8 ms·

Vassal – Online Adaptations of Board Games

274 points by evo_9 9y ago

blue1 9y ago
I don't know if it has become better in the meantime, I tried it some years ago and found that it's a nice idea but in practice most modules (i.e. games) are rather primitive implementations.
ignu 9y ago
The problem with VASSAL and Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia is that... it's awkward to play a real time board game online. There's a lot of down time while everyone else takes their turn. You have to set aside one to three hours to play uninterrupted. In real life, you have the benefit of hanging out with these people as you play. However, I've become a huge fan of http://www.yucata.de/ http://www.yucata.de/ and http://boardgamearena.com http://boardgamearena.com recently and not playing games in real time. Making one or two turns a day means there's no down time, and I can be much more flexible making my move(s) fit into my schedule.
- eterm 9y ago
  What is awkward with things like table top simulator is when they don't have a rules engine, so you don't get the benefit of learning edge cases through the game engine and don't get the bookeeping sped up, so you still have to watch everyone else take their turn to make sure they're not accidentally sneaking resources. boardgamearena has the advantage of actually having rules engines so you can also relax more while playing knowing the engine is taking care of the rules freeing you up to making tactical mistakes instead of rule mistakes.
  - chromanoid 9y ago
    I totally agree. Brettspielwelt and Yucata also automate and ensure the gameplay according to the rules.
  - Woofles 9y ago
    My friend used to play games on Tabletop Simulator. It's a good way to play with friends who don't live near you, but beyond that it's definitely a worse experience than playing board games in person. I don't have any experience playing with people that aren't friends, so I can't speak to the cheating aspect of it.
    - eterm 9y ago
      I too play with friends but it's not outright cheating that's an issue, it's usually more innocent than that, just edge cases or forgetting about less common rules, especially in more complex games like Eclipse or through the ages. It's easy to forget a rule that only applies in selective situations but which can have far reaching consequences. It's nice to relax and have the engine take care of it, and by pushing things you can actually learn odd interactions you wouldn't have discovered through reading the rule-book.
      - Woofles 9y ago
        I totally understand where you're coming from. I don't think I've played any games where it's made a large enough difference (in person or online). I also love the idea that it will resolve things correctly right away instead of having to look at the rulebook every time you run into some crazy edge case or wording confusion.
        reificator 9y ago
        Games on TTS can absolutely come with the rules built in via the exposed Lua interpreter. Mods can automate as much as they'd like.
  - reificator 9y ago
    Tabletop Simulator has an exposed Lua interpreter that any mod can take advantage of. The games can come with rules or not. I much prefer the ruleless approach of TTS to be honest. It gives you that tactile sense of actually moving pieces around the board and interpreting the rules yourself that makes a board game feel like a board game. But with undo and instant setup and without the requirement that everyone be in the same place. Not that it's a great tabletop game, but have you ever played a PC version of Monopoly? It's the most boring way to play an already incredibly boring game. My only issue with Tabletop is that all the games I want to play with friends (and that at least one of us owns physically) keep getting DMCAed. That's fine in and of itself, but if a company is going to stop people who own their game from "pirating" it, it'd be nice if they'd make it available legitimately as DLC.
- chromanoid 9y ago
  Also nice: https://m.brettspielwelt.de/ https://m.brettspielwelt.de/
- maerF0x0 9y ago
  Use skype/facetime/hangouts to make it more fun. Then you can talk live kind of like in person
- Woofles 9y ago
  The main thing I've found about playing games not in real time is you are always able to min-max every move. Since I don't necessarily play every game to win (I try to win, but if I don't it's not a big deal) I enjoy the arbitrary time constraint of playing in real time. Makes things move along and gives games more of a lighthearted feel. Also it's only three games, but I play Food Chain Magnate a lot and you can only play it online here: http://play.boardgamecore.net/ http://play.boardgamecore.net/
  - jaryd 9y ago
    Hooray for FCM :)
  - SubiculumCode 9y ago
    You may try to min max everything, but you might not actually min max it. Not everyone is willing to build a model of the game with all its probabilities, and calculate the optimal solution. Many will just play their gut feeling for the probabilities. Others will build naive models. Others will just guess at a general strategy.
