Back to games!
For those who don't know already, I have (and am very proud of) a Danger Hiptop cell phone. It's a remarkable device: fully internet connected all the time, with a 240x160 16-bit display and a free Java-based SDK for developers to play with.
There's really no excuse for me to not be writing games for this thing.
The app I'm working on now is an interface for chessclub.com. If you play chess, you're probably familiar with the site already; if not, you can always grab Icarus and check it out. A great place to play chess online.
This is a fully timestamp-enabled client, which means you get lag protection for your moves. "Lag" refers to the amount of time between when you make a move on your cell phone, and when the chessclub server gets the move: this is important, because if you run out of time you lose the game. Every second counts, especially in the popular faster games (say, 3 minutes for each player for the entire game).
So far you can't play unless you type in the moves ("e4{enter}"); I haven't hooked up the board to let you D-pad around and select pieces. And I'm far behind on showing the chat session, messages, move lists, history and all that other fun stuff.
BUT all the hard stuff is in: it knows how to log in (and reconnect if you drop signal), do the timestamp support (whew!), keep track of all the ongoing games, maintain scrollable history for whatever you're watching, keep track of kibitzes and commentary and personal tells; animates moves and lets you issue any commands you want. The menus and configuration pages are all done, and you can even customize the buttons on the main page and assign hotkeys to your favorite commands (say, menu+5 = "seek 5 0 r").
At this rate, it'll probably take another two months before I'm really finished with it and ready to offer it for testing, but I wanted to show it off now. Suggestions are always welcome.
Ah, what's an app without a nice splash screen?
Lots of configuration stuff, all done and persistently stored.
The main launch page is fully configurable: you choose what buttons to populate it with, and can even create your own.
A typical game display, showing the players, clocks and ratings. Kibitzes and other commentary show up on the right. If you start typing, a text-entry area appears just above the lower clock. The board is as big as it possibly can be: no titlebar, no borders, nothing.
Turns out the client is just excellent for watching lectures, like the ones from MrSpock. You can scroll back through the entire thing, one kibitz at a time, so you never miss anything.
There's really no excuse for me to not be writing games for this thing.
The app I'm working on now is an interface for chessclub.com. If you play chess, you're probably familiar with the site already; if not, you can always grab Icarus and check it out. A great place to play chess online.
This is a fully timestamp-enabled client, which means you get lag protection for your moves. "Lag" refers to the amount of time between when you make a move on your cell phone, and when the chessclub server gets the move: this is important, because if you run out of time you lose the game. Every second counts, especially in the popular faster games (say, 3 minutes for each player for the entire game).
So far you can't play unless you type in the moves ("e4{enter}"); I haven't hooked up the board to let you D-pad around and select pieces. And I'm far behind on showing the chat session, messages, move lists, history and all that other fun stuff.
BUT all the hard stuff is in: it knows how to log in (and reconnect if you drop signal), do the timestamp support (whew!), keep track of all the ongoing games, maintain scrollable history for whatever you're watching, keep track of kibitzes and commentary and personal tells; animates moves and lets you issue any commands you want. The menus and configuration pages are all done, and you can even customize the buttons on the main page and assign hotkeys to your favorite commands (say, menu+5 = "seek 5 0 r").
At this rate, it'll probably take another two months before I'm really finished with it and ready to offer it for testing, but I wanted to show it off now. Suggestions are always welcome.
Ah, what's an app without a nice splash screen?
Lots of configuration stuff, all done and persistently stored.
The main launch page is fully configurable: you choose what buttons to populate it with, and can even create your own.
A typical game display, showing the players, clocks and ratings. Kibitzes and other commentary show up on the right. If you start typing, a text-entry area appears just above the lower clock. The board is as big as it possibly can be: no titlebar, no borders, nothing.
Turns out the client is just excellent for watching lectures, like the ones from MrSpock. You can scroll back through the entire thing, one kibitz at a time, so you never miss anything.