How do I find the software

[karinza]

Hi,

I have a website dedicated to widows and widowers, www.widows-and-widowers.com, and want to be able to add games to the site for people.  I just don't have a clue where to get the software or how to do it.

I would like to have backgammon, scrabble, pinochole, cribbage and things like that.

Does anyone know where to find this stuff?  There are many sites out there that you can play games on.  They had to get the sofware somewhere....

[alef]

hi karinza,

it depends what kind of backgammon playing you'd like on your site. the easiest thing to add would be a player vs bot (software) page, such as Motif. but considering the nature of your site i suspect you're looking for something more socialable! in which case you either have to create your own backgammon server (not easy) or can request a room on an existing server. i know that PlayMaker offers rooms, and suspect most other fee-paying servers do too.

this might be too basic, but you could also recommend your members use DailyGammon and just keep a registered list of widows & widowers to invite each other to play against. the advantage with turn-based play is the opponents don't have to be connected at the same time, and at the end of each sequence of moves you can leave a message which allows for conversations to develop.

or you could just organize tournaments of your members here on FIBS? how many people on your site have expressed an interest in backgammon?

in the near future FIBS is likely to have a rooms system using a local proxy (extra software running between FIBS and you), contact player burper for more info on that.

good luck,
alef

[karinza]

Thank you for answering.

If I am reading this correctly you are saying that there is no way to have them stay on my site and play the games?

How do places like yahoo set up their games?

[alef]

I don't have a technical background, hopefully others will add feedback here, but my impression is that creating your own backgammon server is not easy, but it is certainly possible.

Rod at ParlorPlay is working on creating his own I believe. Yahoo would have had programmers write their software I'm guessing, but it could have been based on something pre-existing? To make it worth your effort you'll need to have enough people interested in using it. Here's an interesting question: what's the minimum population of players needed to sustain a new online backgammon server? Having a bot or two playing there is particularly essential in the beginning, helps deal with having an odd numbered number of players wishing to play.

[burper]

Why an entire server? LEverage the ones that exist. How about putting a frame in your pages that contains parlorplay or the javafibs applet?

But you want only your own population of users right? More difficult.

There was something (forget the name) that was the 'swiss army knife of backgammon software' that might help your users play each other p2p rather than in server mode. You will probably have more luck hitting google..

[alef]

There was something (forget the name) that was the 'swiss army knife of backgammon software'...

That would be BGBlitz, an excellent bot with playing strength and features somewhere between Jellyfish and gnubg. And as burper says, it can be used to play peer-to-peer, although I suspect some technical confidence is required.

karinza, I think the important questions are how many players do you foresee using it? and how dedicated are you to setting it up?

[burper]

Hey karinza, it sounds like JIBS is close to being available for simple game playing.

But the larger problem remains: you need an audience. I suppose if you have 2 people chatting and they decide to play backgammon, it would be nice to be able to host the game, but you can let FIBS host it now.

You could also wrap parlorplay inside an HTML frame so you still have your stuff around the edges.