    - WorldMaker 9y ago
      Right, it remains as much a social problem as a technical problem. If you worry your friends (or worse, you) might be prone to min/max more in asynchronous/delayed multiplayer situations, find social ways to encourage avoiding it. (That's very much something that will be unique to your group dynamics, but little things like asking people to time how much they actively work on turn, or encouraging them to only do their turns during lunch breaks and from their mobile phone, can work for different sorts of people.)
  - nandemo 9y ago
    FCM is one game that I prefer to play online. The physical version is a pain to play.
- RangerScience 9y ago
  > There's a lot of down time while everyone else takes their turn. Play more simultaneous-play games. Captain Sonar, Space Alert, Galaxy Truckers, and Sidereal Confluence are all really good games with basically no downtime.
  - nandemo 9y ago
    Other games that use simultaneous action: 7 Wonders and one of my top 5 games, Race for the Galaxy.
    - RangerScience 9y ago
      Yes! Both of those are excellent.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    Tell that to 4X Multiplayer Games or even Advance Squad Leader (ASL can take an hour a turn in real life) Down time isn't always bad, especially if you have youtube open while you wait.
    - zentiggr 9y ago
      After playing a decent chunk of the original Squad Leader, ASL always seemed like "WW2 action for Star Fleet Battles fans". Define every edge case and interaction and any amount of in-game time can stretch to fill all available real time... (See GDW's Fire in the East :)
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Seems like the awkwardness could be mitigated by using teleconferencing software of choice (audio or a/v)—even just a boring old phone teleconference—alongside the virtual tabletop software. Doesn't get you the full in-persom experience, but enables more interaction alongside gameplay.
- fsiefken 9y ago
  I'm playing Tabletop Simulator in VR, it's pretty close to the real life board game experience... and you can resize yourself so you can walk around the pieces on the board
tomcam 9y ago
Wonderful! When I was a kid before the microcomputer age I was a fan of exotic games like Turkish and Japanese chess. I had to make pieces using bread dough clay. Not fun.
fenwick67 9y ago
What I'd love is a FOSS alternative to Roll20, which is namely for tabletop RPGs.
- mhd 9y ago
  Have you tried MapTool? It's not an online service but a client/server Java tool, but if you're not e.g. looking for a new group it's good enough for scripting rules and displaying maps.
- orcusz 9y ago
  I haven't used Roll20 in some time, but you might be interested in MapTool (http://www.rptools.net/toolbox/maptool/ http://www.rptools.net/toolbox/maptool/). It's FOSS and I've used to for various pen and paper RPGs before. Granted, it's not a web app, but it has a lot to like.
nicolodavis 9y ago
Vassal has two main limitations: - It requires a download (not web-based). - Most games still require you to manage the board state yourself. Like someone else pointed out, boardgamearea.com, yucata.de and (my favorite) http://play.boardgamecore.net/ http://play.boardgamecore.net/ also manage the game state for you. I've been working on a (very early stages still) rules engine that will hopefully make it easier for more websites like the above to pop up in the future: https://github.com/google/boardgame.io https://github.com/google/boardgame.io
- IpV8 9y ago
  I love this idea. A quick tutorial on how to use this would make it much more approachable to developers wanting to use it without reading every line of code. Also, why is it copyrighted by google?
  - nicolodavis 9y ago
    You can find a tutorial here: https://google.github.io/boardgame.io/ https://google.github.io/boardgame.io/ I'm a Googler, so released it under Google's open source program (it's not an official product, though).
- jtolmar 9y ago
  This is pretty nifty! Do you have any desire to add AI? I could almost write a generic AI for your current version; the two things that are missing are a way to enumerate the possible moves (the ability to pass extra arguments to a move causes issues there), and a way for the game to know when a turn is supposed to end. (I'm also at Google; drop the j from my name to get my ldap.)
  - nicolodavis 9y ago
    AI sounds great! One of the selling points of a project like this would be access to machine readable game logs that people could use to train bots offline. Having something generic that could play reasonable moves by exploring a possible list of moves (and their outcomes a few levels deep) sounds pretty exciting too. Let's talk :)
smaili 9y ago
Slightly off topic but it's always interesting to run into open source projects that continue to be hosted on Sourceforge
- b0rsuk 9y ago
  Inertia ? Vassal has always been on Sourceforge. I don't see much benefit in using Java for board games, especially in a client-side app where server resources are not an issue. Vast majority of board games are turn-based with alternating turns. The bottleneck is player input. A more expressive language like Python would work better in my opinion. Inertia, I guess. Java was all the rage back then.
