1. A Toolkit for Fast Prototyping of Board Games Etienne Vouga Mike Friedman Joe Warren

2. Overview Tony owns 6,000 board games Tony owns 6,000 board games Rice Digital Media wants to digitize them all in playable form Rice Digital Media wants to digitize them all in playable form Our framework makes encoding game rules easy and fast Our framework makes encoding game rules easy and fast

3. Digitization Process 1. Scan board 2. Define board topology using editor 3. Import common elements and rules from library 4. Add unique features using Java code

4. Step 2 – Define Board Topology

5. Step 3 – ImportLibrary Code Library provides functionality common to many games Library provides functionality common to many games –Turn manager –Linear path movement –Finding patterns on grid –Manage cards

6. Example Games Game Name Time to Implement Lines of Code Othello 30 minutes 100 Connect Four 30 minutes 100 Snakes and Ladders 20 minutes 100 Stratego 3 hours 250 Risk 1 day 700 East of Thebes 2 days 1000

7. Future Plans Test the framework on Tony’s collection Test the framework on Tony’s collection –Hire 3-4 second-semester students next summer –Encode 200-300 games East of Thebes and the other example games are playable online at http://128.42.6.208/dlp/netgame.html http://128.42.6.208/dlp/netgame.html Requires a browser with the Java 1.5 plugin