justCheckers

Now On Gitorious and Launchpad!

Dorian — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:21:06 +0000

Hurrah! The justCheckers project is now on Gitorious! Check out our new spiffy, glorious and currently very spartan setup there for managing and distributing our git and wiki stuff. But wait folks there is more!* I have also updated the Launchpad page for justCheckers, as the way to track bugs, feature requests and other project management stuff. Not everything is up to date, but I will work on both. I am considering a move away from Sourceforge, both as a way to simplify my life and also as a brand new start for the project. I will setup more things on Gitorious, Launchpad and here on the project site in general… How soon I get to everything all depends on the needs that I encounter and time I have to work on this project.

* Yes, my pay-cheque has the words “TV” on it, so I can totally get away with using TV salemen lines.

And We’re Back!

Dorian — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:18:35 +0000

After the madness of the past few months, I have a bit more free time to work on justCheckers. Not that the fast pace of the last few months has subsided. I just managed to catch up on other projects and free up time here and there.

The first order of business will be to clear out the old code and get a working Android version of the app. Along the way I will add in unit tests and hopefully make it easier for other people to come out and help with the development.

Website Migration

Dorian — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:30:31 +0000

I just finished migrating the website to a new install and a new hosting service provider. Hopefully everything worked smoothly, and development on the game can begin again proper.

Website Refresh

Dorian — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:13:43 +0000

Amongst the various changes that I have planned for justCheckers, I have updated the website. I hope you like the new theme, which I think is much cleaner (even if it is the default) than before. Also I have updated the content of the website, to reflect the new changes.

Probably the most notable change is that I have taken down the Development Guide. Many things will change with the project, as I change it into an Android app. Many of the best practices no longer apply, now that I have transitioned over to Git. Since at the moment I am the sole developer of justCheckers, I think it is pointless for me to keep up a Code of Conduct or Coding Style page up. Many of the changes I will do over the next little while will be invasive, so my code will be of varying style and quality. My many goal is to release a working version as soon as possible.

Before anyone asks: no I am not closing up the project. The code will still remain free (as in speech). I plan on maintaining the project indefinitely. justCheckers is not going to disappear or suddenly become proprietary. However I have a lot of ground I need to cover before I feel comfortable bringing on more developers.

Moving to Git

Dorian — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 23:17:37 +0000

justCheckers is getting with the times and moving over to using Git as our main revision control system.

Git is a much more flexible system and I can manage contributions from the community. If I hesitated with giving out commit access, it was because there is far more trouble with dealing with merging code and dealing with radical changes in Subversion than in Git. So I am a lot more willing to reopening the project to a full team.

I will update the downloads page with instructions on how to access Git later this weekend. In the meantime, feel free to visit the justcheckers SourceForge project page for instructions on how to checkout the code in Git.

Solo Coding and Android Progress

Dorian — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:27:06 +0000

The move to using Android as a base for justCheckers is going well. I’ve already managed to setup a nice looking user interface. And the information screens work without any problems. All that remains is to build a settings screen and the game screens. This entire project is still a work in progress and so I expect many changes as the project matures.

Another thing I realized is that at the moment I do not need a team of developers to build justcheckers. At least at the moment, I can get more done without worrying about coordinating a team. I might ask for contributions at a later date, but for now I’m going to fly solo.

Behold the Android

Dorian — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 17:13:39 +0000

Just in case someone thought that this project is dead, I would to disprove them of this. I’ve resumed work on justCheckers with a slight change of direction. Over the past few months, I’ve started work as an Android developer for a media firm and I’d like to apply all that I have learned on this project. By switching over to Android, there are a lot of things that will get simplified. Especially the end product is a lot easier to deploy on Android handsets than on desktops. Does this mean that the desktop version will cease to exist? No. Rather it will be easier to the desktop version, once the existing codebase is refactored. But for now I will concentrate on the Android version, because it is easier, more fun and will easily raise the visibility of the project.

New Site

Dorian — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:42:36 +0000

Apologizes for the surprise website change. However after months of silence and lots of haggling with Drupal, I just could not take it anymore. So now the official justCheckers site runs on WordPress 3! Yay!

This website is still a work in progress. I still need to upload the old content from the older Drupal site. Also while the default theme is great, it really needs some love before I can say the website is fully ready. Hopefully before the end of next week, I’ll have most of this done.

New Developers and Mailing List

Dorian — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:30:30 +0000

I am e-mailing back all those interested in contributing to justCheckers. We also have one new developer: welcome pushdown! Finally the justcheckers-developers mailing list is back in action. I suggest all developers and potential contributers subscribe to the developer mailing … Continue reading →

Apologies to All Who Answered My Call for Help

Dorian — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:58:48 +0000

Oh my, I must apologize to everyone who has offered to help with the justCheckers project. It seems that my Gmail spam filter likes to chuck SourceForge related e-mails into the abyss of the spam folder. And I just noticed a whole thread of people offering to help with justCheckers! I apologize for not checking earlier. I will get back to all of you who replied back to my call for help, very, very shortly. In the future I will keep an eye on my spam folder, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.