beefsack 9y ago
On the topic of online board games, I've been really interested in the idea of a pure play-by-email (PBE) system where there isn't a frontend or web interface at all. By that, I mean that a full game rendering is emailed to each player, and they take their turns by replying to the email with the commands they wish to execute. I started one in Go a number of years ago[1] and I feel I managed to prove to myself that a pure email interface is possible and actually really convenient in some cases. I even managed to implement over 20 games[2]. It was only ever used in my closed circle of friends, but we played thousands of games and many found it simple to participate in slow periods at work or school. If anything, my biggest takeaway was that if you want to really reach a level of expertise in a new technology, you need to find a project that you can pour your heart into. I've probably breached 100k LOC for the project and I've been working on it for over half a decade. I'm currently redoing the project in Rust as an attempt to become highly skilled in that[3]. [1] https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me [2] https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me/tree/master/game https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me/tree/master/game [3] https://github.com/brdgme https://github.com/brdgme
- snekops 9y ago
  This is really cool, thanks for sharing. How do you find Rust for this code base compared to Go?
  - beefsack 9y ago
    The main reason why I wanted to switch from Go to Rust was I was finding the type system a bit too weak for game implementations. There were even some games I was having trouble implementing at all without resorting to `interface{}` throughout the data structures. Rust has been a challenge but now that I'm fairly proficient it's very well suited to implementing the game data structures. Parsers are much more pleasant to implement in Rust too; I've written a custom parser combinator for game input and it's much easier to handle input in Rust than it is in Go.
    - siscia 9y ago
      I, as well, don't love go and I prefer rust especially for the type system. I would like to hear the negative side of switching from go to rust.
miiiiiike 9y ago
Speaking of online adaptations of board games.. My Massively Multiplayer Adaptation of Codenames was just approved for public consumption by its illustrious creator, Vlaada Chvátil today! Sign up and help me test out Django Channels in production! TL;DR: An MMOBG based on Codenames! - Sign up form: http://codewords.io/ http://codewords.io/ - FAQ: http://codewords.io/faq/ http://codewords.io/faq/ I needed to learn a few new technologies (TypeScript, Angular 4, Bootstrap 4, Django Channels.) Building the same chat room app that everyone builds as their first demo using these technologies sounded tedious. I decided to build a Massively Multiplayer Online Board Game instead. If you'd like to help with a stress test or participate in a game, there's a sign up form up here: http://codewords.io/ http://codewords.io/ I'm going to try to get Vlaada to host a game with me, but, he's a busy guy. If he's unavailable I'll find someone almost as interesting to play with us. If you'd like to know more, I put up an FAQ over there: http://codewords.io/faq/ http://codewords.io/faq/ (you can skip to the gameplay FAQ by tugging on this: http://codewords.io/faq/#how-work http://codewords.io/faq/#how-work) Screenshots and a gameplay overview can be found somewhere under here: https://imgur.com/a/3xtZC https://imgur.com/a/3xtZC
- nandemo 9y ago
  Thanks for doing this. For those who are looking into taking up boardgames, I highly recommend Codenames.
  - miiiiiike 9y ago
    Thank Vlaada and CGE! I can't believe that they gave me permission to play with their toys. This is what it looks like when a company/creator responds with great kindness when confronted with a fan project!
- cozuya 9y ago
  Very cool - a little surprised if it was endorsed that you didn't get the art. I specifically picked my board game project because it was creative commons (plug: https://secrethitler.io https://secrethitler.io).
dmcginty 9y ago
Given the name I was expecting this to be affiliated with Tom Vasel (founder of The Dice Tower and notable game reviewer) in some way, but it seems to be completely unrelated.
- miiiiiike 9y ago
  And all around good guy. Have you met him in person? He's shockingly tall. Taller than you would think possible from his videos. I saw him again at PAX Unplugged last week... I'm always surprised by just how impossibly tall he is.
  - dmcginty 9y ago
    I met him at Gencon this year, but I didn't realize who he was at the time. I only listen to the podcast, so I didn't recognize him. He was sitting on a Rathskellers gaming table and I started asking him about the table. It was only when some people asked for a photo that I realized who he was.
- Ivoah 9y ago
