MacFormat 1995 January/macformat-020.iso/Shareware City/Developers/apps.to.go/Kibitz/! read.me

Text File | 1994-05-06 | 6.0 KB | 125 lines | [TEXT/MPS ]

KIBITZ:  The Why and How.

As a alternative kind of sample, we here in DTS did a complete application.
Granted, a game is by no means as complete an application as you dudes out
there write, but at least the same kinds of issues are addressed.

With an application this size, structure becomes important.  You will note a
good number of source files.  Hopefully, I have broken the code up into logical
enough pieces that finding a piece of code is no problem.

As I wrote this sample, I tried to fully address development areas as they came
up.  Thre is a file I/O unit, which is rather general in structure.  Hopefully
this code can be useful as it currently stands.  (If it isn't, then I did
something wrong.)

Along with the file I/O unit, I wrote a TextEdit control.  This was done so
that TextEdit items could easily be put into non-dialog windows.  The same
philosophy behind the file I/O unit was applied to the TextEdit control.  Now
that the TextEdit control is complete, it (hopefully) will be easier for
developers to add TextEdit items to non-dialog windows.

Of course, I am looking for suggestions as to how to make these units more
general and useful.  Any suggestions are welcome.


As you are most probably aware, DTS shut down for three weeks so that we could
learn 7.0, write sample code, and stuff like that.  I would like to take some
read.me space to thank you for your patience during this period.  Hopefully,
you will agree that it was time well spent.


Now to the application itself:

First, I would like to explain why I did a chess game.  I was assigned to
write sample code for the AppleEvents part of 7.0.  Keith Rollin had been doing
AppleEvents stuff up to the shutdown, and you will see a good amount of his
work in this sample.

Just before the shutdown, and for the first week of the shutdown, we were to
determine what our sample would be.  Since I hardly knew the Mac, didn't know
the first thing about 7.0, and probably less about AppleEvents, I spent a lot
of time learning, and not much time deciding what my sample should be.

This situation was getting a bit desperate, since we were supposed to announce
what our sample was going to be in a matter of days.  Around this time, Keith
bailed me out by giving me the idea of a chess game using AppleEvents.  I
immediately liked the idea for two reasons.  The first is that is was a cool
idea.  The second was that I hadn't thought of a darn thing myself, so this
idea was better than facing my DTS peers with a comment like:  "Gee, I, uh,
well, I don't have an idea.  My brain's gone."

So, chess it was.


I used to play a lot of chess in my younger days.  In trying to come up with a
theme for this chess application, I thought back to what really annoyed me
when I was playing chess.  The most annoying thing was the kibitzer who would
just not go away, and would string on endless comments.  It seemed like a
natural theme for my game.  It is a good Yiddish word, plus it offered the
opportunity to send more AppleEvents messages than just chess moves.

So, as a design specification, I made sure that there was no way for the player
to get rid of the message (other than quitting the game) from the other player.
This adds a touch of realism that true chess players should appreciate.

The full design specification has not been implemented for this version, but
may be implemented for future versions.  As a suggestion from Keith Rollin,
I would like to put in some sort of challenge board or automatic rating system.
(USCF rating system, maybe.)  Guillermo Ortiz would like a spectator mode where
you can hook up to a game in progress and send messages to the players.  (You
wouldn't be able to make any moves, but you could annoy the heck out of the
players.  And of course, there would be no way that the players can make you
stop sending messages.  Ah, that touch of realism again!)

What is in this version is a reasonably complete first pass at an application.
It is fully functional, and seems to be rather solid, although we are calling
it Beta software at this point.

There is a good amount of code in Kibitz that isn't necessary in terms of a
standard DTS sample project, but I couldn't help myself.  Checking for legal
moves, for example.  I couldn't handle the idea of somebody making illegal
moves with my software.  I just had to check to see if the move was legal.
When reviewing the sample code, you can just ignore this code.  I put all the
chess-specific code in a single file to make it easier to ignore.  I think you
will agree however, that I didn't spend too much time getting the computer to
play good chess.  (Maybe next version...)



At this point, I would like to thank a number of people for their
contributions.  These folk are:

Keith Rollin, who had the original idea, did the ground-breaking work for
AppleEvents, put up with many questions from me, did the Traffic Light 2.0
sample which I modified to form ShellApp which I used as the basis for my
sample, did code review, etc., etc., etc.  (Is a thank-you enough?)

Pete Helme, who got parts of the AppleEvents stuff to work when I couldn't.

Forrest Tanaka, who made sure that I wasn't doing brain-dead things with
TextEdit.  Pointers from him were most helpful.  (It could have been
embarrasing for me if he didn't steer me right.)

Guillermo Ortiz, who made numerous human-interface suggestions that really
improved the smoothness of the game, as well as various suggestions (as yet
to be implemented) for features.

Dave Radcliffe, who made sure that various segments of my code were legible.

Bryan Stearns, whose TESample I used as a basis for my TextEdit control.

John Harvey, who answered questions of any topic, independent of whether or
not it was a stupid question.

John Sullivan, who is a human-interface guy who had a lot of good advice.
(If you like the slider and the real-time update, even across the network,
thank him.  He shamed me into it.)

There were, of course, numerous other people as well, who gave me comments,
played me games to test the thing, and development stuff like that.  (Thanks.)



Eric Soldan