I don’t know Russian, but I suppose I think I’m pretty good at recognizing Cyrillic characters and assuming it must be Russian. But I checked with Google Translate and it tells me that this is Russian for “Network Fool game.” The video also includes some Cyrillic text on buttons and such, but no audio.
It turns out Network Fool isn’t just a card game. It is an plugin for the chat system CommFort. Maxim describes the architecture pretty well:
Since the text chat is a client-server structure I had to write the server side of the game – to store statistics and other calculations, as well as the client part. However, the client side is not so simple, it not only communicates with the server, but also starts a separate process for the graphic display of the game and builds a GUI in the chat window. The server and client side is a dll library written with VCL, and the graphical shell is a separate exe using FMX.
I love that network fool integrates with a 3rd party system, extending a chat system into a full card game platform. The fact that is uses both FireMonkey and VCL to make it all work is a great example of flexibility and versatility. It is developed with Delphi, and uses FireDAC and Named Pipes to make it all work.
Watching the video I would not have expected that it was a card game plugged into a chat system. It looks more like a card game with an integrated chat window. I’m always tickled to see people extend systems in new and creative ways like this. Certainly a cool app contender.
Notice the VCL button doesn’t have an icon on it? You may remember the old one with the colorful, 3D shaded shapes: circle, cube and cone. I’m working on a new one that I hope you all like just as much. Stay tuned!