  I would assume the name is just a reference to Tom.
kolanos 9y ago
Anyone aware of one of these board games sites that makes it a priority to be accessible? I'm visually impaired, so would benefit from anything visual also having a text/audio component. Also a lot of these are drag-and-drop, so having an alternative way to move things around would be helpful. Obviously some games wouldn't translate well to a non-visual medium, so that's why I ask.
- gh02t 9y ago
  I'd be pretty keen on this too, my girlfriend lives far away and is completely blind- it'd be really nice to be able to play board games with her online.
konpikwastaken 9y ago
Worth mentioning here for any interested parties is OCTGN [1], or "Online Card and Tabletop Gaming Network". Interesting history - it started out from a VB6 application (specifically for playing Magic the Gathering) maintained by a single guy, he then handed dev off and the entire application was rewritten as a C# WPF application and was in hot competition with Magic Workstation directly for some time [2], which ultimately IMO made it a much better product. I believe I actually still have the original VB6 source on an old HDD somewhere... If I find it, wondering how to best archive it, or would anyone even care? Anyway, OCTGN is currently a generic "tabletop game" program that allows for new games to be defined via the documented game format [3] and even supports python scripting. [1]: https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN [2]: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/other-magic-products/third-party-products/337938-octgn-2-0-is-finally-out-it-blows-magic http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/other-... [3]: https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN/wiki#create-games-on-octgn https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN/wiki#create-games-on-octgn
- aidenn0 9y ago
  This seems to have a strong "Card Game" bias, with a slightly less strong "LCG/CCG" bias. Are there any game models for it for games that aren't primarily card based?
  - konpikwastaken 9y ago
    There appear to be some but you are correct that it has a strong "card game" bias as it was originally meant to play Magic. I'm not aware of any, no.
sozin 9y ago
The most played game in Vassal right now is the very popular Xwing miniature combat (http://xwvassal.info/ http://xwvassal.info/). Sadly the Vassal devs seem to have lost the flame for the project. A big client side rewrite to get off of Java was planned for many years but never executed. Great software even in its current state though!
dwaltrip 9y ago
I'm currently finishing up a MVP for an entirely in-browser turn-based gaming platform. It has a custom game editor/IDE with Google Blockly [1] inspired visual programming tools for implementing the game logic and the game UI. My design goals with the editor are to enable as many non-programmers as possible to make games (there's a lot that can be done here). Games that are developed & published on the platform can be played online just like any other browser-based multiplayer game. Rules are entirely enforced by the backend game engine, so games can be played competitively. The format for valid games is fairly open-ended. It should support games like Settlers of Catan, Risk, poker, Pokemon-style card games, go, chess, etc. To be clear, it isn't a 3d table-top simulation, by any means -- just HTML and CSS for now. There will be forking and modding of games (sort of like github). I have several ideas for how this could work without diminishing the original game designer's efforts [2]. I also want to foster the formation of communities around individual games and any mods that are made. I've been working on the platform for over a year now, and it's finally close to being ready, at least as an MVP. I'm hoping one more month... Anyone interested in being a beta tester once the MVP is looking decent? [1] https://developers.google.com/blockly/ https://developers.google.com/blockly/ [2] Currently, I'm thinking that a "fork" will only copy over the code & ruleset for the game, and not any graphical assets. It will exist on the same level as the original game, underneath the authorship of the forker. A "mod" can make use of graphical assets, but will live underneath the umbrella/community of the original game. Definitely open to suggestions on this.
caf 9y ago
What's the copyright situation with the modules? The screenshots I've browsed seem to have images of the actual board and card art.
sharpercoder 9y ago
I'm a developer of an online board game implementation. Before starting out, I consulted any library, platform and framework available to minimize implementation effort. Vassal was also on the list to checkout. Various items made it clear Vassal was no fit (for me at least): 1) No web interface available 2) Lead developer who seemed to worry about inexplicable technical issues 3) non-existing usability 4) board game logic must be shoehorned into a generic framework, where I want to expose a boardgame specific API. I ultimately decided to write it from scratch.

