joancefet / Virtual-Game-Table

A general-purpose, browser-based game table for casual games and rapid board game development.

Virtual Game Table

This is a general-purpose, browser-based board game table, aimed at online game nights and rapid game development. No rules will ever be hard coded, so you can play however you like. The purpose of this is only to provide an intuitive, synchronized game table in everyone's browser.

The client software currently requires Chrome to run. Eventually (now that I've learned a bunch of stuff) this will be overhauled to PixiJS, because awesome.

Starting and testing a server

This program runs directly from the source code (see Releases) so no compiling or binaries are required (other than downloading / installing Node.js). This server has been tested on Linux & Windows, but should work on OSX as well.

Linux

1. Install Node.js: For me, this meant downloading the binaries, unpacking them in a convenient folder, adding the binary path to .profile (with a line like PATH=$PATH:/path/to/node/bin) then logging out & back in.
2. Run start-server-linux from the terminal.

Windows

1. Install Node.js: Download the appropriate windows installer and run it.
2. Double-click start-server-windows.bat in one of the game directories.

Both scripts will prompt you for a valid game name (any directory name from either games/ or private/, e.g., cards). They will then ask for a port number, and you can provide any valid port (e.g., 37777). You can also launch a server directly with a command similar to node server.js cards 37777.

A successfully booted server should declare something like listening on port 37777 after initializing. At this point, you can test the server by opening a few Chrome browser windows side-by-side and typing in the address localhost:37777. Things moving around in one window should also move around in the other. Push a few buttons (especially the New Game or Setup buttons, click a few things, see what happens.

You can do most things with the mouse and "shift" button, but it is well worth your time to click the "controls" link in the upper right panel and learning the keyboard shortcuts.

Games

The games I have coded thus far include some basics:

• checkers: Checkers & board (double-click pieces to king them)
• chess: Chess pieces & board
• go: Go table & board
• cards: A standard deck of cards with 8 private viewing zones
• poker: Same as cards, but with poker chips on the table and a whole bunch of related functionality and hot keys.

and some more complicated systems:

• roll: All the nerd-dice and a few more pieces (press / hold r to roll)
• strategy: Pieces for my own strategy game
• puerto-rico: Puerto Rico (can't publish images; check vassal and image_list.txt?)
• arkham-horror: Arkham Horror base set (can't publish images; check vassal and image_list.txt)

Each of these games illustrate the functionalities of the main workhorse code in browser.js and server.js. So, if you're interested in writing your own games, I recommend playing with these to see what's possible, then looking at the game.js code for each to see how things are actually implemented. In particular, I would monkey with checkers/game.js first, since it's by far the simplest!

Here to Help

Feel free to pester me if something isn't clear. I will likely be slow to respond, but I believe in this project and will gladly update the comments in the code or help out within reason.

My next goals (if I ever find time) include:

• Pandemic
• Power Grid
• Chess clock

Things I will never do:

• Hard-code any rules or anti-cheat measures. You will always be able to look at your oponent's hidden pieces or move them around when they are taking a poo.
• Convince my friends and family that the games I invent are worth playing.

More documentation to come...