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SPC Poker is obviously inspired by the Japanese amine 'Kyatto Ninden Teyande' and the American/Canadian adaptation 'Samuri Pizza Cats'.
The SPC Poker project started in 1997 in a tiny 24-hour computer lab. in Bristol, England. At that time I had just moved to university and discovered what it was like to live two lives, one in the real world - and one on the net! When I first looked up SPC on the web (several years earlier), there was only one site dedicated to SPC - even Princess Vi wasn't on-line yet. Time past, sites started appearing I became a silent member of the WPCA and that's where my on-line life stayed for a while - until that fateful move.
At Uni. internet access was free and I had time. I would stay up all-night talking to SPC fans on-line, not going to bed until 7,8 in the morning - That's the price you pay for living in England and wanting to be on the net. After a while, I looked at some of the great work other pillars of the SPC community were doing and taught 'How can I best serve the community?' My talent is software - I've been a programmer since 8 and have had plenty of professional experience by this time, so I thought - "I know, I'll start the SPC Fan Software Development Team".
One of the initial projects suggested by Rebo Valence and Survechay was SPC Poker. Unfortunately just a things got going Uni. hit me with assignments and exams. So, the project had a set back and people lost interest. However, as dedicated to SPC as ever, I was determined to complete the project, even if it meant doing it alone.
That summer, I took a holiday to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. It was sitting on the beach there, that the concept got developed into a design and storyboard. (Now that's dedication - my favourite place in the world and I work on SPC Poker!!!!)
Later in the summer of 1998, my interest changed focus. The company I was working for at the time decided to create a 3D gaming engine (Ok, it wasn't that spontaneous, but the work started then!) This was a great development as they agreed to sponsor the SPC Video Game - An opportunity I couldn't pass up!
However, life isn't always a bed of roses and the company got into financial trouble. The company went under, I lost my job and the SPC Video Game lost its sponsor.
So in the summer of 1999, my attention returned to poker. That summer two versions of poker were developed 0.0 and 0.1.
Version 0.0 was created for the development of the AI for the computer players. It was a small DOS application. The computer players have six levels of difficulty and always play to win. The game works by scoring hands. A score is a 24-bit number and is made up of 6 four bit groups. The highest four bits represent the type of hand, straight, flush etc. The other 5 bit-pairs are used to split differences between hands and contains the values of the cards sorted in order so the lowest four bits contain the value of the smallest card value (ACE high!).
I'm afraid that's all I'm going to tell you about the technical side of the AI as it is the secret. What I can tell you is the computers player use basic game theory as a principle, but they have a personality. The computer players go all out to win, but will fold if it doesn't think it can win that hand. I also give you this warning, the computer has been know to cheat! If you take to long it might take a peek at your cards or it might start counting cards. In the planed online version (see later) I also plan to introduce computer players on-line, however you won't know who these are.
Version 0.1 was developed to create the SPC Poker gaming engine. As you may know there are many different ways to play poker. The type of game mentioned in 'The Pizza Cats Are Only Human (part 2).' Is straight draw poker. I'm let to learn the rules to this type of poker (can anyone help?). So, with all that in mind I developed the gaming engine so that it can take a wide range of ways to play.
In September 1999, I started my placement year for Uni. and moved to Geneve and started to work for CERN on the French/Swiss border. It was here that version 0.2 was created and was intended for release as version 1.0 alpha. This was the first version to include a graphical GUI. However using my usual method of programming of creating a version and then re-writing it for a final version - This version became un-maintainable as it got large - also there were a lot of things that would have meant that it would only work on my machine. Therefore this version was put down to experience and I started again.
In December 1993, I started development of the current version - 0.3. Also for the windows platform, this version has support for other hardware other than my own (Sensible really!). I've also designed this version to be able to use a variety of display methods. For efficiency, I write straight to the frame buffer on the graphics card. For this I use Direct X. However Direct X makes debugging difficult and so I included a native Windows GDI interface - However, if anyone decided to run this to play the game - I warning you it's very slow! I plan to introduce an Open GL interface latter, and port the code to other platforms, but unless there are any explicit requests, this is not a priority.
