A two player game over the intranet..

Question

Hi everybody.. I am a student of 3rd year engineering and only a novice in my programming skills. I need some help with my project.. I wish to develop a two player game to be played over the network (Intranet).

I want to develop a simple website with a few html pages for this.My ideas for the project run as follows:

1.People can log in from different systems and check who ever is online on the network currently. the page also shows who is playing with whom.

2.If a person is interested in playing with a player who is currently online, he sends a request of which the other player is somehow notified( using a message or an alert on his profile page..)

3.If the player accepts the request, a game is started. This is exactly where I am clueless.. How can I make them play the game? I need to develop a turn based game with two players, eg chessboard.. how can I do this? The game has to be played live.. and it is time tracked.

i need your help with coding the above.. the other features i wish to include are:

4.The game could not be abruptly terminated by any one if the users.The request to terminate the game should be sent to the other player first and only if he accepts can the game be terminated.

1. Whoever wins the game would get a plus 10 on their credit and if he terminated he gets a minus 10. The credits remains constant even if he loses but the success percentage is reduced.

6.The player with highest winning percentage is projected as the player of the week on the home page and he can post a challenge to all others..

I only have an intermediate knowledge of core java and know the basics of Swing and Awt. I am not at all familiar with networking in java right now. I have 5 to 6 weeks of time for developing the project but I hope to learn the things before I start my project.

i would prefer to use a lan to illustrate the project and I know only java,jsp,oracle,html and bit of xml to develop my proj.

Also I wish to know if I can code this within 6 weeks, would it be too difficult or complicated? Please spare some time to tell me.

Please.. please.. I need your suggestions and help..

thank you so much..

Answer 1

Firstly, it sounds like you do not have a clear idea what you want from this project. You should write down your requirements and draw up a design. Work out exactly what you want to develop before you write any code.

You shouldn't post the whole plan on StackOverflow, as people will struggle to interpret your actual questions; instead work out which parts of the design are outside of your comfort level, and post a series of concise questions asking how you would go about completing it - as part of your research.

One example is your Java networking question. Work out exactly what you need to send over a network, and write up a separate question based on what you already know. Also, make good use of the 'related questions' feature on this site as it will save you time and reputation points.

Regarding how long it will take you to complete the project: I would say that 5-6 weeks is possible, but considering you will probably be tackling this alongside your other college work, I would recommend you focus on keeping it simple. Work out a series of milestones and complete your project in stages, that way you can avoid getting stuck on a particular problem and fail to complete your project in time because of it.

Make sure you consider non-programming challenges as well - such as how you will obtain the artwork you need, and make time for any report writing you need to do.

Answer 2

Is there a specific requirement for you to write the server and the client in a specific way using a set of technologies eg. web based with servlet, socket based, etc. I'll list a few technologies you can use

1. web based

   • use servlet at the back end with some Ajax on the browser
   • you can also use Comet. Here is a Comet engine

2. Client-server with fat client front end

   • you can always write your own server with Socket/ServerSocket
   • RMI is another option, nice and simple
   • Use a chat server like Jabber. I frequently use Openfire and Smack API. See this

3. Use a game framework like GameGarden. Bonus is that you get to host it on their servers.