Question

I’m developing a two player checkers website. The idea is to allow people sign up and add to a list of friends they have. They can then send or accept requests to/from a friend on their list to play a game of checkers via the site.

I’m using Ruby on Rails to develop it (It’s mandatory in case people think another language is more appropriate!).

There are two things main things I’m researching at the moment:

1: How to manage and maintain the game state over a browser:
I’m only used to developing web applications that follow your standard data entry and browsing format i.e. Signup and post info, saving to database, etc.
Will I have to create some sort of lightweight server each time a new game is started to manage that game? (There may be multiple games in progress at any time)

2: How to represent the board:
I’ve looked into two-dimensional arrays and bit-board (32 bits). From what I can gather bit-boards are extremely fast but difficult to test and debug. Will the speed performance difference really be that much considering its only a two player game and therefore requires no AI?

Thanks

Answer 1

Checkout this project for some inspiration. It seems very similar to what you are trying to do.

http://github.com/ryanb/govsgo and http://govsgo.com/