User:Licah Fox/Card game

RS Card Game - how to do it?

Language

• PHP/Ajax -- I already know most of the language and no one has to download any programs. This way we can also integrate it with the RS site easily.
• Java -- I know the language, but running applets in a browser is not all that fun, and also I don't have any experience with sending information over the net.
• C++ -- Not so bad, but platform-specific (although nearly everyone in the RS uses Windows) and I would rather have the more immediate integration with the RS site possible through AJAX.

Main components

• The card game rules... clearly the most complicated part. I'll need to think about this quite a bit.
• Integration with the website, which can recall card sets, etc.
• A chat interface whereby members can communicate with each other in-game

Research

• Munchkin Online forum post apparently many people have thought about coding this before!
• Discussion of implementation (I'd have to agree with their implicit recommendation of not trying to hard-code all the rules)
• Munchkin reproduction policies Yeah, we aren't actually allowed to make this game by the copyright rules.
• Supposedly there's a Munchkin computer game being made! See original announcement and subsequent announcement. But I just read through practically all the news archives since then and it was Never mentioned. I think I might shoot them an email.

Conclusions?

• As far as coding goes, I think I'll simply write a program that can distribute cards and accept them on a table, allow them to be played, etc., but has no understanding as to the nature of those cards. Policing of play, as in real life, will be left up to the players. That way, the rules can be changed easily without needing to modify any code, and different rule variants can be used in consecutive games. I'm essentially coding a digital tabletop. This may well have been done before.. so, time to research more!

Research II

Look more into the following sites:

• OpenRPG (requires Python) May be adaptable for our use.
• Free RPG compendium - List of possible game rules to use/adapt
• Card based RPG downloads possibly useful

Probably OpenRPG is the best bet, or my own AJAX creation.

We need to come up with our own rules too -- the Munchkin rules are copyrighted and we can probably make better ones anyways. I don't think we need anything too complicated at first. I'm not exactly a card RPG rules expert, though, so I may need some help from ABG members.

Chat application

• A good tutorial for making my own from scratch
• PHP Free Chat (and demo) -- we may be able to simply customize this instead. It's quite nice.

There don't seem to be any other major efforts out there? At least not that I could find from a brief search.

PHP Free Chat seems like it will work very well with minimal modification, if I don't need to integrate it into the game and instead just have a window below the game for chatting. Next up is: how to do AJAX tabletop?

AJAX tabletop

• Found AjaxVTT It seems to be too early on in its programming stage to be of much use. I couldn't get the demo to do much. I don't think this is quite what we want? It's not card-based.
• Primera -- not of use to us, but, wow. what an amazing effort.
• pitStreet has some really well-implemented card games, including Solitaire.
• Gpokr (Texas Holdem) is quite advanced and seems to work excellently.
• also see PokerRPG.