Concept Feedback

[CodeDoctorDE]

This is a concept for the cross platform game application Qeck.
It should allow you to play card/board/... games with or without internet with multiplayer support

General idea

You have a custom game board on all your devices. You can place different types of objects on the table in a grid pattern. The objects can be moved around and modified. You can play together with other people on the same board.

Team

This is a concept to control who can see what on the table.
You can join and create teams.

Grid

The grid is the base of the table. It is an infinite 2D grid where you can place objects. The grid is divided into cells. Each cell can contain multiple object.
A cell can have different properties:

• Name (The name that will be displayed on the table)
• Visibiliy (If we can see the objects in this cell, these can also be defined to a specific team)
• Layout (If the objects are put on top of each other or next to each other)

Objects

There are 2 different types of objects on a table:

• Figures
  • These can be player characters, cards or chess pieces. These can be placed on one grid cell.
• Boards
  • These are bigger objects that can be placed on the table. They can be used to create a game board or a map. They can be placed on multiple grid cells and is always behind the figures.

Figures

Figures have different properties:

• Hidden image/text - will be displayed if you set the grid cell to hidden
• Variants - Can be used to add different variations with text and image, for example 6 of hearts, 5 in a dice, ...
• Roll - A boolean that controls if you can roll through the variants, for example on a dice

Custom rules

Rules can be defined for the table and defines what events are cancelled (similar to the minecraft bukkit plugin system).

But then it's not possible to save the current state and play it back later.

If you don't play with any rules you can freely move objects and boards around, delete them and make everything you like. This is useful if you know the people you play with and trust them.

Scripting

Webassembly
Wasmtime (because we need interrupts)
Pro:

• Embedded
• Supported for many languages

Contra:

• Very big library and not easy to go

Luau
https://github.com/mlua-rs/mlua
Pro:

• Familiar language with roblox
• Rust can be compiled to luau with this library
• Very sandboxy and easy to develop
• Can be used inside the app, you can test it there easily and program there

Contra:

• Not every language is supported

Packs

Every rule, board and figure is part of a pack. A pack is a collection of objects that can be used together. For example, a pack can contain all the objects for a game of chess. The pack is saved as a zip file.

There are already a few packs available in the application. You can also create your own packs and share them in Luna (an asset store that will be hosted static on github actions) for example.

Networking

There are different ways to play together with other people:

Local

This is the simplest way to play together. You can play together with other people on the same network (LAN).
It will create a websocket server and every client can connect to it.

Online

This is a more complex way to play together. The server defines the games and the clients can connect to it. The server can also add authentication to allow to have leaderboards, friends and other features.

Custom server

This is a middle way between local and online. You can define your game like in local but can connect to it from everywhere.