From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-03-10T01:33:06+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby Central 2005 Codefest Grant recipients

On Mar 8, 2005, at 8:23 PM, Shashank Date wrote:

>> 3. Gambit (James Edward Gray II)
>> Gambit is pure Ruby framework for building multiplayer Web games
>> offering two key services:  Game management and design tools.  Gambit
>> can manage player's accounts, game hosting and joining, player
>> histories, in-game communication systems and out-of-game notifications
>> for in-game activities.
>
> I am very interested in learning about this project ... James, has 
> there
>   been any activity since its hosting on Rubyforge?

Yes, a little on and off the radar.  My partner, Greg Brown, and I were 
informed we had a better shot at the grant if we didn't do too much 
work upfront (to create a need).  ;)

Officially, we've committed a few files to CVS which your are welcome 
to pull down and look over.  The main point of interest here is the 
project README, which outlines our vision.  (This is pretty much our 
grant application.)

There are also a couple of unit tests I recently committed.  
Interestingly, these grew out of ideas I had while running/solving the 
Yahtzee Ruby Quiz.  We're using the tests to play with interface.  When 
we find what we like, we'll build it until they pass.  This is our 
pre-codefest planning strategy, so expect to see this set grow in the 
near future.

Unofficially, we've been doing research and planning.  One of our big 
goals with the project is to support commercial game sites as best we 
can.  (Yes, we will support open source sites as well.)  Our README 
contains links to successful commercial game sites we've looked into.  
We're looking at how they work and what they need, so we can ease 
development and management for similar operations.

As I said, we've also been planning.  This mostly concerns our build 
strategy.  We're going to start by throwing together some game tools, 
probably using them to build simple command-line games.  From there, 
we'll mix in views for each component and develop a layout system that 
can be used to design each game related Web page.  We put these in 
trivial servlets, so we can watch our progress.  Then we will tackle 
wrapping that in a game hosting management infrastructure.  Throughout 
our process, we want to test with actual games, or our slight 
variations of such.  We have already selected a few favorites, one 
definitely non-trivial.  We want to ensure the system's usefulness for 
real work.

Basically, we're taking the project seriously, hoping to produce a 
useful tool.  It's not all fun and games.  ;)

That's where we are at this point.  We've just begun discussing dates 
for the actual codefest, but it will be sometime this summer.

We're very excited about the project and are glad to see that others 
are too.  We want to thank Ruby Central for our selection and the whole 
grant process.

If I can answer anymore questions, please don't hesitate to email me 
(off-list is fine).  Thanks for the interest!

James Edward Gray II