gameboards & dice as objects

[Gorilla Daddy]

Hi, how about making maps objects that you can move around, and then be able to stack things on top arbitrarily (without having them automatically grouped into a single stack)? I have a few games with modular boards, that can be assembled in different configurations. I can send the scans if you'd like to play with them. Is there a way to do that now? It seems that tabs are maps, when I'd rather that they be just virtual tables that you can place maps onto.

Also, how about alternate stacking mechanics? A simple game of "Solitaire" is sort of awkward to play with a poker deck, if you play the board like you would on a real table. I think stacks of things need to retain their relative positions sometimes. The way it plays now, the cards snap to a single point relative to the stack, which doesn't happen face-to-face. It's a departure from the idea of a virtual game table, but a useful one admittedly for wargames. I'd group it into a different category, which you might call automatic fanning mechanisms. Like say if you stacked a bunch of cards, it would be neat if the game automatically fanned the cards like you would when playing cards (and like the icon on Pokerv2). Right now it explodes the stack in an awkward way (but one that works well for wargame chits). More important is being able to move stacks of things around as a unit. Less important, for me, is automatic fanning mechanics. I've noticed that once you have a stack of cards, face down, you can't move it.

Another thing is hands of dice. Because dice aren't moveable objects, you can't assemble a hand of say 12 D6 & 3 D8 & 2 D4. There are games that actually need this badly! Without changing much, if you could move the dice into a horizontal hand, and shift them around, and roll them, that would work out ok. But it's not ideal. Here's an example:

The way Dog's in the Vineyard is played, is you have a giant bowl of mixed dice, and then you assemble a hand like the example above (it varies, which dice & how many you use), throw ALL the dice, and then assemble the dice in front of you. You move the dice, one, two, or three at time (with their current random value) ... and then the players move those dice that have played out from their hand back into the big bowl.

It's impossible to play as designed. In the real world, unless you have a bazillion dice! Doesn't play right in ZunTzu either. But virtual dice are free! Supply=99, plus dice as objects, and we can play.

Ideally, dice would just be a groupable thing you could throw (random face shown), but otherwise would work like everything else, in that you could arbitrarily move them around and have them retain their position.

If you wanted to get fancy, you could implement all of these things as a sort of polygon face mapping. Counters and cards are both 2 sided polygons. Front is one face, back is the other. With dice, you just have those polygonal objects which make for fair dice. On each face you have mapped a texture. If you abstract things this way, you can do things like coin tossing. And you can make "Poker dice" where the faces are suits and whatnot. Or special dice like fudge dice, which have "+" or "-" mapped on 4 of the sides of a cube, and a blank face on the others. And then you could move dice around, whatever face up, and use them like chits and cards.

Another example: A game like Biplane Barmy uses D6 as an alititude measure. You place it next to the chit that is the plane.

[Jerome]

Hi, how about making maps objects that you can move around, and then be able to stack things on top arbitrarily (without having them automatically grouped into a single stack)? I have a few games with modular boards, that can be assembled in different configurations. I can send the scans if you'd like to play with them. Is there a way to do that now? It seems that tabs are maps, when I'd rather that they be just virtual tables that you can place maps onto.

It is planned for the next version of ZunTzu. Terrains will be moveable and cloneable. They will be displayed beneath cards and counters.
Things that will be possible:

• a scenario designer combines several geomorphic maps to create a scenario for a WWII tactical wargame.
• players set woods, rivers and hills out on the table before a miniatures game.
• a game master reveals a room at the end of a corridor during a live roleplaying game session.
• ...

Also, how about alternate stacking mechanics? A simple game of "Solitaire" is sort of awkward to play with a poker deck, if you play the board like you would on a real table. I think stacks of things need to retain their relative positions sometimes. The way it plays now, the cards snap to a single point relative to the stack, which doesn't happen face-to-face. It's a departure from the idea of a virtual game table, but a useful one admittedly for wargames. I'd group it into a different category, which you might call automatic fanning mechanisms. Like say if you stacked a bunch of cards, it would be neat if the game automatically fanned the cards like you would when playing cards (and like the icon on Pokerv2). Right now it explodes the stack in an awkward way (but one that works well for wargame chits). More important is being able to move stacks of things around as a unit. Less important, for me, is automatic fanning mechanics. I've noticed that once you have a stack of cards, face down, you can't move it.

I'm not happy with the way cards are implemented in ZunTzu at the moment, for all the reasons you give. I believe the current implementation is OK for boardgames and card-driven wargames, but it's not convenient enough for card-only games. Back to the drawing board!

