The adventure begins

I will be traveling to Europe at large for the next ten weeks. I am still in balmy Olympia WA prepping for the trip. This means packing nearly everything I own and putting it in storage. I say not everything because I will leave Chris here on a sublease to take care of the plants and to keep my apt for me when I get back. Things left to do. Finish packing, eat as much as I can of the food I've bought (because 8 == €1.40 as of this publish date), get drunk, move my shit to storage.

Well the quarter is over, and so is my stint at university. The app is not finished, but it is soo close. The android side is working (client-side GUI), and so is the server/website (user registration/DB management), but the JSON communication between the two is not working, and thus the app is not working. I do plan on finishing it with Lee, and we do plan on putting it up on the Play Store. When this will happen is not decided, but it will be as soon as possible.

I haven't kept the reader up to date, and I regret this. I've finished secure logins and logouts for the website, and Lee and I are learning to use JSON requests to communicate between client and server. A lot of work over the weekend will yield a presentable model for Tuesday's exhibition.

Lee is done with a Java version of the game, he now needs to port it to Android. I am busy designing a website for users to register and a database that will store user information. I just finished ensuring all emails cannot be duplicates and that they have to be of the correct type. Garrett doesn't really know what to do at the moment, as he is not a programmer, but is a graphic designer. I will try to find something for him to do this next week.

Winter quarter presentation

Our ppt presentation for SOS winter quarter.

I've set up my development environment, installing httpd, mysql, ruby, rails, and all the dependencies. This was not as easy as it sounds on a CentOS machine. Lee has not finished the Java version of the game, and had some trouble installing ADT (Android Development Tools). He hopes to have the Java version of the game done by the beginning of spring quarter in order to begin porting it to Android. Garrett has written a base website upon which we can build further. It has not been hosted yet, but I plan on setting up an apache server to host it myself from home. Garrett has also been creating graphics for the game, including 52 custom cards, as well as 52 additional "secret" cards that can be unlocked through achievement.

I've decided to make the database for this game using Ruby on Rails and mySQL. I've found many resources for this and will devote this week to learning it. Garrett has been working on the user interface, and created custom card images for the game. He will start work on the website shortly. Lee used Java to create the heart of the game mechanics, and can so far shuffle a deck and deal out 7 cards to x players. He has installed ADT and is learning how to wrap his work in Android-java.

I've been working with my new CentOS6.4 system and I've installed Apache and several other necessary systems. I have set up port forwarding on my home broadband router to allow the server access to incoming internets.

I've picked up two people to work on this with me: Lee Wadley, a fellow classmate and Garrett Borden, a friend from outside of school. We sat down tonight and worked out details of how the game should be done. We filled out the Thesis Proposal Form and discussed both the game implementation and a plan of action.

I am building a project for SOS at Evergreen that I will be using this blog to document. This will be an Android game, but it will be easy to do because it is a simple card game, like a 52-card game. I have not come up with a good name for the game, it is a game a friend told me about, and he didn't have a name for it, so that's something I'm working on. I will be implementing the game in Java, and putting the website together in Ruby. I have purchased and am setting up a server with CentOS. More information to follow. edit1: How to play: This game uses the standard deck of 52 cards and is meant to be a multiplayer game, though 2 players are possible. Each player gets 7 cards to begin. The player can exchange any number of cards before the first play. The first person to exchange cards gets to go first, so there is an incentive to evaluate one's hand quickly. The first player can put down any card, or a combination of cards that share a numerical value. A player could put down 3 sixes, or 2 Queens, or 2 threes, but NOT multiple cards of the same suit. The next person, in clockwise turn order, has to either play a number of cards that are all equal to or higher in value than the cards already on the board, or they have to play a number of their lowest value cards equal to the number of cards already in the pile. This is significant later in the game when the last hand is played. This process continues until all players have one card in their hand. The one player with the highest card at the end of the round is required to keep it beyond the end of the round. IT DOES NOT GET SHUFFLED INTO THE DECK. That card becomes that player's score. If players are tied for the highest card, they both keep their cards. When the next round begins, players do not necessarily receive seven cards again. In rounds > 1, the number of cards distributed to players is equal to the value of the card that was taken by a player to represent their score. For example, if the card taken by a player at the end of the round is 3, in the new round players will be given a hand of three cards. When someone's score becomes greater than 20, they lose the game and the remaining players continue playing. The game continues until only one player has a score < 20.