My random blog

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This is so cool, I hope labels works out for me read more →

As I mentioned before, I really don't like the idea of trying to play a networked 5hr plus game over a possible 3 hour (or more) time difference. So the next best idea is do figure out a way to play a game based on email. Here's what I came up with:

Player plays his turn
Game automatically emails the next player with the current state of the game
When the next player receives an email, it will have a save file attachment, he loads that attachment and it automatically sets up the board state and resumes play from that point

This is the basic logic of a "pen-pal chess" game. But there are a couple of challenges I had to over come

How do you keep the file from being "hacked"

Well, this one will always be tough, but as long as the file is written in binary that's a pretty good start. The bigger issue is trying to keep players from "replaying" their turn. There's no real solution for this other than the emails are sent automatically by the program, so if emails are received out of order, the game will suddenly have 2 different possible states... right now I'm relying the people playing to not be complete dicks >_<

How do you actually send emails from C++ code

I had a course on networking in college where we did exactly this, but we never sent file attachments. So I hit google and found a number of resources, and shortcuts (or what I thought would be shortcuts) for sending emails from code.

Attempt #1: http://johnwiggins.net/jwsmtp - John's website is one for the first that comes up when searching for code examples on this topic, and he's shared his code out for the world to use... must be good right? Meh... It sends emails, and if your attachment were pictures, it would get the job done, but for everything else it tries to encrypt and add the attachment into the body of the message of the email... not what I wanted at all
Attempt #2: http://www.emailarchitect.net/easendmail/ex/vc/14.aspx - Another site that seems to have it's shit together, but this garbage couldn't even open a connection to any mail server I picked. Complete waste of a weekend
Attempt #3: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.aspx - I finally wised up and just went straight to the source... the managed C++ libraries I normally find to be complete crap.... but this was everything I needed and it all worked on the first try.

I don't really have a better name than that... but overall my goal is to be able to play one of my favorite board games with friends while not being in the same room. Also, many of the board games I prefer, to play an inter game in 1 sitting is already usually a heavy deal, but to do with multiple hours of time difference between people, that would be a pain. So enter my idea, playing board games in the same way you could play chess with a pen pal. But a little "updated".

This is my favorite board game of all time. There's some pretty great strategy combined with some random-ness to keep you from ever seeing the same game twice. It's not as overly complicated as other board games of it's type, while being far more advanced than just basic original Risk. (The "stock" rules for LotR:Risk kind of suck... but I really only care about playing for total domination!) Hopefully, if I build everything correctly, I will be able to make my program versatile enough that plugging in any board game is just as easy as typing the rules in. read more →

So a few weeks ago the bulb in my projector burnt out and it still hasn't been replaced... Being that it was my main use of entertainment (movies and console video games) I've decided to start filling my time with something productive that is still entertaining. I've started coding my own game. I did start a project a year ago when I was laid up when I had my knee surgery, but I never had a real goal, and in the end I didn't make anything and just looked around at everyone else's code engines because I never wanted to take the time to learn DirectX. Well I had to hang up that notion and just dive into it. Luckly, my previous experience with OpenGL and some easy to follow DX tutorials helped jump start me into a pretty good spot. The tutorials themselves are written in some pretty crappy code overall, but they've served pretty good to teach me the basics for writing my first DX shader ever.

Basically this "random" blog is going to be turned into a blog tracking the progress of this game project as well as play instructions and version and patch note updates... maybe it'll catch on to something big, but ultimately I'm making this game to help fill time, as well as a void of being able to play an amazing game with friends I don't get to see anymore since moving to another country.

More to come...... read more →