Welcome to Daily Shinro!
A social gaming engine built on the Force.com platform
This website was built as an entry for the 2009 Force.com Cloud Developer Challenge.
A Casual Gaming Site
Daily Shinro is a fully operational gaming site built around a clever puzzle
concept. With attributes similar to Minesweeper and Sudoku, Shinro has been gaining popularity
on the iPhone platform. Alas, it is difficult to find on the Internet, so we had the idea of
creating an online playable version and releasing it as a 'daily puzzle' website.
To make the game more exciting, a social layer has been added. Players can create Social Leagues, allowing them to compare scores amongst a group of friends of office co-workers. Playing the game is fun, but comparing your scores against friends adds an extra dimension of challenging fun.
The idea of social leagues came from John, who plays a daily game of SET with his co-workers. They compiled a shared Google Apps spreadsheet with their scores and discovered how much fun it was to compete amongst a team. Each day the cry of "SET!" interrupts the standard workcycle for a few minutes as his team plays and compares results. This website was created out of a desire for more daily games with friendly competition.
If you enjoy playing Shinro, we highly recommend Shinro Mines, an excellent implementation of the game on the iPhone!
A Gaming 'Engine'
The website has been designed as an 'engine' that can serve multiple games, and even multiple
gaming sites - each capable of having an unique user interface.
The presentation layer has been kept separate from the logic layer, making it easy to implement a new games and new virtual websites, running from the same Force.com 'engine'.
The Force.com platform provides all the infrastructure services:
- Database for storing puzzles, players and scores
- Serving web pages from Force.com Sites
- Creating business logic in the Apex programming language
The game itself is written in JavaScript, interfacing with Force.com to retrieve game statistics (eg fastest, slowest and average times) and for storing the results of games.
User Management is maintained within Force.com. Almost all pages are public, so there is no need to authenticate users prior to access. The only requirement for authentication is when storing the results of a game and when editing a Player Profile.
Meet the Authors
This site was created by two well-known Force.com bloggers:
David Schach - Chicago, USA
Blog: X-Squared On Demand
David is a technology consultant, specializing in Salesforce and Force.com. David worked as the Salesforce System Administrator at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before becoming System Administrator, Data Consultant, and Sales Engineer at Model Metrics, a Salesforce.com implementation partner. David’s project history includes implementations and optimizations for Honeywell, Tribune Company, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange/Chicago Board of Trade merger, Advanced Equities Financial Corp, Kimball International, InfoUSA, Walgreens, Tripp Lite, Orbitz, MAN Roland, Lodgeworks, Initiate Systems, BouMatic, and Blue Shield of California.
While currently based in Chicago, David is thinking of moving to San Francisco to be 'closer to the action'. So, if you're looking for a top-notch Salesforce technologist, let him know!
John Rotenstein - Sydney, Australia
Blog: theEnforcer.net
John is a Salesforce Administrator at Atlassian, a successful Australian software company with a unique culture (see the video). John started using Salesforce in December 2007 and quickly moved into the more technical side of the system, using S-Controls and Apex to customize functionality. He enjoys it so much, he started a blog on Force.com technology. This challenge was his first foray into Visualforce and Sites.
"The best way to learn is by doing, and this Challenge sure had us do a lot in a short space of time!" says John. "It was great fascinating to learn what's possible when you combine Force.com with Visualforce and Sites. The result is a very powerful platform that does a lot of the 'heavy lifting' for us, letting us concentrate on the content and process rather than the platform and infrastructure.