A Journey of a Thousand Miles...

Today I have taken the first step in my journey of implementing Clixmaker: I have downloaded the Python source code of the Google Channel API tic tac toe demo, made a trivial change to it (inserting the word "Python" in the message displayed at the beginning of the game), and deployed it to Google (my app is called clixtactoe). I then tested it by performing the following steps:

1. Steps 2 thru 6 are performed on my desktop computer
2. Visit the web site: clixtactoe.appspot.com
3. Log into Google (if not already logged in)
4. Copy the link displayed to the clipboard
5. Paste it into clixtactoe.txt in my Shared folder
6. Edit that text file by changing "localhost:8080" to "clixtactoe.appspot.com"
7. Using my other computer (the laptop), open the above text file by accessing my desktop's Shared folder
8. Copy the link to the clipboard
9. Paste the link into my browser's address bar
10. The game starts; the first player to move is my desktop computer
11. Players then alternate moving by clicking on the board
12. I deliberately let one player win: the game-over board/message is displayed

So I'm finally on my way towards that far off goal of implementing Clixmaker. The next step is to implement the multi-player test Scrabble game and play it with my niece. I must learn about Canvas and HTML5 in order to display the Scrabble board (which is performed with JavaScript code on each player's local hard drive, they are called clients). I must also learn how to write the server-side code, which is written in Python (a language I'm familiar with and enjoy using, unlike JavaScript, which is unfamiliar and uglier than Python).

I'm going to watch the CBC News at 5 and then have dinner. After dinner I must call Victoria, who left a message in my voice mail in October and until now I haven't got around to returning her call. I used to work with her at Fred Victor in the early 90s and ran into her on the Sherbourne bus several months ago. Tomorrow or the day after I will wash my hair and get a haircut. Then I will trim my beard. I hope my sister will visit me next month. She said before she would come for 8 or 9 days and then go to Montreal. Early this morning I got all my tax stuff ready for Susan, my sister-in-law, who does my taxes every year. Maybe I will go over to my brother's place on the weekend (Susan is his partner).

I still can't believe how easy that was: getting the Python version of the tic tac toe demo to work, compared to getting the Java version to work (which was a nightmare). The only tricky part was figuring out that I needed to perform Step 6 in the above list of 12 steps. Go, Clixmaker! Long live Python and JavaScript! Hurray for Canvas and HTML5! Clixmaker (the game editor) installed on a thousand desktops, and one million registered users of Clixmaker who play its hundreds of available multi-player games on their mobile devices: that's my ultimate goal. Gaming for the masses! Make your own games! I guess tomorrow I will start learning JavaScript/Canvas/HTML5. Later I can learn server-side programming using Python. Hopefully this spring I will have a working multi-player Scrabble game up and running. Praise be to Google the Almighty, and His Google App Engine, upon which Clixmaker is based and hosted. Golly!