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Generic Card/Board Game Prototyping and Playtesting Tools

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mouser:
Recently I've been getting more serious about the idea of making card and board games -- not as a profession but as a hobby and academic exercise.

One of the things I've been looking for are tools that would make it easier to:

* Programatically create sets of cards and card images, and print these out on various card stocks
* Simulate a virtual card table for online play, quickly and without worrying about coding rules
* Eventually be able to make an online version that did enforce rules
I've actually found quite a few tools that were designed for collectible card game playing online, card/deck building, generic card/board/table game playing (i.e. rules not enforced), and a few tools designed to actually let you code full games with rules enforced.



Here are some of the links I've found to sites that seem useful - if you know others please let me know (Java seems to be the dominant language for these tools; nothing against Java just not sure why it is so dominant in this domain):


* http://www.angelfire.com/va/planeswlk/
* http://www.onlineplaytable.com/
* http://mindless.sourceforge.net/
* http://www.firemox.org/
* http://www.vassalengine.org
* http://www.zuntzu.com/
* http://www.battlegroundsgames.com/
* http://www.lackeyccg.com/
* http://ask.metafilter.com/97736/Looking-for-an-Online-Generic-Card-Game-Simulator
* http://cardtable.sourceforge.net/
* http://gccg.sourceforge.net/
* http://www.magicworkstation.com/
* http://vhati.sitesled.com/ArcanistCCG/
* http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=20
* http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/index.php/Links
* http://www.magic-league.com/guide/apprentice.php
* http://digilander.libero.it/zak965/thoth/
However I have not yet found a set of tools that I really feel great about -- that would really speed up Prototyping and Playtesting, and provide a path to eventual online implementation.


And.. well.. I've been thinking about embarking on a project to code a toolset myself that would be useful for other game designers.

It's a bit of a daunting task, and I'm still not really sure I have the time for it.  I still have to investigate more what's already available.

Right now though I feel like game designers could benefit from a new project designed to help them.  And I feel like there is an opportunity to create something useful, with a different, more designer/coder centric approach then these existing tools.

I'd like to hear some feedback about whether people think this is worth doing.. Or what they use.

Actually to be honest, I spent the last several days writing some generic python code to tackle the task of dynamically creating card sets, images for them, laying them out on generic card templates for printing, and actually working with card data in a way that will hopefully set the groundwork for a richer game table engine.  I've also begun writing some scripts to create game data files for some of the online game playing tools (like zuntzu and vassal) which are otherwise a bit cumbersome to set up for prototyping.  I plan to open source and share the code after I get it development and a little more friendly.  Now I have to decide if I want to put the creation of a full-fledged game-table engine/library on my Project List.

Thoughts?

alivingspirit:
Yea! I love the idea of creating a toolset for game designers. I have been thinking about doing a project like this for a while but I was trying to work on projects a little less ambitious first.
I too have been unimpressed with the current offerings in this type of program genre. It seems to me that most of these programs simply lack the features needed to really create your own board/card game quickly and easily.
Unfortunately for us, the reason why many of these programs fail is because programs of this type quickly become too generic and difficult to use, or too specific to a certain type of game (ie:Magic the Gathering).
If I am understanding you correctly, you want to create a very generic type of program but one that is also easy to use to create any type of game. If you created such a program, you would be the first. I would love to help to help out any way I can.

mouser:
If I am understanding you correctly, you want to create a very generic type of program but one that is also easy to use to create any type of game.
--- End quote ---


I am interested in doing 3 things:

* Providing very fast prototyping of card/board games via an online multiplayer application.  In this case, the engine will not try to enforce any rules -- the idea is to provide a flexible and easy system for arranging and moving pieces and cards around.
* Provide a LIBRARY/API for CODING rules for a real multiplayer card/board game.  Here I'm not trying to make a generic do-everything game engine; my thought would be to view it as a library where a real coder would use this as the starting point and script the game logic using a real programming language, but be able to use all of the foundations of the engine so they could focus on gameplay not graphics/networking/etc.
* Provide a toolset to help game designers programatically/dynamically generate for online play and for printing, pieces,cards, boards, easily -- to facilitate rapid iterations in prototyping and playtesting.

alivingspirit:
In other words: Board Game Engine.  :D

Ampa:
In brief: Yes! this would be hugely useful.

I have tinkered with Zuntzu, but found the creation process more laboured than it should be, plus in the early stages of design I don't want to playtest with other people in a multi-player environment, but rather on my own, since the game will no doubt be dismal in its early incarnations!

Will try to respond more fully later on, when I have time to read the original post in full.

A bit more…

I don't find Zuntzu very intuitive to use, but there are some useful features…

* The tray for holding a hand of cards

* The ability to stack cards / tiles / counters

* Rotation of pieces / cards

* Flipping of pieces / cards
I guess I'd be looking for a system that had all these things and more, but with less emphasis on good looks (functional and clear is all that is required) and it must be quick to change.

Although adding a ruleset is not a necessity it might be nice (limit the hand size to 5 for example)… And consider the power of a system that gathered statistics as you play-tested, especially if this was recorded along with the ruleset…

eg: Game turns = 23, Winning Score = 102, Handsize Limit = 5 etc etc.

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