274 points by evo_9 9y ago

I don't know if it has become better in the meantime, I tried it some years ago and found that it's a nice idea but in practice most modules (i.e. games) are rather primitive implementations.

ignu 9y ago

The problem with VASSAL and Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia is that... it's awkward to play a real time board game online. There's a lot of down time while everyone else takes their turn. You have to set aside one to three hours to play uninterrupted. In real life, you have the benefit of hanging out with these people as you play. However, I've become a huge fan of http://www.yucata.de/ http://www.yucata.de/ and http://boardgamearena.com http://boardgamearena.com recently and not playing games in real time. Making one or two turns a day means there's no down time, and I can be much more flexible making my move(s) fit into my schedule.

eterm 9y ago
What is awkward with things like table top simulator is when they don't have a rules engine, so you don't get the benefit of learning edge cases through the game engine and don't get the bookeeping sped up, so you still have to watch everyone else take their turn to make sure they're not accidentally sneaking resources. boardgamearena has the advantage of actually having rules engines so you can also relax more while playing knowing the engine is taking care of the rules freeing you up to making tactical mistakes instead of rule mistakes.
- chromanoid 9y ago
  I totally agree. Brettspielwelt and Yucata also automate and ensure the gameplay according to the rules.
- Woofles 9y ago
  My friend used to play games on Tabletop Simulator. It's a good way to play with friends who don't live near you, but beyond that it's definitely a worse experience than playing board games in person. I don't have any experience playing with people that aren't friends, so I can't speak to the cheating aspect of it.
  - eterm 9y ago
    I too play with friends but it's not outright cheating that's an issue, it's usually more innocent than that, just edge cases or forgetting about less common rules, especially in more complex games like Eclipse or through the ages. It's easy to forget a rule that only applies in selective situations but which can have far reaching consequences. It's nice to relax and have the engine take care of it, and by pushing things you can actually learn odd interactions you wouldn't have discovered through reading the rule-book.
    - Woofles 9y ago
      I totally understand where you're coming from. I don't think I've played any games where it's made a large enough difference (in person or online). I also love the idea that it will resolve things correctly right away instead of having to look at the rulebook every time you run into some crazy edge case or wording confusion.
      - reificator 9y ago
        Games on TTS can absolutely come with the rules built in via the exposed Lua interpreter. Mods can automate as much as they'd like.
- reificator 9y ago
  Tabletop Simulator has an exposed Lua interpreter that any mod can take advantage of. The games can come with rules or not. I much prefer the ruleless approach of TTS to be honest. It gives you that tactile sense of actually moving pieces around the board and interpreting the rules yourself that makes a board game feel like a board game. But with undo and instant setup and without the requirement that everyone be in the same place. Not that it's a great tabletop game, but have you ever played a PC version of Monopoly? It's the most boring way to play an already incredibly boring game. My only issue with Tabletop is that all the games I want to play with friends (and that at least one of us owns physically) keep getting DMCAed. That's fine in and of itself, but if a company is going to stop people who own their game from "pirating" it, it'd be nice if they'd make it available legitimately as DLC.
chromanoid 9y ago
Also nice: https://m.brettspielwelt.de/ https://m.brettspielwelt.de/
maerF0x0 9y ago
Use skype/facetime/hangouts to make it more fun. Then you can talk live kind of like in person
Woofles 9y ago
The main thing I've found about playing games not in real time is you are always able to min-max every move. Since I don't necessarily play every game to win (I try to win, but if I don't it's not a big deal) I enjoy the arbitrary time constraint of playing in real time. Makes things move along and gives games more of a lighthearted feel. Also it's only three games, but I play Food Chain Magnate a lot and you can only play it online here: http://play.boardgamecore.net/ http://play.boardgamecore.net/
- jaryd 9y ago
  Hooray for FCM :)
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  You may try to min max everything, but you might not actually min max it. Not everyone is willing to build a model of the game with all its probabilities, and calculate the optimal solution. Many will just play their gut feeling for the probabilities. Others will build naive models. Others will just guess at a general strategy.
  - WorldMaker 9y ago
    Right, it remains as much a social problem as a technical problem. If you worry your friends (or worse, you) might be prone to min/max more in asynchronous/delayed multiplayer situations, find social ways to encourage avoiding it. (That's very much something that will be unique to your group dynamics, but little things like asking people to time how much they actively work on turn, or encouraging them to only do their turns during lunch breaks and from their mobile phone, can work for different sorts of people.)
- nandemo 9y ago
  FCM is one game that I prefer to play online. The physical version is a pain to play.
RangerScience 9y ago
> There's a lot of down time while everyone else takes their turn. Play more simultaneous-play games. Captain Sonar, Space Alert, Galaxy Truckers, and Sidereal Confluence are all really good games with basically no downtime.
- nandemo 9y ago
  Other games that use simultaneous action: 7 Wonders and one of my top 5 games, Race for the Galaxy.
  - RangerScience 9y ago
    Yes! Both of those are excellent.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Tell that to 4X Multiplayer Games or even Advance Squad Leader (ASL can take an hour a turn in real life) Down time isn't always bad, especially if you have youtube open while you wait.
  - zentiggr 9y ago
    After playing a decent chunk of the original Squad Leader, ASL always seemed like "WW2 action for Star Fleet Battles fans". Define every edge case and interaction and any amount of in-game time can stretch to fill all available real time... (See GDW's Fire in the East :)
dragonwriter 9y ago
Seems like the awkwardness could be mitigated by using teleconferencing software of choice (audio or a/v)—even just a boring old phone teleconference—alongside the virtual tabletop software. Doesn't get you the full in-persom experience, but enables more interaction alongside gameplay.
fsiefken 9y ago
I'm playing Tabletop Simulator in VR, it's pretty close to the real life board game experience... and you can resize yourself so you can walk around the pieces on the board

