Fujitzee, a FujiNet Game System (FGS) multiplayer game has been released by Eric Carr, the accomplished game designer responsible for the other amazing FujiNet enabled 8-bit game: Five Card Stud. Eric Carr created the multiplayer, multi-platform, Five Card Stud (5CS) game last year and showed off the amazing networked abilities of a FujiNet enabled system. 5CS plays on Atari, Apple2 and C64. Fujitzee is a clone of a popular dice game, Yahtzee, and is available right now to play on Atari 8-bits with FujiNet. Apple2 and C64 should have clients available soon.
Fujitzee is here and you can play today on Atari
Fujitzee follows in the wake of the excellent gameplay of Five Card Stud- controls are simple- space-key, arrows, Q, and ESC are used to fully control the game (joystick support is also there to replace arrow-keys and the space bar). Running the client (which can be launched from the FGS Lobby server- available from CONFG via the L command) lands you onto the Fujitzee server, where you see a selection of games, some with AI players (for single player fun) and some dedicated to human multiplayer gaming.
Game page on Fujitzee- here you can see all the games on the server and any human and AI games in progress
Human players have a special icon showing where they are – the total amount of players on any game is six
Full Lobby Support
The FGS Lobby is another client server component that allows discovery and launching of clients to play multiplayer games. The Lobby server is a persistent service run by fujinet.online and allows clients to connect to see all available Game Servers and any in-progress games.
Lobby Client on Atari – Shows available games for Five Card Stud and the new Fujitzee games
Game Play
Fujitzee gameplay is polished and fun to play. The limited screen pixels on the 8-bit systems are put to excellent use and allow for clear and quick game execution. Rolling and keeping the die are easy with arrows and space. As you roll the best scores are automatically posted on your place at the table.
Choosing the best score and completing your round is also accomplished with the arrow and space keys. Turns move quickly and the app is very responsive. You can leave with ESC key and then quit the game (Q) or return back. Entering a game in progress allows you to fully spectate. At the end of game as a spectator, if there is an empty player spot you are popped right into the next game.
If you need a refresher on Yahtzee gameplay there are lots of Youtube videos…
My win against a 2 bots
Four human players playing a round
The AI players (just like with 5CS) provide a nice challenge for single player gaming.
Eric has been rolling out bug fixes and play improvements all week, in both the server and Atari client. He plans on releasing in-game-chat (text) in a future release. Meanwhile the best way to talk and converse during multiplay is the FujiNet Discord server, and the Game Server Alerts (GAS) system.
Multiplayer Discovery
If you are on the Discord there are two (maybe three) important channels to watch. The GAS system is an event bounce service that uses the built in functionality of Game Servers to send events back to the Lobby Server to signal when players join. This allows the Lobby server
The Lobby Server html view is available to view from any browser: http://fujinet.online:8080/
Lobby Server HTML view
Discord Channels to watch
- #game-alert-system (GAS) – this shows players joining and leaving FGS games in real-time
- #fujinet-game-talk – this channel can be used to talk amonist players who are playing in FGS games
- #fuji-game-system – this channel talks about server and client coding and updates to the games
These channels will often contain valuable info relates to new client release, server improvements and also real-time game play by players of FGS.
GAS channel shows real-time updates for game joins and parts so you can find a game to play
Lobby Clients Note
The Lobby client – that is, the 8-bit application that runs on the retro system is currently only available for Atari. However there are game clients (not Lobby clients) for Five Card Stud for Apple2 and C64.
How can those non-Atari platforms without access to the Lobby play these multi-player games? They can play directly- they must load the game clients directly from a TNFS server, which at this time is hosted by Eric Carr. The Lobby facilities game discovery and launches the proper platform client (for supported clients) without having to know where (on what TNFS server) the actual client application is located. The Lobby will just allow you to launch it with one button push. But the games can all be played if you manually load in clients. For Five Card Stud (and soon Fujitzee) those clients are located on Eric’s TNFS server. His server is available at:
ec.tnfs.io
If you connect to that using CONFIG on Apple2 or C64 (yes, CONFIG is almost done for C64) you will see folders for Apple2 and C64. If you load those clients (at this time they are for Five Card Stud) you can join the game servers and play against players on any other platforms. Work to port the Lobby client to Apple2 and C64 is on-going.
C64 Five Card Stud Table screen