I need a collaborator (or two) for a professional project

[Mr. Strange]

Two years ago, I started a project to allow people to play card-games online. I was specifically targeting Shadowfist, a CCG I've loved for about 15 years. At the time the best solution for playing online Shadowfist had just died, and I thought providing a high-quality free alternative would be awesome.

I made lots of progress, got all of the card data converted into tables and wrote a pretty sweet card rendering routine, along with an infinite tabletop with a camera that could zoom/pan/rotate with customizable views for each player. Each player had their own view of the table - as though they were sitting around a physical space (my opponent's cards were upside-down if they were "across" from me.) I never finished the project, but it's something I've always meant to come back to.

Skip ahead to today - Shadowfist has changed owners, and the new folks in charge are very interested in helping me get this project finished and into the hands of the players. I don't want any money from them, but I'm sure we could negotiate a stipend for a few people. My biggest hurdle is the networking element - figuring out how to best break the computation into client and server-side programs, distinguishing between moves made by multiple players, and packing/unpacking the data tables needed for updates. I'm also not sure how to handle the fact that when the project goes live dozens or potentially hundreds of games would be played simultaneously - networking is not my specialty.

If this sounds appealing to you - if you like a good challenge, need to build your resume with a released product, or maybe you're another Shadowfist veteran (or you just need the $$) - please get in touch with me. I'm projecting a timeline that starts in early October and ends in December/January.

About Me:
My name is Simon Strange, and I've been a professional Game Designer for 13 years. I've shipped 15 console titles, including Tony Hawk, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia, Rampage, Godzilla, Hellboy, Army of Two, and others. I've recently founded my own company - Sunstone Games - which is developing mobile-platform games using Corona (another lua-based engine). I've been using love for a little over 3 years, mostly as an engine to prototype gameplay concepts.

About Shadowfist:
Shadowfist was introduced in 1995 during the first rush of CCG games following the release of Magic:TG. Shadowfist distinguished itself for a focus on 4-player action, massive comeback, great mechanics, and awesome Hong-Kong cinema theme. Shadowfist has been in continuous production and development for more than 15 years, with tens of millions of cards printed. Check it out at www.shadowfist.com

[TechnoCat]

I'd be interesting in working on a larger scale project with you.
In fact, I just started doing Corona development stuff. https://bitbucket.org/dannyfritz/corona ... r/overview
I'm a senior in Computer Science at Purdue University about to graduate in December. http://about.me/dannyfritz

[ljdp]

Interesting, I did make a virtual card table a while a go, have a look here
http://www.locofilm.co.uk/blog/2010/cards/

[Mr. Strange]

Interesting, I did make a virtual card table a while a go, have a look here
http://www.locofilm.co.uk/blog/2010/cards/

I'm well aware! In fact, I tried to contact you about getting your help back when you first posted this, because your implementation overlaps with some things I wanted. Are you willing to give me a hand in incorporating some aspects of that project into mine?

[ljdp]

Sure, If you also need a hand with graphics I can help with that too.

[tsturzl]

I'd give you a hand but I've never played shadow fist. I've got my Cisco Networking certification, I've done a lot of network programming, I've programmed for almost 8 years now, and I know lua and love pretty well, though I have no degrees in computer science(I'm a culinary student..).

If you need help I can help you with the networking concept, however I'm busy with my own project right now, otherwise I'd love to help.

[Mr. Strange]

@tsturzl - I might try to tap you for a secondary part - implementing a lobby / chat room to help people set up games.

Each user has a scrolling chat window, and a field at the bottom for entering text.

We create a table of text strings, which is kept on the server. Each time a player sends a string, it gets appended to the list, and timestamped. The server periodically broadcasts the last few minutes of the table to all clients, who build their own local copy of appended texts, sorted by timestamp.

If that sort of thing sounds up your alley, I'd love to have your help.

[appleide]

This sounds like a good challenge and I'd be interested in working on it - if you think I'm up to it.

I know the in and outs of lua and I (only) made http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2574 and http://textbookcentral.com.au/. (python/django) You can also look at more of my code here: https://github.com/meric/ (more recent more relevant).

Having made the latter made me more aware of network programming but not the kind you've described, but it sounds interesting to me so I'd like to explore it further.

I have never worked on a project where there are team members more experienced than I am, so I would love the opportunity; but only if you think you can take on someone with less experience.

I am also almost finished with my Software Engineering degree.