tomcam 9y ago

Wonderful! When I was a kid before the microcomputer age I was a fan of exotic games like Turkish and Japanese chess. I had to make pieces using bread dough clay. Not fun.

fenwick67 9y ago

What I'd love is a FOSS alternative to Roll20, which is namely for tabletop RPGs.

mhd 9y ago
Have you tried MapTool? It's not an online service but a client/server Java tool, but if you're not e.g. looking for a new group it's good enough for scripting rules and displaying maps.
orcusz 9y ago
I haven't used Roll20 in some time, but you might be interested in MapTool (http://www.rptools.net/toolbox/maptool/ http://www.rptools.net/toolbox/maptool/). It's FOSS and I've used to for various pen and paper RPGs before. Granted, it's not a web app, but it has a lot to like.

nicolodavis 9y ago

Vassal has two main limitations: - It requires a download (not web-based). - Most games still require you to manage the board state yourself. Like someone else pointed out, boardgamearea.com, yucata.de and (my favorite) http://play.boardgamecore.net/ http://play.boardgamecore.net/ also manage the game state for you. I've been working on a (very early stages still) rules engine that will hopefully make it easier for more websites like the above to pop up in the future: https://github.com/google/boardgame.io https://github.com/google/boardgame.io

IpV8 9y ago
I love this idea. A quick tutorial on how to use this would make it much more approachable to developers wanting to use it without reading every line of code. Also, why is it copyrighted by google?
- nicolodavis 9y ago
  You can find a tutorial here: https://google.github.io/boardgame.io/ https://google.github.io/boardgame.io/ I'm a Googler, so released it under Google's open source program (it's not an official product, though).
jtolmar 9y ago
This is pretty nifty! Do you have any desire to add AI? I could almost write a generic AI for your current version; the two things that are missing are a way to enumerate the possible moves (the ability to pass extra arguments to a move causes issues there), and a way for the game to know when a turn is supposed to end. (I'm also at Google; drop the j from my name to get my ldap.)
- nicolodavis 9y ago
  AI sounds great! One of the selling points of a project like this would be access to machine readable game logs that people could use to train bots offline. Having something generic that could play reasonable moves by exploring a possible list of moves (and their outcomes a few levels deep) sounds pretty exciting too. Let's talk :)

smaili 9y ago

Slightly off topic but it's always interesting to run into open source projects that continue to be hosted on Sourceforge

b0rsuk 9y ago
Inertia ? Vassal has always been on Sourceforge. I don't see much benefit in using Java for board games, especially in a client-side app where server resources are not an issue. Vast majority of board games are turn-based with alternating turns. The bottleneck is player input. A more expressive language like Python would work better in my opinion. Inertia, I guess. Java was all the rage back then.

