Expert: Eddie - 9/26/2004

Question
Let me start by telling you what I am looking to do. I want to create a boggle game to run on a LAN. What the program would need to do is take words as input from mutiple machines and verfy that they are legitamate. When the time is up all of the lists would be compared with one another and duplicate answers dropped. The remaining words would be counted and a score sheet generated. I would like it to be automated to the point that I start it and when the time is up a score sheet pops up without me doing anything. My thinking at this point would be to write an application that runs on a server and the other machines log into it but I don't know how to handle the I/O for such a program. I can write the stuff to process all the info I just don't know how to get it in one place to process it. If you can tell me what commands I would need to accomplish such a task I think I can figure it out. Also if you have a better idea of how to accomplish my task I would love to hear it. Sorry for the long question but my students and I appreciate your time.  

Answer
Hello George,

As far as the fast calculating at the end of the game, that shouldn't be a problem with processors being as fast as they are now. It looks like you just want to run a bunch of strcmp()'s on a 2D array of strings, and again to compare answers. Easy enough.

Now with the networking thing, I've never done any before, but a buddy of mine used this program called Net-Z and told me it was great and bragged about how simple it made the networking code. Net-Z uses the concept of duplicated objects as in, an object gets created on the server, it duplicates it automatically on the clients as well. Net-Z is freeware, as long as the project isn't for commercial use. You can get it here, http://www.quazal.com/ . Sorry I couldn't be helpful with the networking.

I hope this information was helpful

- Eddie