MIME-Version: 1.0
Server: CERN/3.0
Date: Sunday, 01-Dec-96 19:13:21 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 4206
Last-Modified: Tuesday, 04-Jun-96 19:54:44 GMT
CORNELLopoly Home Page
CORNELLopoly....... by
MULVA Inc.

Our work is no longer beta...here's the
alpha release!
...And just what is this madness???
We have implemented an online version of the popular Parker
Brother's board game Monopoly, adapted to reflect the trends and
geography of the Cornell community. Our implementation has obvious
variations from the traditional version in order to
illustrate many of the concepts inherent in the distributed systems paradigm.
For more information, refer to the Project Design &
Specification document.
The game is played over the Internet, requiring a Java interpreter
running either on Solaris or WindowsNT. It is not be as graphically
advanced as the commercial CDROM version by any stretch of the
imagination. However, enhancements such as real-time updates of
fluctuating interest rates and inflation heightens the excitement
of game play. An exposition of the modified
rules outlines these enhancements. It is our intent to
illustrate distributed programming concepts by way of this
entertaining media.
...and what do we learn from this?
A new language, Object Oriented Design, and Distributed Systems are the three
areas of computer science that we exploited for this project.
We utilized object oriented design skills for the data structures of the program.
We also see how theory meets practice in a practical distributed system.
...and how does it tie in with Distributed Systems?
This game is server-less. All player correspondence is done via
message passing. We learned concepts of various broadcast algorithms,
support of fault tolerance, and methods of mimicking real-time behavior
in a distributed system.
...and how do we measure success?
Unlike Dean Witter, we don't measure success one invester at a time.
If two or more players play, completing the game according to the
rules, then we are in business of contributing "Cornellopoly" to the
expanding population of Java applications on the Internet.
...and finally, how are we progressing?
MULVA - Name of Jerry Seinfeld's girlfriend which rhymes with a
part of the female anatomy.
Courtesy of the "Junior Mint" episode of
Seinfeld.
Visitors since March 25th, 1996