Betatest my online othello/reversi game

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#1

Hello group.

I need some help on testing my new online othello game:

http://apelab.com/othello

I runs of my home server so I am very interested in seeing what kind of load is it capable of handling.

The game features a “lightweight” login, a basic chat, 16 independent game “tables” and of course the othello board game.

To play a game, you need to enter a room and wait for some other player to come by (or maybe pick a room with someone in it already).

What do you think? Do you notice any kind of delay / latency / problems playing the game?

#2

Broken :(.

If you go into a game where other people played and its finished, then go out and go into a different empty room it shows the old room and crashes (no buttons let you do anything).

#3

Since you’re going to have trouble gettnig significant numbers of players, I strongly suggest you add a computer player - even one that just moves at random - so that people have something to do while waiting for humans. You could make it so that when another human joins a table the existing player gets the option to stop the computer and restart against the new human.

PS I really like the style - although the buttons are far far too similar when enabled as when disabled.

#4

Woohoo,

thats really cool. the chat function is really funny.
Nice idea with the rooms. Keep it going :slight_smile:

#5

blahblahblah: did it throw an exception? I think I maybe may have some synchronisation issues …

#6

blahblahblah: Something with a NullPointerException in method move in an anonymous inner class? Just fixed that … give it another go if you want :smiley:

#7

A public chat would be nice. Hard to test alone :stuck_out_tongue:

don’t key in colon or the applet crash!

#8

oh oh - the colon - my advanced client/server protocol …

.
.
.

(hmm - maybe this will work … … . . :smiley:

#9

I got :

OthelloClient v. 0.09

Uncaught error fetching image:

java.lang.NullPointerException

  at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)

  at sun.plugin.net.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getInputStream(Unknown Source)

  at sun.awt.image.URLImageSource.getDecoder(Unknown Source)

  at sun.awt.image.InputStreamImageSource.doFetch(Unknown Source)

  at sun.awt.image.ImageFetcher.fetchloop(Unknown Source)

  at sun.awt.image.ImageFetcher.run(Unknown Source)

I tested with win2000 java1.4.2_02

#10

very cool game. Had a game with you I believe, it rocked. Liked the non-swing GUI tho, just like iChat! :stuck_out_tongue:

#11

Thanks for testing.

It was not quite the load test I had hoped for but you guys helped me to squash quite a few bugs which was needed.

blahblahblah: I think you are right: There need to be a computer player for the game gain enough players. I better get working on that.

#12

Although I haven’t been able to find anyone to play against, everything has been error free thus far.

One note though: it’s a little bit confusing to the user when you join a room with no one else in and you are presented with a two button panel in the middle of the screen asking for your choice of black or white. With the current layout, it feels as if that these should be the only selectable items within the screen at that time i.e. not the “leave game” button, which feels like it is behind the colour choice panel and thus disabled.

It just feels as though you should either remove the colour choice panel once a player has picked, and then all the other options become active, and you can then choose to leave the game. What are your thoughts?

BTW: I like the simple colour scheme!

[edit: added system info]
Apple OS X.3.3, Java 1.4.2, Safari 1.2.1

#13

ribot: yes - the dialog looks like it is “modal” but it isn’t. I can follow your point but I don’t have a good alternative design.

The options - restart game and leave game - make sense to have active eventhough the game is still waiting for other players to join in.

I am about to add another option in the dialog - making it possible to play against the computer.

You can see it in my chess game which has the same user interface:

http://apelab.com/chess/