Another thing is hands of dice. Because dice aren't moveable objects, you can't assemble a hand of say 12 D6 & 3 D8 & 2 D4. There are games that actually need this badly! Without changing much, if you could move the dice into a horizontal hand, and shift them around, and roll them, that would work out ok. But it's not ideal. Here's an example:
The way Dog's in the Vineyard is played, is you have a giant bowl of mixed dice, and then you assemble a hand like the example above (it varies, which dice & how many you use), throw ALL the dice, and then assemble the dice in front of you. You move the dice, one, two, or three at time (with their current random value) ... and then the players move those dice that have played out from their hand back into the big bowl.
It's impossible to play as designed. In the real world, unless you have a bazillion dice! Doesn't play right in ZunTzu either. But virtual dice are free! Supply=99, plus dice as objects, and we can play.
Ideally, dice would just be a groupable thing you could throw (random face shown), but otherwise would work like everything else, in that you could arbitrarily move them around and have them retain their position.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could implement all of these things as a sort of polygon face mapping. Counters and cards are both 2 sided polygons. Front is one face, back is the other. With dice, you just have those polygonal objects which make for fair dice. On each face you have mapped a texture. If you abstract things this way, you can do things like coin tossing. And you can make "Poker dice" where the faces are suits and whatnot. Or special dice like fudge dice, which have "+" or "-" mapped on 4 of the sides of a cube, and a blank face on the others. And then you could move dice around, whatever face up, and use them like chits and cards.
Another example: A game like Biplane Barmy uses D6 as an alititude measure. You place it next to the chit that is the plane.

Plenty of good ideas.

I like the idea of the virtual dice that would be a different kind of dice that stays on the game table. Or maybe it's not a different kind of dice, it's just that dice can be undocked from their tray.

Groupable thing? That's something lacking in ZunTzu at the moment. Miniatures gamers would enjoy that kind of feature. It would also be great to grab a handful of counters into one's hand in one go.

Regarding "poker dice" and "fudge dice": dice with custom textures are already planned in a future version of ZunTzu. They'll be available soon.

Here is a workaround for dice used as markers: some miniatures gamers already use counters shaped like numbered wheels. You can decrement or increment the counter by rotating the wheel. It's even more convenient than the real thing because you don't have to look for the face you want.

[Gorilla Daddy]

It is planned for the next version of ZunTzu. Terrains will be moveable and cloneable. They will be displayed beneath cards and counters.
Things that will be possible:

• a scenario designer combines several geomorphic maps to create a scenario for a WWII tactical wargame.
• players set woods, rivers and hills out on the table before a miniatures game.
• a game master reveals a room at the end of a corridor during a live roleplaying game session.
• ...

Yeah, that sounds good! As for cloneable, it sounds like that fun "supply=99" thing, but which would be alterable in the game (so you wouldn't have to mess with it in the XML, and have it saved just like positioning info).

I'm not happy with the way cards are implemented in ZunTzu at the moment, for all the reasons you give. I believe the current implementation is OK for boardgames and card-driven wargames, but it's not convenient enough for card-only games. Back to the drawing board!

Maybe "Wings of War" would be a good one to look at. I have the scans, but haven't made the gamebox. It's a wargame played with cards, where you lay down the cards sort of like maps. In that the orientation of the cards (rotation & position) has some significance.

"The gameplay is very smooth. One plane is represented by a little card on the table, indicating on the card it’s vital statistics including a graphical depiction of its firing arc.

During a turn, players lay 3 maneuvring cards face down. Each of these cards displays various maneuvers (sidelslip, turn, Immelman, …), and the mix of cards is different for each type of plane. One by one the cards are revealed, and you can actually use the maneuver cards to reposition your plane on the table. On each card an arrow indicates the starting position and end position of the plane, and the card itself acts as a template to reposition your plane. So no fiddling with rulers, turning templates etc."

I like the idea of the virtual dice that would be a different kind of dice that stays on the game table. Or maybe it's not a different kind of dice, it's just that dice can be undocked from their tray.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of that automatic boomerang dice tray thing. Yours is a good implementation, the best I've seen. But conceptually it's very much like the one in "Fantasy Grounds", which I don't like at all. Because it messes with the idea of a game table, where things are only shifted around and stacked manually (like furniture), it stumbles over itself by being too cute and makes many kinds of gameplay impossible.

Groupable thing? That's something lacking in ZunTzu at the moment. Miniatures gamers would enjoy that kind of feature. It would also be great to grab a handful of counters into one's hand in one go.

