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Video tutorials on game design and computer programming

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Tue, 10/18/2011 - 14:35
christianboutin
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Joined: 10/15/2011

Hello BGDF!

First post, long time board gamer and recently published my first game, Con Sonar! through The Game Crafter. I'm currently making a series of video turotials on how computer programming can assist in board game design. Here's the first episode, others to follow soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nXh_BM2hw4

Comments, opinions welcome!

Cheers!

Christian

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Wed, 10/19/2011 - 15:53
#1
le_renard
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Joined: 10/08/2010
Great !

Thanks a lot for those very useful tutorials...
Merci !

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Thu, 10/20/2011 - 11:16
#2
Dralius
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I used Zillions of Games to

I used Zillions of Games to test Cannon prior to live testing. There are 36 combinations of starting positions for the city and I had ZoG play 10 game of each for a total 360 games. That was time consuming even though it played much faster than a human would.

I’m interested to see more about how you do it.

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 09:38
#3
larienna
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I think I prefer using random

I think I prefer using random number generator in a spread sheet than actually program a game.

I made some tests lately for my game. I wanted to know what was the average amount of combats and victories in each turn. I also want to know how many combat rolls per turn in average people made.

Testing this with a computer program would simply mean making a video game out of my board game because I need to implement everything: Map with city connection, path finding, production, movement and combat, etc. Since everything is interrelated to each other.

So instead of spending weeks of works on doing that, I prefer make 1 or 2 test games that are going to take at most 2-3 hours each and it will be done.

I like the idea of using a random AI that might make bad decision, but where there is so much game generation that you could still make averages. I think it could be a good idea for AI development, to make them learn what is the best choice (give them some base stats to work with).

Else, you'll need to test something very simple, so that it could easily be programmed. But it's simple, then it can probably be implemented in a spread sheet. You can also do some basic algorithmic operation in a spreadsheet if I remember correctly.

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 12:52
#4
Maaartin
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Joined: 05/15/2011
Great!

christianboutin wrote:
Here's the first episode, others to follow soon:

I'm looking forward to the follow ups.

larienna wrote:
Testing this with a computer program would simply mean making a video game out of my board game because I need to implement everything: Map with city connection, path finding, production, movement and combat, etc. Since everything is interrelated to each other.

In the game you could leave out all the user interface, which may be the most time-consuming part. I agree that implementing the rules alone may be hard too, especially when there are things like mupliple machnics, special rules for first/last moves, embedded sub-games, etc.

I started programing my game some time ago, and it's not that hard (but I am a programmer). Unfortunately, the rules still keep changing, which means additional work. On the positive side, writing the program makes many things clear: While the game description can be ambiguous, the programed rules can not. So the program clarified some things even without running it.

larienna wrote:
I think it could be a good idea for AI development, to make them learn what is the best choice (give them some base stats to work with).

Unfortunately, making a competitive AI is quite a lot of work and making it able to learn is even harder. The algorithms are known and there are probably some universal AI available, too; did somebody have a look at it?

larienna wrote:
Else, you'll need to test something very simple, so that it could easily be programmed. But it's simple, then it can probably be implemented in a spread sheet. You can also do some basic algorithmic operation in a spreadsheet if I remember correctly.

IIRC you can do everything with a spreadsheet, as it has variables and conditions and loops and all the needed things. However, you can provably do everything with a Turing machine as well, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. :D

Could you elaborate on how you can use the spreadsheet for your game? I think it could be really useful for others.

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 16:21
#5
larienna
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By the way, I am an

By the way, I am an Ex-Programmer who decided to put an end to programming except for web development ... and maybe a local web browser game idea I have.

Quote:
Could you elaborate on how you can use the spreadsheet for your game? I think it could be really useful for others.

I Did not use it much, it's another BGDFer that suggested using spread sheets for randomized values. My latest application was to calculate complex odds calculation where the math formula was not very obvious to find.

Still, you could code decision with random values: 1,2,3 could be decision A-B-C. So for simple mechanics, it might be possible to set conditions according to generated values. Like "If decision A=1 then you can do either decision 4 or 5 (50% each)" or if variable X>Y do decision 4 else 5.

I think that those kinds of simple algorithms could be possible to use in a spread sheet. Apparently, somebody coded puerto rico in a spread sheet.

The question is always: what time do I need to invest to get the results I want and does it worth it or would my time be better spent else where.

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 20:58
#6
christianboutin
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Yes if you just code the

Yes if you just code the back-end logic you save yourself all the nightmare related to user interface. It can take as little as 2-3 days to make that script. Doing a full game would take weeks more. Also you can code only the things you need to test out.

If you can get the answers to the questions you want with an excel sheet, by all means! I do think scripting makes the whole thing more complete.

BTW I just uploaded episode 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYsaZS7movc

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