. We were leaning heavily toward Flash to execute our plans, but we were also giving the C++ OpenGL library some consideration.

Week of May 21

This week we decided definitively that we wanted to create a checkers game, and we wanted to do it with Flash. We defined our goal as to have both single- and mutli-player options. We scheduled ourselves to start getting acquainted with ActionScript.

Week of May 30

I went out and purchased Flash MX 2004 Game Design, which has chapters on multiplayer games and chess, so that should be a good resource. We created a class diagram and flowchart (pictured below) as a starting point, so that when the time comes, it will be easier for us to divvy up coding tasks and to in general give us a better feel for what it is we need to do. We decided to do a client-to-client interface as opposed to web-based.





Week of June 4 -- current!

Upon further inspection, it seems like ElectorServer3 might make a web-based interface easier than we thought! This week we will be deciding once and for all if the two player interface is going to be client-to-client or web-based. The book makes it sound like ElectroServer is a snap to use, so I've got my fingers-crossed that it's as straight-forward as they claim. I'll be focusing my energies on that this week, while I think Alan will be looking into that with a little less depth but also focusing on the structure of Command and getLegalMoves. I also got a good bit of work done on the UI, we just need to figure out how to manipulate it with ActionScript.






--jess

Introduction

Alan and I have decided to create single- or multi-player checkers using Adobe Flash. Flash ActionScript is a language that we are both minimally familiar with at the start of this project, but we recognize the usefulness of the language--particularly when on the job hunt!--and think it would be fun to learn; additionally, it seems to us that the UI will be easier to handle with Flash than with the other graphics tool we are familiar with, which is the OpenGL library in C++.

Our goal for this project is to having a working game of checkers that can be played with a friend on two different computers, or that can be played against a reasonably challenging AI opponent. Bonus if it looks nice.


--jess