Client: Ford & Wise, Inc.
Industry: Entertainment Software
Year: 1996 - 2002

Designed and created an application for creating chess-like games. Includes the ability to add new piece types. Allows for more than two players and alliances between players. Originally written in HAL on the Mac utilizing sound and speech APIs, then ported to Java. This game started as a four player chess variant that was popular in the 19th century, then gradually evolved to include a dungeons and dragons/4 person chess game hybrid. There are four levels which must be searched for a treasure chest and a key. There are many fantasy pieces like wildebeests, and even bombs. The majority of the board is hidden at the beginning of the game, and gradually revealed by piece movement or the use of candles and lamps. There are 14 separate artifacts that pieces can pick up, hand to each other, and use in the game.

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Implemented as a collection of Model/View/Controller trios to support multi-board game definitions. The view class observes the model class. Used the Castor library for marshalling and unmarshalling Java objects to and from XML to save and restore the state of a game. This laid the groundwork for writing an editor for creating new games using new boards and pieces.

Tools: Java, C, FORTH, Model/View/Controller Design Pattern, Game AI

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