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Software Designer/Developer that loves tabletop games

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Sun, 01/04/2015 - 22:48
abstractcoder
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Joined: 01/03/2015

I'm a software designer/developer who has always had a passion for games.

In the last two years I got back into tabletop games after finding the Dice Tower and was lucky enough to make it to the 2014 Dice Tower Convention and play a game with Tom and Sam. It's great to have a hobby that doesn't involve sitting in front of a TV or computer.

Now I bring games to every family gathering and have really started to make connections with people I didn't talk to much in the past. I really love quick games that are easy for anyone to learn but still have some depth such as For Sale, Good Cop Bad Cop, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and Wits and Wagers.

My New Year's resolution is to stop thinking about getting into board game design, and start doing it, so I signed up for an account yesterday, came up with a design and submitted it for the current contest today, and now I'm writing this post.

I'm interested in designing games that anyone can play, but still have depth and replayability. I love the idea of using mechanisms from heavier games in games that are more accessible.

I have a lot of experience designing and developing web sites, web apps, and mobile apps, and am definitely interested in sharing my knowledge where needed.

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Mon, 01/05/2015 - 00:54
#1
LordBrand
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Joined: 12/27/2014
Welcome to the board! We're

Welcome to the board! We're excited to have you. As you work on ideas, feel free to throw out what you're working on for tips. The group here is very helpful and responsive, and have been a great help to me.

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Mon, 01/05/2015 - 02:52
#2
nomad
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Joined: 11/13/2014
Welcome Aboard... Planty Of Room In The Boat

abstractcoder,

Welcome... I'm newer here too but have been a software developer for somewhere around 18 years and a board game player since the late seventies (Shhhh, don't tell anybody). I know the feeling!!!

Anyway, good to have you on "board".
-nomad-

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Mon, 01/05/2015 - 20:23
#3
The Game Crafter
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Joined: 06/09/2009
Just so you know,

Just so you know, thegamecrafter.com has a programmable API. I'm also a software developer and design all my table top games in code, and then the code simply exports the images and uploads them to The Game Crafter.

More info: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/help/developer-api

It saves a bunch of time to design your table top games in code. Then if you need to make a change to a layout or something, you simply make the change once and regenerate all your cards, tiles, or whatever. You don't have to spend 100 hours in photoshop making the tweak over and over again. Plus you can generate all kinds of stats to make sure the math of your games is working out how you thought. For example, that you have the right proportions of components in each difficulty level, or that no one component has stats that are unbalanced relative to the others, etc.

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Mon, 01/05/2015 - 22:28
#4
abstractcoder
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Joined: 01/03/2015
I will definitely check that

I will definitely check that out! Do you know of any tutorials or articles written on the subject of writing software to simulate board game designs?

It's also cool to see that Game Crafter is from my neck of the woods (I live in Wisconsin).

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Mon, 01/05/2015 - 23:25
#5
The Game Crafter
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Joined: 06/09/2009
I wrote one a long time ago

I wrote one a long time ago here: http://www.perl.com/pub/2012/11/designing-board-games-with-perl.html

That was really just about drawing using Perl and Image::Magick. I should really write a more modern version of that.

Here's another article about someone doing it in C#: http://news.thegamecrafter.com/post/46166736252/designing-a-game-program...

Unfortunately neither of these goes into simulations or statistics. I know there have been some Reddit threads about that topic on this subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopgamedesign/

If you find more resources do let me know. I always like reading such things. And clearly, I should be writing more about those things myself.

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