beefsack 9y ago

On the topic of online board games, I've been really interested in the idea of a pure play-by-email (PBE) system where there isn't a frontend or web interface at all. By that, I mean that a full game rendering is emailed to each player, and they take their turns by replying to the email with the commands they wish to execute. I started one in Go a number of years ago[1] and I feel I managed to prove to myself that a pure email interface is possible and actually really convenient in some cases. I even managed to implement over 20 games[2]. It was only ever used in my closed circle of friends, but we played thousands of games and many found it simple to participate in slow periods at work or school. If anything, my biggest takeaway was that if you want to really reach a level of expertise in a new technology, you need to find a project that you can pour your heart into. I've probably breached 100k LOC for the project and I've been working on it for over half a decade. I'm currently redoing the project in Rust as an attempt to become highly skilled in that[3]. [1] https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me [2] https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me/tree/master/game https://github.com/Miniand/brdg.me/tree/master/game [3] https://github.com/brdgme https://github.com/brdgme

snekops 9y ago
This is really cool, thanks for sharing. How do you find Rust for this code base compared to Go?
- beefsack 9y ago
  The main reason why I wanted to switch from Go to Rust was I was finding the type system a bit too weak for game implementations. There were even some games I was having trouble implementing at all without resorting to `interface{}` throughout the data structures. Rust has been a challenge but now that I'm fairly proficient it's very well suited to implementing the game data structures. Parsers are much more pleasant to implement in Rust too; I've written a custom parser combinator for game input and it's much easier to handle input in Rust than it is in Go.
  - siscia 9y ago
    I, as well, don't love go and I prefer rust especially for the type system. I would like to hear the negative side of switching from go to rust.

miiiiiike 9y ago

Speaking of online adaptations of board games.. My Massively Multiplayer Adaptation of Codenames was just approved for public consumption by its illustrious creator, Vlaada Chvátil today! Sign up and help me test out Django Channels in production! TL;DR: An MMOBG based on Codenames! - Sign up form: http://codewords.io/ http://codewords.io/ - FAQ: http://codewords.io/faq/ http://codewords.io/faq/ I needed to learn a few new technologies (TypeScript, Angular 4, Bootstrap 4, Django Channels.) Building the same chat room app that everyone builds as their first demo using these technologies sounded tedious. I decided to build a Massively Multiplayer Online Board Game instead. If you'd like to help with a stress test or participate in a game, there's a sign up form up here: http://codewords.io/ http://codewords.io/ I'm going to try to get Vlaada to host a game with me, but, he's a busy guy. If he's unavailable I'll find someone almost as interesting to play with us. If you'd like to know more, I put up an FAQ over there: http://codewords.io/faq/ http://codewords.io/faq/ (you can skip to the gameplay FAQ by tugging on this: http://codewords.io/faq/#how-work http://codewords.io/faq/#how-work) Screenshots and a gameplay overview can be found somewhere under here: https://imgur.com/a/3xtZC https://imgur.com/a/3xtZC

nandemo 9y ago
Thanks for doing this. For those who are looking into taking up boardgames, I highly recommend Codenames.
- miiiiiike 9y ago
  Thank Vlaada and CGE! I can't believe that they gave me permission to play with their toys. This is what it looks like when a company/creator responds with great kindness when confronted with a fan project!
cozuya 9y ago
Very cool - a little surprised if it was endorsed that you didn't get the art. I specifically picked my board game project because it was creative commons (plug: https://secrethitler.io https://secrethitler.io).

dmcginty 9y ago

Given the name I was expecting this to be affiliated with Tom Vasel (founder of The Dice Tower and notable game reviewer) in some way, but it seems to be completely unrelated.

miiiiiike 9y ago
And all around good guy. Have you met him in person? He's shockingly tall. Taller than you would think possible from his videos. I saw him again at PAX Unplugged last week... I'm always surprised by just how impossibly tall he is.
- dmcginty 9y ago
  I met him at Gencon this year, but I didn't realize who he was at the time. I only listen to the podcast, so I didn't recognize him. He was sitting on a Rathskellers gaming table and I started asking him about the table. It was only when some people asked for a photo that I realized who he was.
Ivoah 9y ago
I would assume the name is just a reference to Tom.

