Development Starting: CocoaFIBS for Mac OS X

[agerson]

For my Masters program in CS I have to design, create, and document a program from scratch. I am planning to write a FIBS Client in Cocoa/Obj-C which will run native in Mac OS 10. I hope to have it done in about 6 months. Any thoughts or ideas are welcome.

Adam

[Bondy]

I'd love to see that, agerson!  It annoys me now having to put up with Java or Classic interfaces for FIBS when everything else I use is in such a pretty Cocoa interface!  And when I look at the player list, there are always quite a few people using the Mac client, so I suspect a good Cocoa front-end will be quite popular.

[webrunner]

Good idea and good for our community!  

If you want i can create a forum for your fibsclient.
Then you can create polls on f.i. features and maybe even a name (or do you already have a name?)

Just let me know.  

[alef]

Some name suggestions:

CocoaFibs
MacXFibs
MXFibs
XFibs
FibsX
FibOsX
MacGammon
BackgaMac

I prefer the first because it sounds like a breakfast cereal  

[Bondy]

One early request/suggestion: Have you thought about building RepBot/TourneyBot (maybe even ChouetteBot) in?

[agerson]

A forum sounds great. It is only in the design phase right now, but I have just received formal approval from the CS department for my project and I have been assigned a graduate advisor so it is going to happen. As far as a name, I am going to keep it as CocoaFIBS at least as a development name. Then who knows... I have not thought about including support for those bots. As far as 1.0 release I am looking to accomplish the basics of chat and gameplay. Can you tell me more about what would be involved in supporting them?

[gotsha]

ager...don't forget a GNUBG interface.  Checkout http://mapage.noos.fr/gnubgosx/ if you have already done so.

Best of Luck!

[webrunner]

Take a look here.
You will find sone usefull information there.  

[burper]

A couple questions:

1) Who is this Bondy that talks about ChouetteBot?

2) Can he write code?

[SirLuzalot]

I have some specific ideas Agerson... but that discussion was put somewhere else! Get in touch if you need help with graphics, general functions and useability and whatever else that should implemented I might have forgotten about..

Best wishes, awaiting the masterpiece fibsclient to beat them all..  

[cthulhu]

Some name suggestions:

CocoaFibs
MacXFibs
MXFibs
XFibs
FibsX
FibOsX
MacGammon
BackgaMac

I prefer the first because it sounds like a breakfast cereal 

There's already a client called xfibs so I'd avoid that name. It's for a unix system.

[MadMatt]

Some name suggestions:

CocoaFibs
MacXFibs
MXFibs
XFibs
FibsX
FibOsX
MacGammon
BackgaMac

I prefer the first because it sounds like a breakfast cereal 

There's already a client called xfibs so I'd avoid that name. It's for a unix system.

yes, true, I would avoid anything with just X and FIBS in the name, as an X generally signifies a Unix/X Window System software.

[JayWalker]

I am a newcomer to FIBS and quickly got hooked, but I was annoyed by the missing client application for MacOS X. So I just decided last week to start coding a client under the name "XFIBS". Then I came here and found out that agerson recently got the same idea. Funny coincidence, I guess it means NOW is the time to make a client for Apple's "new" operating system, which has been on the streets since 2000. I am also a student of CS, but my implementation was to be a hobby project, and I'm happy to read that agerson is dedicating a Masters program to the task. That is bound to result in a well-designed, robust application for the poor Mac fibsters who want their Aqua look and feel. I appreciate the effort and I'm looking forward to the release. I'll probably continue rolling my own anyway, just for fun.

As for names, CocoaFIBS is cute, but a little esoteric and confusing, as the average Mac user doesn't and needn't know the name of the umbrella framework developers use to build OS X applications. FIBSOSX is quite straightforward, but maybe just too many acronym letters in a row. How about MacFIBSX, if the author of the Classic MacFIBS client doesn't mind?

-J
--
"Fast, cheap, good: pick any two"

[alef]

There's already a client called xfibs so I'd avoid that name. It's for a unix system. 

Wow, so there is....

New thread: Older, lesser known FIBS clients

[jinnate]

Some name suggestions:

CocoaFibs
...
BackgaMac

I prefer the first because it sounds like a breakfast cereal 

ditto.

[agerson]

Does anyone know if any of the existing GUI fibs clients are open source? Its always helpful to see what other have done.


Adam

[tryout]

Does anyone know if any of the existing GUI fibs clients are open source? Its always helpful to see what other have done.

I'm not sure but you could have a look at KBackgammon. It ships with KDE.

[webrunner]

have you looked at the thread i mentioned?
It really has all the info you need.
Take a look at this page especially: http://www.fibs.demon.co.uk/CLIP/clip.html

[Bondy]

A couple questions:

1) Who is this Bondy that talks about ChouetteBot?

2) Can he write code?

Hi, Burper!

I'm relatively new to FIBS.  I suspect there still aren't many people around who would know who I am.

Yes, I can write code.  I'm an honours student in Computer Science.

As for bot implementations: I'd mostly be interested in RepBot; I just mentioned ChoetteBot and TourneyBot as extra ideas.
Adding RepBot to CocoaFIBS wouldn't be that difficult.  The way I imagined it, you'd just right-click a user and get a list of options, like 'ask', 'list', 'friends', 'vouch', or 'complain'.  Selecting one of the commands would just send the command 'tell RepBot ask X' (or whatever) to the server.  The results would come back as a tell, which should go straight to your output window.

Or, for a bit more fun:
If someone invites you to a match, I assume a dialogue box will pop up informing you of their desire.  Perhaps when CocoaFIBS receives an invitation from X, it could automatically send the request 'tell RepBot ask X', parse the next message it receives from RepBot, and include the player's reputation in the dialogue box.  Of course you'd have to catch the 'User has no vouchers or complainers' message, and you'd have to cope with RepBot not always being online.  A bit more intricate, but still within the realms of the possible.

Cheers,
-Bondy

[burper]

Heya Bondy!

That all sounds good, except that I think you can fully integrate RepBot by making reputation a first degree attribute, just like rating, experience, idle time etc... That way users don't have to pull down a menu and ask, it will just be there. The details and actions can still be off the menu as you describe.

Yes, that is a lot of ask's to do, but it can be done in a background thread, with question marks until it is fully populated. They could be cached from previous sessions and updated by the thread. In fact, Avi (the current maintainer) has spec'd out a clip-alike protocol for RepBot where a client could retrieve reputations in bulk, but neither of us has gotten around to implementing it yet. Hey, you've got 6 months

As far as Tourneybot goes, I am working on a GUI now that you can review for me if you like, or borrow ideas from. Details available in the TB forum.