This is the third part in my tutorial for converting a board game for a touch table using Unity.
The first part covered all our reuse code and conventions, setup the project and created a main menu.
The second part built the UI for a very simple game called “No Thanks!”.
This part will write the events to control the game, add buttons to the UI for the players to use to play the game, and finally add animations to the game.
This is the second part in my tutorial for converting a board game for a touch table using unity.
The first part covered all our reuse code and conventions, setup the project and created a main menu.
This part will build the game and player UIs for a very simple game called “No Thanks!”.
Now that I have created several board game conversions in Unity, I thought that it might be useful to create a tutorial that describes the process that I go through to make a game.
In this tutorial, I’ll start with a common set of code from prior games and some basic art. I’ll create a new Unity project, import all the reuse code and plugins that I use, and make a complete game.
There is a set of videos to go along with this post which show all the steps that I perform in the Unity game builder.
I’ve also saved my Unity project at a few points along the way so that you can skip ahead or make sure that your project matches mine.
In this post, I’m going to cover all the reuse code and the reasoning behind it. I’ll setup the project, import all the plugins, scripts and assets that I’ll need. Then I’ll build the main menu.
In the next post, I’ll build the UI for the game itself and create the scripts for modeling the game. In the third and final part, I’ll add game control events and animations. Continue reading “Board game programming tutorial”
I’ve completed a touch-table version of the board game Village.
Village has an interesting mechanic where you manage the life and death of your workers. All your workers start as farmers and can be trained as specialists. Actions take “time” to perform, and when enough “time” has passed, a worker dies. A limited number of each type of worker is rewarded with fame and victory points upon death while the rest get an anonymous grave. The key is making the best use of your workers and their time while trying to arrange a good death.
I am considering creating a system for touch table games so that they can be played both by people sitting around the table and by individuals at their own computer.
This post will talk about what I’d like to do and show the steps that I’ve taken to setup a websocket server on my domain and to connect to it from Unity.
Continue reading “Websocket server for remote connections to touch table games”
I’ve completed the touch-table version of Age of Discovery and this article compares this project to my previous project which was Medici.
For both being touch-table conversions of board games, they were very different projects. Medici was small and took less time than I expected it to. Age of Discovery was a large project, and it ended up being even longer than expected.
Continue reading “Age of Discovery and more about complexity”
I’ve completed a touch-table version of Medici
Medici was an interesting project because of how simple it was. It is my first conversion project that has taken significantly less time than I thought it would and is also the quickest that I’ve been able to make a new game.
Continue reading “Touch Table Medici and a discussion of project complexity”
I’ve completed a touch-table version of Castles of Burgundy. In the board game, players build up their estate with tiles drawn from a common area. Each turn, players roll two dice and use the results to pick tiles, place tiles or sell goods. Placed tiles give the player victory points, extra actions, or advantages in later turns. Each player manipulates their own estate and only interacts with the other players through competition for the tiles in the center.
I’ve completed a touch-table version of Concordia. We saw the game at Essen last year. They were promoting the Salsa expansion, but we weren’t familiar with the base game. The game has relatively simple rules but it takes many steps to achieve your goals.
The game was a good candidate for the touch table because is no hidden information, there is a decent amount of setup time and piece twiddling, and I felt like the game could be improved with a real-time scoreboard.
A couple of months ago I started a project to convert some card games for play on the touch table. I started this project because I wanted to convert the card game “Linko”, but I’d also been planning to convert “Turn the Tide”.
I’d done one card game (Wizard) in the Torque engine and I used the web interface to keep player’s card’s on their device. I wanted this implementation to be more generic and support multiple card games.
I planned to use Unity’s built in networking and have the server run on the touch table with an Android application that players would download to their phone to show their hand of cards.