The main goals of this version are the same as version 0.2 with the added addition of theming. The idea was actually suggested to me by my dad as I was talking to him about the game over the phone. My dad suggested that I adapted it to a Pokemon Poker game, and maybe get some money for the effort by making it shareware. The next day, I was having a skiing lesson on Mont Blanc - I aborted skiing in that afternoon (even though I'd paid for it) and just sat in a restaurant on the top of a mountain next to the peek of Mont Blanc and doodled on a napkin. (OK, nerd alert :-P) I like Pokemon, hey us people in the UK are starved for amine and it is on telly at the moment! However I'm too much of a Fanatic to SPC - there's still hardly a day that goes by when I don't watch at least one episode (And I still go into manic depression in the afternoon if I only get to see part 1 of either 'The Great Comet Caper' or 'Bad Bird Uncaged' at lunch. It's sad I know - but SPC is my life!
After 3 hours in the restaurant and a huge pile of napkins latter, the coach left Mont Blanc and I had complete a design on how I could theme poker, to allow people to use their favourite whatever as the theme for the poker. To make it legal, due I not be allowed to make money off other peoples copyrights, the poker will be distributed as shareware and the themes independently as add-ons. However being a loyal SPC fan, any SPC fans will receive free registration (that's the kind of person I am) - details of this will come later as and when I'm ready. There are two types of theming that the application can handle - Scenario Based and Free-Play. In scenario based poker, you have to play to win basically. You are issued a chanllenge like your Princess Vi against Bad Bird, and your trying to win the UFO and every hand you win helps the Pizza Cats to rescue you, every hand you loose and the Pizza Cats full victim to one of the Big Cheese's bobby traps. Another examle of a scenario theme is the dreaded ClothesPin Test, where you play against Guru Lou for the Supper Robot 'he' (yeah right!) built! In this scenario, you can even play with other players to help you defeat Lou. Free-Play themes are for those who don't want to play a scenario. They a multi-player games on or off line for money, clothes pegs anything (theme dependant). However each player has a limited amount of money. You start with a finite amount when you run-out, you'll have to ask Francine for more - and she keeps track of whose borrowed what money and there's is a global on-line league of who's one the most -This tally is also kept for off-line games.
So what's the current state of play...Honestly, I've having trouble with the colours in a video file! OK, that's a little too detailed! The current state of version 0.3 is good. The framework for the application is complete, the gaming engine was developed in version 0.1 and is ready for inclusion in the framework as is the AI from version 0.0. The only thing left is the user interface for version 0.3. The user interface is quite a major issue. The interface is built up of several layers of graphics objects from bitmaps to video streams to hard coded graphics elements. A lot of work as each object is very complex, but I'm hopping the problems I'm currently having will not hold me back much longer.
OK, the first version won't be released with the SPC theme available. If biggest problem is, I'm very good when it comes to graphics programming, but useless when it comes to doing the drawings in the first place - I need the drawings as numbers. So once the 1.0 alpha version is released I'll turn my attention to developing the on-line server and hopefully leave it up to you lot to do some of the graphics - otherwise you'll get my graphics and pictures I can nick.
Right from the begging I knew this game need to have an on-line multi-player capability, so back in October 1999 I negotiated with PurrCat to let me use edoropolis.org for the SPCLobby Demon, the application that will co-ordinate all on-line games. I will organise other servers as time progresses. As part of this I had to apply to the Internet Protocol Authority for a port number for the TCP/IP protocol. A port number is like person's name when you address a letter. It lets computer's know which application a message is address to. The SPCLobby Protocol, which I also had to summit, is a generic protocol used to establish communication between a group of people who want to use the same application over a network as a group. This protocol will not only be used for SPC Poker applications, but other future ones as well. As part of this I will be developing an Active X control to handle the client side of this communication, so that other programmers, including those many Visual Basic programmers can use the facilities to connect two applications over a network or lap-link cable. The application to the Internet Protocol Authority was accepted in February 2000.
I hope this article was informative and gives you an insight into what I've been doing towards SPC Poker over the last few years. I've wrote this article quickly in the Laundrette at the request of Robert Glass- As I've been asking the question what would you prefer a website or the game? The response was a web site explaining what's going on with the game, so I'm prematurely releasing the website for that purpose.
If anyone wants anymore information, please e-mail me and I'll either respond personally or add to this site. I'd also appreciate any offers of help of any kind. I'm especially looking for at the moment someone to take over the SPCsd website, so you can see more updates and keep you more informed and maybe even develop this site a bit more than one page! If you want to help, please e-mail as I have a very long list of things that need doing from drawings, to programming, to whatever - you tell me what you do and I'll tell you what you can do to help. Hey, we may even be able to get this completed before summer?
Thanks a lot.
