Save yourselves! Women and children first. We’ve crossed the tenth dimension and fallen into a bizarro universe. RIT is closed.

Lidiya and I are speed demons. We make an awesome team.

So Christmas is over, and a week (4-5 days) is about to start. Let’s get the nasty stuff out of the way before talk of gifts starts. I have a lot of work to do. Physics webassign, Japanese listening, and then I need to write my code for Internet Checkers.

Checkers is going to be interesting. I got an email back from my professor about it and I don’t have to make a GUI (Graphical User Interface)… thankfully. Text commands it is. I’m thinking of using letters for columns and numbers for rows on the checkers board, and then a direction to move the piece in. It would be something like “e4ne” for the space where column ‘e’ and row ‘4′ meet, and you want to move that piece to the square that is north-east from there. I’m not sure what I want to do about jumping though. Do I have them try to move to an occupied space and then check if the spot that is inline behind it is empty. That was a horribly confusing sentence. I need to check the rules we were given to see what the policy on multiple jumps are. I don’t know how I can work that in. You know, when you jump over a piece that’s to the north-east, and then you have another available jump from there.

Besides actually having to write the game, I have to set up a client-server connection so that multiple people can play at the same time and play the game over the internet. It’s going to be something like:

Player1: I want to play a game with Player2! And I want to use UDP.
Server: Okay, please wait a minute and let’s see if Player2 also wants to play.
Player2: Hey Server, I would like to play checkers with Player1, but I’m going to use TCP.
Server: Not a problem. Let me set up those connections, and then create a new game for you with it’s own unique id number. Okay, all set. Player1, your turn.
Player1: Here’s my move server.
Server: Thank you. I’ll make a note of it, send the new board positions to Player2 and wait for her move.
Player2: Oh, Player1 made a move. I’m going to make one too. Server, I told you my move.
Server: Excellent Player2, I will change the game state and inform Player1.

And this whole thing goes on, all while the server is accepting new connections from other players wanting to play checkers with their friends. Sounds like fun, no?

And presents: Guitar Hero, Cash, Go, Coat, Books, Magazines. I do believe that’s the bulk of it. Guitar Hero and Go are my favorites. I should start blogging about Go. Maybe I can make an internet Go game, but that would definitely require a GUI. Good times.