We are developing a graphical multiplayer Mancala game for our client Mr. "Hat-on" Stotts. On this site we will post updates to our progress, releases, and any other pertinent information.
We are using distributed pair programming for this project. We are communicating vocally using Skype and sharing David's desktop using VNC. Brian is working from home over a cable internet connection.
To install our product, download the JAR file below and save it wherever you would like to store it on your system. Stats and settings will be stored in the same folder. Then you may run the program by typing from a command prompt `java -jar mancala.jar` while in that folder, or by double clicking on the JAR file if Java is setup to run JAR files automatically.
Spent 1.25 hours working on the system over the network using telephone to talk.
Put in all finishing touches, cleaned up so it doesn't print stuff to console, etc
Spent 1 hour working on the system side by side because of aforementioned computer problem
Fixed up some minor bugs and problems with socket disconnects and such
Spent 1.75 hours working on the system over the network
Cleaned a bunch of stuff up so games can cleanly terminate, it enters a "PLEASE WAIT" state when waiting for a connection, and it displays the player names nicely.
Brian's laptop (needed for voice communication) has a faulty AC adapter that stopped working, and the battery is now dead. We will have to finish cleaning up side-by-side. Very little cleanup left to do, just add some notification of game termination and make sure everything is fully tested.
Spent 2 hours working on the system over the network
Implemented host and client network players and finished network infrastructure. Network play works, just have to clean some stuff up.
Spent 2.25 hours working on the system over the network
Finished up the new game dialog and added a remote connection dialog to ask for an ip address to connect to (includes previous addresses in a drop down).
Set up infrastructure for network play, just have to implement host and client player classes.
Spent 2.75 hours working on the system over the network
Added box plot statisticis display to the game. A box plot is displayed for each player that has played on the computer with all of their scores and the label for each box is the player's name and their win-loss-tie record.
Created a new game dialog for choosing options about a new game, but haven't implemented it yet
Spent 3.25 hours working on the system over the network
Added login support, the user is prompted for a name when starting the program
Made the board not look like a game is started when the application starts even though the player can't play, it now starts with a blank board.
Fixed up and combined our box plot classes for use in the Mancala stats.
Implemented player stats and reading and writing stats from a file. We still have to add the ability to display the stats using box plots.
Spent 2.25 hours working on the system over the network
Fixed up the graphics of the program, it now has nice colors and draws circles indicating stones with larger circles with "5" or "10" in them to indicate piles of stones. The two players are shown with different colors as well. There is also either a green arrow in the local player's mancala pointing at his bins or a red arrow in the remote/computer player's mancala pointing at his bins to indicate whose turn it is.
Spent 3.25 hours working on the system over the network
Refactored board to run on multiple threads with a separate thread for the "game engine." Added animated moves and indication of what was changed when a move was executed. It is now hard to see how the game actually works over VNC while Brian is at home with a cable internet connection. We need to fix up the engine to handle some aspects of new games and the end of games, and change what happens when the program first executes.
Spent 2.5 hours working on the system over the network
Implemented the simple computer player and statistics and test case for the statistics. Cleaned everything up for release. We will improve the look of the board for next release.
Spent 3.5 hours working on the system over the network.
Completed a GUI version that accepts valid and rejects invalid moves, allows for multiple games to be played in one session, and has rules in the help text. We have the simple computer player and simple statistics left for this release. We may improve the look of the board for this release as well.
Spent 1 hour designing the system side by side. We will use JButtons with custom paint methods for our GUI. Most of the rest of the code is either trivial or already implemented in our previous Mancala game.
Website created. Nothing to post yet