Hearts for KDE

The SVN version is coming along nicely and soon (by the end of the week) a release will probably be in order.

The new network server already surpassed the old one in functionality. It's still less code than the old one.

The main addition was database integration for username lookup (the same database format that drupal uses to facilitate future integration with the webpage), and the option to add computer players to network games --- this makes it easier to play a game if there are few people online.

I just commited to SVN a new way to initialise the game.

Previously, the game greeted you with a game setup screen:

Now, it goes right into the game, but the application has gained a menu bar:

On this menu bar, you can find the old options.

This has several advantages:

1. You get right into the game. If this is the default mode of play, it should be fast.

Less than a week after setting this up, a new version of drupal gets released and I have to upgrade.

I started completely rewriting the network server today. I was a Qt-based network server. A nice idea, but I couldn't use it on my current server (without maintaining a copy of Qt on the server myself: too much pain).

I started rewriting it in Python and have almost all the functionality I had before.

I was amazed at how fast Python development goes compared to C++ (I wrote it in two hours) and at how small the code is (226 lines versus 2024 for the old code). Everything was designed already, so I only had to port it.

I have picked up this project again. I will be updating the code and releasing a new version soon.