| Author | Message | ||
| Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member Username: Karl Post Number: 354 Registered: 9-2000 |
Games with mixed stacks of tokens are notoriously difficult to create in Zillions because Zillions allows only one piece per board position. My new games 'Laska' and 'Stacks' (out 28 October 07) use a novel display (namely a second board with special design) to make games with stacks of tokens (coins etc) on each board position possible. Check it out! Laska allows up to 18 coins per position, Stacks allows up to 10 coins in a stack. Happy programming! Karl | ||
| M Winther (Kalroten)
New member Username: Kalroten Post Number: 45 Registered: 1-2007 |
In my Asian Tiger Games I employ stacks (multiple pieces on a single square). I solved it by simply moving in a piece automatically when a piece is moved from the square, or captured. In this case it works fine, but it depends on the complexity of rules. Mats | ||
| Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member Username: Gschmidt2 Post Number: 39 Registered: 1-2007 |
Mats - I believe Laska is different here. Karl is able to show a "simplified" version of the piece on the left side of the board thus drastically reducing the large number of possible piece types that would otherwise be impractical to represent in the zrf. On the right side of the board, Karl uses a single piece type to represent each layer of the stack (at the expense of creating many positions on the right side of the board). This allows for an extremely large number of stack configurations to be *displayed*. I think it's clever, and it works well for Laska, although I'm not sure I see it generalizing well to other stacking games. The reason is that that even though there are many stack configurations (as seen on the right side of the board), the stack configuration has little impact on the piece movement which is determined only by the top color of the stack. This works to our favor because it leads to a small number of "actual" pieces on the left board. For example, the height of the stack does not affect piece movement (movement only affected by the color of the top piece for this particular game). So it applies to stacking games which have the following properties: - A large number of stack permutations are possible. - A small number of actual stack movement behaviors is allowed. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. Karl - I didn't see the "stacks" game posted today. Mats - I didn't see stacking in "Asian Tiger Games". Did I miss something or were you thinking of a different game? -- Greg | ||
| Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member Username: Gschmidt2 Post Number: 40 Registered: 1-2007 |
I wrote: [Karl - I didn't see the "stacks" game posted today.] Never mind on this. Patience is a virtue.  | ||
| M Winther (Kalroten)
New member Username: Kalroten Post Number: 46 Registered: 1-2007 |
In Bagh bandi, for instance, there are stacks in the sense of five pieces per square. The stack is reduced when the heap is jumped, or a piece moves. I implemented it by making the graphics smaller for the extra pieces. /Mats | ||
| Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member Username: Karl Post Number: 355 Registered: 9-2000 |
Hi Greg, meanwhile I have published several more games using mixed stacks: Stacks, Stacksa, Stackso, Staxa, Staxo. So there are indeed good applications for other games, answering your question whether there are applications. There are obvious advantages of having a board (on the left side) which looks and feels like the normal playing board with real stacks, and the order of pieces in the stack is clearly displayed on the right. Of course the order is very important on such games. Also the stacks look quite natural in the stacked display at right. This cannot be accomplished in any other way in Zillions for large mixed stacks. | ||
| Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member Username: Gschmidt2 Post Number: 41 Registered: 1-2007 |
Hi Karl, [So there are indeed good applications for other games, answering your question whether there are applications.] Cool, it looks like you've found more applications for it. I was wondering if it would work for the quintessential stacking game, Sid Sackson's "Focus" (aka. "Domineering"). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(board_game) The behavior in question here being that a single stack can be split and recombined with other stacks on the board. -- Greg | ||
| Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member Username: Karl Post Number: 356 Registered: 9-2000 |
Done: Focus out next weekend. Cheers, Karl | ||
| Greg Schmidt (Gschmidt2)
New member Username: Gschmidt2 Post Number: 42 Registered: 1-2007 |
I just played a game Focus. Nice implementation, and thanks for showing how it can be done. Focus and Dvonn are among my favorite stacking games. As a side note, I see we've now reached the 1500 mark for game submissions. Let's try for at least another 1500! -- Greg | ||
| Karl Scherer (Karl)
New member Username: Karl Post Number: 357 Registered: 9-2000 |
...as another side note, I have now reached the 500 mark at the same time... --Karl |