Rolling out a ROApp - Programming GPS and OpenStreetMap Applications with Java - page 167

Chapter 12

Rolling out a ROApp

12.1 Introduction

After a rough construction of the ROServer, the architect directly adds the
ROApp layer as indicated by the four-layer architecture in the previous
chapter (page 145). Server and application layers represent the technical
and semantic aspects, respectively.
The mission of this topic is the creation of an executable demonstration
prototype, which is equivalent to establishing a first cycle. This chapter
ends with the barebones of a game. The reader can experience his own
life cycle development by playing, adding rules, implementing details,and
playing against other readers and/or computers.

12.2 LC: The Game Scenario

The architectural approach is dierent than the developers', who has to add
the details later. The architect creates the four components representing
the layers as early as possible and then adds functionality (with prelimi-
nary prototype implementations) step by step. Every concrete application
can introduce new technical challenges, which should be shifted onto the
server on a long-term basis. From the object-oriented view, the application
extending the server represents one server object for a specific application.
Developers like games and board games, in particular, have clearly de-
fined, discrete rule- and game sets. After implementing these, the program-
ming challenge is the automation of players with programmed intelligence
for decision making.
We will use the board game Scotland Yard for our example. 1 This game
was chosen, since the game board is basically a city map of London reduced
to a network with 199 stations and three map features cabbussub similar
to the Germany map already used for the Navigator on page 129. Since the

1 The current publisher is Ravensburger; a previous US edition was published by
Milton Bradley. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland Yard (board game) .

167