King of Vegas

Handango Mobile Software: Java Phone Software - Counterpart

Well, Counterpart sales have been dissapointing thus far. I'm a little bummed, but it's only been on sale for 2 days, and half that time it was pulled from the list because I modified some details on it. None of the other games released at the same time have sales, so I'm not the only one.

Just don't know much about this market yet.

What I do know, though, is my next J2ME project. :-) The idea came quickly after Counterpart, and I was going to use the month to decide on my plan...but, this goes beyond J2ME...this is an exciting project!

My next game will be "Texas Hold 'Em: King of Vegas" (tentative title), which will be based on the wildly popular card game.

Funny story, the idea came from me thinking about what might sell well. The card games seem to do well, and especially Texas Hold 'Em. But, I'd never played the game or even knew much about it! I talked with my buddy Steve (an avid player) and did a little research on my own and fell in love with the idea.

Now I'm playing on Yahoo, have a book by Ken Warren on the subject, and have already started working on the engine! Mind you, real development won't start til next month. But, in my spare moments, I've been working on the rudimentary engine:

* Card class
* Deck class
* Hand checker (what's the best hand of these 7 cards?)

This will be an interesting experiment in optimized code. Because a Card class just won't work out in the end. I'm going to have to abandon class structure for parts of this engine in favor ultra-optimized, if slightly obfuscated code. The reason is, there's a lot of effort in finding what the best 5 cards of a 7-card hand is...and before that, figuring out what *could be* the best possible hand before the Turn and River cards are seen!!!!

It will be great fun, although a great challenge in AI. But I look forward to it. :-)

As for Counterpart, the game ain't going away and I have some ideas for simple improvement. At any point, I can add smooth scrolling back into the game (for phones that can handle it) and/or smaller tile modes, so smaller-screened phones can see more at once.

There is also one small defect that Sean found, which is easily fixable...but I'll wait on updating the application for now. If sales start to pick up (or, start, period!), I'll determine my course of action. As it stands, if no one buys it, I won't have to address any complaints! :-)

OK, then...that's all for now.