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.

Today I saw what Mexico City is all about. I went for a walk in the central district, exploring shops and trying to acclimate myself to the foreign surroundings. The shops are so organic here, what I imagine little shops were like in the United States in the 1800s. Not that they shops are unsophisticated; they all have the ubiquitous credit card readers and professional barkers. I took some pictures, but they got erased when I ran out of memory at the National Museo de Antropologia—but I’m getting ahead of myself.
So I went for a short walk, maybe 15 blocks, and came back to the hostel. I vegged here for a minute (I got fitful sleep last night: the light scenario mentioned in my last blog, the mattress is hard, the pillow is hard, I was acclimating to a new personal space, idk, I just didn’t sleep well.) watching an episode of Weeds. I’m almost done with season six…Nancy just found a journalist who convinced her to tell her life story. That is not a spoiler, btw.
Anyway, I decided that Mexico is not made for television. I mean, Mexico makes lots of weed and imports it to the U.S., but that’s neither here nor there. So I planned a trip to the Ingles Kent ESL school. The school is near the National Museo de Antropologia, and I wanted to go there after. It was about seven miles from the hostel, but google maps said it would only take an hour and a half.
Little did they know that streets are named funny here. I walked for 2.5 hours before I gave up on going to the school and just started heading for the museum. The streets and the people are fascinating. I strode confidently through streets I wouldn’t dare show my face in after nightfall. I window-shopped for a time, but the core purpose of getting where I was supposed to be motivated my feet.
The smells are astounding. They change from raw sewage to delicious fried foods to fresh fruit to garbage in the space of several paces. I saw a huge open-air garbage heap about 15 meters square being picked over by poor Mexicans. Blocks away stood large single-family homes, some adobe, some not—all surrounded by tall walls topped with barbed wire. There was even one with electric fencing at the top. Even with this, the disparity between rich and poor is not as great as in the United States. The reason open-air heaps aren’t found at home are the social safety nets in place. Like WIC, food stamps, section 8 housing, social security, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.
The language barrier was quite strong and prevented me from getting directions. I had expected to find English-speakers here and there, but none were to be found. In retrospect I should have continued to ask people, but I felt foolish. People looked at me like I was a bug—“What are you doing in my country if you cannot speak my language?” The directions I did get through my broken Spanish were often contradictory and led me in the wrong direction. I know that at least once I was deliberately given wrong directions. I got lots of pictures that will be posted on facebook later today.
Eventually I got to the museum (with blisters on my feet) and paid my entry fee of 51 pesos. Although I could not read the plaques next to the exhibits, they were fantastico! Ancient works of art, exquisite mudmen that made me think of Liz’s grandmother (who collects them), mummified Olmecs with all their afterlife gear, and too many statues to mention. The museum allows photography as long as there is no flash, so those pictures will also be posted on facebook later.
The cab back to the hostel tried to screw me on the fare, but I since he couldn’t enforce anything, I haggled him down to a reasonable price. When I arrived, I found the four Brits replaced by three beautiful young European ladies, Laura (pronounced La-u-ra) from Germany, Picana(?) from Denmark, and C.D.(?) from France. As you can probably imagine from my name memory, I find Laura the most attractive. We hung out last night and went to a bar nearby with an English guy who was pretty cool.
That’s enough for now. Time to find an English language school to drop off a resumes.