DMU Computer and Information Sciences Project Proposal

Project Title Diplomacy in the Information Age

Proposer Martin Stacey

Software Language with good GUI facilities, preferably object oriented

Covers GUI development, possibly agent oriented programming, possibly Web application development, possibly network OS application development

Skills Required Programming, understanding the game. (Understanding network operating systems, if you get into that area.)

Brief Description

As well as being the best board game of all time, Diplomacy is a game ideally suited to playing using computers, or even over the internet by widely distributed players. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Build a system to support Diplomacy players, including a graphic display of the board with the units occupying spaces, and a way of entering moves; ideally this should include zooming on particular regions of the board. The system should also include a way of logging email messages sent to other players; ideally it should enable the user to send messages to other players directly from the game interface. Your design decisions include whether to build a single program to support the entire game; or a program to support a single player, that talks to other copies of the same program on other machines; or a distributed system comprising a program to support each player plus a master program owned by the game administrator, to handle the interaction between players.

Variants

Build a system for playing Diplomacy over the web, perhaps using Java. How do you handle security ?

Build a system to support another multi-user board game. (Choose carefully - Diplomacy has the advantage that the mechanics of the game are very simple even if the game as a whole isn't.)