Hi all!
I’ve read the topics in this section and have noticed that people are responsive to posters here. So I hope that I will find a bit of help that I need.
I have collected a few well-known logic games and put them on a Web site. The games are Java applets implemented by me and my friends, so anybody who uses a browser that supports Java can play them online. The problem is that I could only test the games under some versions of Windows (XP and Vista), with some distributions of Linux (Fedora Core and Ubuntu) and under OpenSolaris. Unfortunately, none of my friends uses Mac so I’m not sure whether all of my games run and are displayed as expected in Safari on Mac. Although the basic idea of Java is “To write once, run anywhere”, you know that this isn’t always true for GUI Java applications. If there are visitors that own MBP or Mac Intel, I would appreciate it if you spent a couple of minutes and just tried to load the games. I’m not expecting you to test each game thoroughly, I just want to know if they load in Safari and are shown properly (there are screenshots for each game). You can find the site at http://youvscomputer.com/. Please feel free to reply here or contact me directly via e-mail at the address specified on the Web site.
Of course, if anyone using operating system other than Mac decides to share their opinion about the games, it will be excellent. I will be happy to receive any feedback.
Thank you in advance.
Hi
It works nice here under Mandriva Linux 2007 with Firefox 2. For people who are under Mac, you should rather give the following link to get the JVM:
http://developer.apple.com/java/
Do you plan to release the source code?
Your games are nice but there are already a lot of games using the same concept. Do you plan to create more ambitious games?
Best regards
Thank you for your response. I’m glad to know that the games run in Mandriva with an older Firefox. Could you please tell me whether you installed Java in your system manually or it was pre-installed? I heard that some Linux distributions may include Java but I was always curious which of the distros does this.
Regarding the link to Java - it is on the site mainly for Windows and Linux users. Mac comes with pre-installed Java, so Safari should support Java applets out of the box. Moreover, even if Mac users need to install an update, they usually do not download it, they use a built-in update manager.
As for releasing the source code - there are no plans to do it at the moment. Maybe, I will do it later if it makes sense.
I agree that there are plenty sites that offer online versions of the same games. However, there are always people that do not like either the site design and navigation or the game implementation or something else and these people are still looking for something different. So I think I will get my 10 visitors LOL. Well, seriously: currently there are no new games under development. Nevertheless, I think that once we invent something interesting, we will certainly program it and the game will be added to the site. I mean that we do not stop at 8 games you’ve seen. Right now I’m more focused on the Web site and statistics - I want to add the top players list for some of the games and also display information about the victories ratio (human vs computer).
good games, just two notice :
maybe the CPU play a little too fast wich is quite anoying sometime to know what it have done.
games are already good but they will be very good with some improved design
Thank you for the feedback.
I believe you are talking about Ataxx, right? Or does your note concern some other games too? Regarding Ataxx I completely agree, I just could not eliminate this drawback quickly as it requires serious changes in the game architecture. Will do my best to improve the game soon.
Do you mean the Web site design or the games’ design?
Recent Mandriva versions come with a package with the JDK 1.6 and with a package containing only the JRE 1.6. I installed it manually as my version is a bit old and there was only the JRE 1.5 by default. Lots of Linux distributions come with at least the OpenJDK 1.6 (that does not work with TUER 
).
Do you know the JOGRE project? It is quite very complete, like Yahoo! Games. I hope you will make some other games with new concepts.
One of my friends using Ubuntu told me that he had the JRE by default but it wasn’t used by Firefox - I do not mean it wasn’t enabled, the browser just didn’t know that the JRE exists on the machine. So he had to install the recent version of the JDK manually. Do you know whether it is possible that a Linux distribution comes with a JRE that is not built into Firefox?
I’m hearing about the JOGRE project for the first time 
I’ve just read about its features. It’s a good initiative, I hope they will beat Yahoo! Games soon As far as I understand, JOGRE is developed for multi-client games. I’m not going to make games of this kind. My direction is to create games that can be played by 1 person - either vs computer if a game needs two opponents (like Battleship or Gomoku) or alone (e.g. Tetris or 15 puzzle). So a new game will most likely be a battle with a strong artificial intelligence
Yes there is a missing symbolic link to a .so file that is required for Firefox.
I think that some of games grapics can be easily improved antialiasing image for example, I dont remember the games name but for most I 've tested the CPU was playing toos fast and I have trouble to understand what it did in its turn.
Hmm… I’m afraid I do not completely understand what you mean. I know what antialiasing is but I do not see how to apply it to my games. It would be great if you could clarify it to me. Sorry for being a bit dummy
I got it. I think the problem is not with the speed of the computer player. It is rather related to the nature of the games - moves are made on large boards and it is not always easy to notice the changes after the computer makes its turn. I believe that this inconvenience can be eliminated if each move of the computer is indicated in a special manner - for example, by blinking. I will work on it. Thank you for this remark, it is very valuable.
Wanted to let you know that I did it - I improved the games that you play vs computer (Battleship, Dots & Boxes, Gomoku and Ataxx). Now the computer makes moves with a delay and every its move is highlighted. I believe that the human player won’t miss a move of the CPU anymore
cool I will try it ASAP