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Show HN: I've open sourced DD Poker (github.com)

255 points by dougdonohoe ↗ HN
I'm the original author of DD Poker, a Java-based computer game that ran on Mac, Linux and Windows and originally sold in stores in physical boxes.

I shut down the backend servers in 2017 but the game is still functional and people can still play each other online even though the central lobby and find-a-game functionality no longer work.

I've been asked over the years to release the source code, especially during the pandemic, and again this year. I finally got motivated to clean up the code and put it out there.

The code is 20 years old and uses some ancient Spring, log4j, Wicket and other dependencies, but it still works on Java 1.8.

39 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 87.4 ms ] thread
dlachausse
Thank you for taking the time to open source this! It’s fun peeking at the source code of old games from bygone eras and more open source games are definitely a good thing.
namanyayg
I've never worked with Java before.

Out of curiosity, do you think the game's architecture and tech stack would be easily portable to a more modern setup, or would it require a significant rewrite?

dougdonohoe
The architecture is very Java centric. The UI is all Swing based (no 3D graphics engine stuff). I would think very little is portable to a modern gaming engine.
pc86
Java 22 was released less than a month ago.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dudinax
Any plans to release the source for War Age of Imperialism?

I bought and played the heck out of that game years ago but never could get anyone to try it multiplayer.

Thanks for the great games!

dougdonohoe
Glad you enjoyed the games! Unfortunately, I don't own the IP rights to War! Age of Imperialism, so can't release the source code.
romac
I wonder if this could be made to work in the browser using CheerpJ?

https://cheerpj.com

dougdonohoe
Interesting. I hadn't heard of this before. I'll have to check it out.
apignotti
Lead dev of CheerpJ here, if you need support you can find us on Discord: https://discord.gg/X9ruPkchM5

Edit: Tool a quick look at the repo, if the game is a Java 8 Swing application (as it seems) then it will most likely work out-of-the-box with CheerpJ

BatmansMom
Ported my java game to Cheerp and it was the easiest thing ever. I highly recommend and you can see the results here: http://liarsdiceonline.com

Only criticism is that it can take a few MINUTES to initially load the game and there isn't a loading bar or anything

TSP00N3
Fun game! I thought you programmed it wrong till I realized in your version of liars dice 1s are wild. Also never played the way of guessing the total number of dots, and we always have loser go first on the next round. Thanks for sharing!
dougdonohoe
In our game, one's are wild unless ones are specifically called. Yes, the loser should go next.
jonrosner
Wow thanks a lot! We played DD Poker during the Pandemic. It really saved us from going insane:)
dougdonohoe
That's great! You are the 2nd person who's told me that. You don't happen to know someone named Ryan in Oakland?
jonrosner
No, I am from germany. Also good job on programming a game that plays flawlessly on pretty much all systems after so much time. Also, online play via IP address was super easy.
[dead] localfirst
[flagged]
bigiain
Java: Write once, debug everywhere.

<smirk>

localfirst
careful these type of comments might get you flagged like mine:

    any instructions on how to get this running on m1
v64
Thank you for taking the time to clean this up and release it. I've never played DD Poker, but have experienced the loss of other games when servers go down and the software stops being updated.

I realize source releases aren't always possible, so it's a great gift to the community when one can make it happen and they put in the effort to do so.

dougdonohoe
Thanks for the kind words. It did take a bit of work, but it was my pleasure to do so. I hope it is valuable to someone!
cjcole
Thanks!

(My son loves to play.)

BTW, the old Windows installer runs great under Crossover on Apple Silicon.

I'm going to try running this native. I'll file issues for what I can't readily fix.

dougdonohoe
Awesome, glad to hear your son likes it. Thanks for your help.
TheDudeMan
Could you say a bit about how the poker AI works? I know it's not modern, but just curious. Thanks.
dougdonohoe
There is a write up in the docs/AI_Whitepaper.rtf file.
fnord77
ah, good old Java Swing. Spent years working on big Swing projects.

BTW, you want to wrap statements like this in a logger.isDebugEnabled() especially in the paint loop because otherwise you always incur the cost of string concat, debug or not!

> logger.debug("REPAINT COMPONENT "+(CNT++)+" ("+ImageComponent.getDebugColorName()+") portion " + bounds_.x +","+bounds_.y+" " +bounds_.width+"x"+bounds_.height);

dougdonohoe
That code block is in an "if (debug)" block, which is enabled if "settings.debug=true" is set.
SloopJon
This was a bit of a bear to get running on my Mac. Everything depends on ddpoker.rc, which doesn't behave as expected unless an OSNAME environment variable is defined. I don't have that on macOS 14 (Sonoma) Mac using either zsh or bash. I hopped onto a 10.13 (High Sierra) hackintosh, and it doesn't have that variable either.

For the person who was having trouble getting this to work on an M1 Mac (flagged, really?), try this (after installing Java 8 and Maven using Homebrew):

    % git clone https://github.com/dougdonohoe/ddpoker.git
    ...
    % cd ddpoker
    % export OSNAME=darwin
    % source ddpoker.rc
    JAVA_HOME changed, version now openjdk version "1.8.0_422"
    % mvn-package-no-tests
    ...
    % poker
I built this before figuring out the OSNAME thing, so I can't actually vouch for the build step working out of the box.

Anyway, thank you very much, Doug. This looks really cool.

dougdonohoe
I'll have to fix the OSNAME thing, my apologies. That's an env var I have in my local ".zshrc" I had overlooked. I'll fix it later today.
dougdonohoe
This is fixed. Proper variable is `OSTYPE`, which I've fixed. `OSNAME` is a personal historical artifact.
dougdonohoe
I added a `TL;DR` section to the base readme with jus this info.