[Tutor] playing game across internet: suggestions for design?

[Alex Hall]

Hi all,
While Battleship is not quite where I want it in terms of weapons, and
while I await a response on another list to improve that, I figured I
would at least start inquiries on the internet front. My plan is to
let myself and a friend play each other at the game over the internet.
I realize that one of us will have to play server and the other
client, but the roles nake no difference. When a session starts, I
will create my playing board and place my ships, and my friend will do
the same. Then, I get his board and he gets mine. In this way I can
fire at a board holding his ships, and he can fire at a board holding
my ships. Each turn, I imagine some information moving from one
computer to the other, such as the functions he called and their
arguments. I can then parse this information and output information
("Your Battleship was sunk").

Basically, how might I go about setting up a connection between the
two computers? Not at the socket level, but how do I tell his game
that mine is ready to start? How do I decide who is server and who is
client? Thanks!

-- 
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from GMail website)
mehgcap at gmail.com; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap