Re: GSoC idea: Gnome Games + Telepathy Tube

[Thomas Mills Hinkle <Thomas_Hinkle alumni brown edu>]

So for competitive mode, we can use a small grid beside the major one to
display the opponent's state (the exact numbers are hidden). Winner is
judged by time.

For collaborative mode, either use two grids as above (show numbers) or
only one. Using two grids will avoid all lag and conflict problems and
won't let player's mind be interrupted. To fill in one grid, the latency
should be considered, so it will be a little more complex, but I think
this is more fun, no?

I like the idea of the competitive mode -- sounds simple and fun, and more likely to be used than the collaborative modes. The collaboration would be cool too, don't get me wrong, but I think you'll run into a lot more bugs implementing it.

An even simpler feature that would be nice to add to sudoku (perhaps as a "first step") would be a "share this sudoku" button or something like that -- basically, if you finish a fun game, you could send it to a contact to do as well -- either as data or as a PDF or what have you. I realize this is somewhat out of scope, but I imagine a lot of users would like it.

In short, if it were me, I'd go about implementing things in steps as follows...

1. Add support for "sharing" games you enjoy / opening games that have been shared with you.
2. Add support for competing on a shared game with a timer, either in live mode or in a delayed/report back mode (i.e. I could give a friend a puzzle and he would know that I solved it in 3:35 and he had to try to beat my time).
3. Add support for live updating of your opponent's puzzle grid (the side-by-side grid showing how far your opponent has gotten.
4. Add support for collaboration. You might start with the side-by-side grids and then move onto the collaboration on one grid. With one grid, there are a lot of interesting interface questions... like how do you handle it when you and your partner both fill the same square at the same time, how do you handle it if you fill in squares that conflict, etc. etc.

Just my 2 cents.

Tom