kolanos 9y ago

Anyone aware of one of these board games sites that makes it a priority to be accessible? I'm visually impaired, so would benefit from anything visual also having a text/audio component. Also a lot of these are drag-and-drop, so having an alternative way to move things around would be helpful. Obviously some games wouldn't translate well to a non-visual medium, so that's why I ask.

gh02t 9y ago
I'd be pretty keen on this too, my girlfriend lives far away and is completely blind- it'd be really nice to be able to play board games with her online.

konpikwastaken 9y ago

Worth mentioning here for any interested parties is OCTGN [1], or "Online Card and Tabletop Gaming Network". Interesting history - it started out from a VB6 application (specifically for playing Magic the Gathering) maintained by a single guy, he then handed dev off and the entire application was rewritten as a C# WPF application and was in hot competition with Magic Workstation directly for some time [2], which ultimately IMO made it a much better product. I believe I actually still have the original VB6 source on an old HDD somewhere... If I find it, wondering how to best archive it, or would anyone even care? Anyway, OCTGN is currently a generic "tabletop game" program that allows for new games to be defined via the documented game format [3] and even supports python scripting. [1]: https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN [2]: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/other-magic-products/third-party-products/337938-octgn-2-0-is-finally-out-it-blows-magic http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/other-... [3]: https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN/wiki#create-games-on-octgn https://github.com/octgn/OCTGN/wiki#create-games-on-octgn

aidenn0 9y ago
This seems to have a strong "Card Game" bias, with a slightly less strong "LCG/CCG" bias. Are there any game models for it for games that aren't primarily card based?
- konpikwastaken 9y ago
  There appear to be some but you are correct that it has a strong "card game" bias as it was originally meant to play Magic. I'm not aware of any, no.

sozin 9y ago

The most played game in Vassal right now is the very popular Xwing miniature combat (http://xwvassal.info/ http://xwvassal.info/). Sadly the Vassal devs seem to have lost the flame for the project. A big client side rewrite to get off of Java was planned for many years but never executed. Great software even in its current state though!

dwaltrip 9y ago

I'm currently finishing up a MVP for an entirely in-browser turn-based gaming platform. It has a custom game editor/IDE with Google Blockly [1] inspired visual programming tools for implementing the game logic and the game UI. My design goals with the editor are to enable as many non-programmers as possible to make games (there's a lot that can be done here). Games that are developed & published on the platform can be played online just like any other browser-based multiplayer game. Rules are entirely enforced by the backend game engine, so games can be played competitively. The format for valid games is fairly open-ended. It should support games like Settlers of Catan, Risk, poker, Pokemon-style card games, go, chess, etc. To be clear, it isn't a 3d table-top simulation, by any means -- just HTML and CSS for now. There will be forking and modding of games (sort of like github). I have several ideas for how this could work without diminishing the original game designer's efforts [2]. I also want to foster the formation of communities around individual games and any mods that are made. I've been working on the platform for over a year now, and it's finally close to being ready, at least as an MVP. I'm hoping one more month... Anyone interested in being a beta tester once the MVP is looking decent? [1] https://developers.google.com/blockly/ https://developers.google.com/blockly/ [2] Currently, I'm thinking that a "fork" will only copy over the code & ruleset for the game, and not any graphical assets. It will exist on the same level as the original game, underneath the authorship of the forker. A "mod" can make use of graphical assets, but will live underneath the umbrella/community of the original game. Definitely open to suggestions on this.

caf 9y ago

What's the copyright situation with the modules? The screenshots I've browsed seem to have images of the actual board and card art.

sharpercoder 9y ago

I'm a developer of an online board game implementation. Before starting out, I consulted any library, platform and framework available to minimize implementation effort. Vassal was also on the list to checkout. Various items made it clear Vassal was no fit (for me at least): 1) No web interface available 2) Lead developer who seemed to worry about inexplicable technical issues 3) non-existing usability 4) board game logic must be shoehorned into a generic framework, where I want to expose a boardgame specific API. I ultimately decided to write it from scratch.