Text Based Cell Phone Games

A few weeks ago a friend of mine suggested what I at first thought was a joke - being able to play TicTacToe over a cell phone.

Tic Tac Toe via Cell Phone? What?

After having several discussions in a row and him having countless people come and talk to me about how cool it would be I was finally convinced to at least consider the project.

Now I am working on the third revision of the server before a small alpha test, and have learned so many things during the process.

The server basically continuously checks an email address to which a cell phone can text a keyed message as directed by the game. The server then processes the command sent to the server and sends the correct response, usually a game board in the form of "| |x|o|\n|x|o| |\n| | | |" to the correct cell phone in the form of a text message. It also can recognize a victory and will respond with "Victory!" and "Defeat!" messages.

The best part of this completely server ran game is that there is no need for a "Client" program and aside from having to be a customer of one of the service providers I currently support [Code changes are required to support different providers] there are no modifications or applications needed on the player's cell phone.

Card System. AKA Play for free with a friend who hasn't paid

After I was convinced by many, many people that they were crazy enough to actually -pay- for being able to play Tic-Tac Toe with their friends via Cell Phone I had to come up with a method of getting some cash out of this.

So I came up with the "Card System". Basically I can give people a UserID that has to be activated and once activated will only work for their cell number, this allows me to control who and more importantly how many people are able to play.

Everyone with a UserID can have one active game with any other cell phone, ever if they don't have an ID themselves allowing people who have paid to play with whoever they want.

What's Next?

Well currently I have to finish the third revision and get ready for alpha testing. But after this project I have a lot of ideas.

Cell Phone MUD anyone?