Yes, it might fix the dice problem and the arbitrary way of stacking/joining someone might want. If you can just grab a bunch of stuff off the board, and then throw or shuffle or move them together that would be good. As a convenience, maybe zuntzu could remember the things you last grabbed and manipulated together, for a sort of automatic grouping the next time you use those objects?

Here is a workaround for dice used as markers: some miniatures gamers already use counters shaped like numbered wheels. You can decrement or increment the counter by rotating the wheel. It's even more convenient than the real thing because you don't have to look for the face you want.

If anyone has examples of those, please post it to the files. I think I know what you're talking about, I've seen something like that built into the bases of those new prepainted minatures big companies are selling. Of course, it needn't be a 6 sided die, and could just be chits numbered 1 to 6. But the point is that by simply making everything work like it would on a table, we wouldn't have to come up with alternate play mechanics to suit the computer.

Regarding dice as objects: you could have an object with say 30 pictures. They could be pictures of every position of a spinner. By telling the system that each is a "side" of the object, and giving it the quality of "spinner", you could photorealistically recreate a game spinner for say "The Game of Life". By saying that it is a "dice" object, it wouldn't spin in place, but rather move about (and eventually show a random face).

Chits don't have 30 faces, just 2. Same with cards.

So dice should just be regular objects that have the quality of being able to randomly select a face/side. Even chits could be used as dice, which would make them behave like coins (for a coin toss).

The dice needn't even be 3D objects (but it is cool, but starts off a tangeant that leads to incorporating a physics engine!). By just having a series of pictures of real dice, and flipping the pictures while moving them about on the gameboard, you could get the same (if not better) visual effect. And it would have simplfied things internally.

[Jerome]

As for cloneable, it sounds like that fun "supply=99" thing

It's even better: you'll be able to clone several markers out of a single one in your hand, not just out of the counter sheet.

Maybe "Wings of War" would be a good one to look at.

Sorry, I'm not sure to understand: do you mean that it can't be played with ZunTzu at the moment? I believe it can according to your description and what I see on BoardGameGeek.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of that automatic boomerang dice tray thing. Yours is a good implementation, the best I've seen. But conceptually it's very much like the one in "Fantasy Grounds", which I don't like at all. Because it messes with the idea of a game table, where things are only shifted around and stacked manually (like furniture), it stumbles over itself by being too cute and makes many kinds of gameplay impossible.

I agree that the dice trays in ZunTzu can be seen as a departure from the virtual game table philosophy and that it causes problems.

I've seen the dice in Fantasy Grounds. If I remember correctly the dice in Fantasy Grounds don't have trays: they just stay on the table.
Those dice are a technical wonder and I like their look and feel but unfortunately they don't seem random enough. ZunTzu's dice are very random: I use a pseudo-random function called a Mersenne Twister, combined with a source of entropy based on the mouse cursors movement. It's important to use a pseudo-random function with a huge period because otherwise you can't shuffle large card decks properly. Did you know that there are 8x10^67 different ways to shuffle a 52 cards deck? The Mersenne Twister's period is 4x10^6001.

If anyone has examples of those, please post it to the files.

Here's an example: and the mask:

But the point is that by simply making everything work like it would on a table, we wouldn't have to come up with alternate play mechanics to suit the computer.

I agree. That's the idea driving the design of ZunTzu.

Regarding dice as objects [...]

I'm afraid I didn't understand the end of your message.

[StormD]

Regarding dice as objects [...]

I'm afraid I didn't understand the end of your message.

He's saying that many games use other methods of generating a random outcome than rolling dice (for example, some games have a spinner that points to a spot on a wheel/dial, and some games require you to toss a coin. Also, sometimes dice have pictures or icons on them instead of pips or numbers.

Instead of rendering dice as 3-D objects that roll around in a tray and land with one side facing up, it might be more elegant to write a routine that allows the user to select a group of pictures and then shuffle those, face up, and display one, which would be the result. Dice faces would be one of many options, but spinner/dial spaces would be another, as would coin faces. This would also allow players to arbitrarily add "dice" that are not pre-coded into the existing system (for example, the artillery/miss dice that are used in Warhammer, 30-sided dice, or the Shark/Whale/Sea Serpent die in the old Parker Brothers game, "Survive")



There's no reason the same routine for generating the result of that die roll can't generate the result of this 16-result spinner from bermuda triangle:



And the exact same routine can also determine a simple coin-toss.

You can use pictures instead of numbers, because sometimes dice have pictures. And you can use more than just the standard sided dice that you can get from Chessex, because some games don't use dice but generate randomness in a different way, but it's silly to write a whole other routine to do pretty much the same thing that is generating a random result from a set of choices.