{"id":2214,"date":"2008-04-20T21:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-21T02:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=2214"},"modified":"2008-04-20T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-21T02:22:00","slug":"board-game-emulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=2214","title":{"rendered":"Board game emulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve developed one of my board game manias for Through the Ages<\/a>. I haven’t had it this bad since the Scepter of Zavandor<\/a>. (btw, I am _so_ over Scepter) I can tell I get a little off-putting with my enthusiasm. Especially since both games take hours to play. In order to work this mania out in a less irksome way, I’m thinking of writing an electronic version of the game. This brings up a couple technical questions, and a significant legal question.<\/p>\n

Technical Questions<\/i><\/p>\n

A major challenge of this would be trying to write an AI. I could either try hard encoding my strategy theories, or some sort of machine learning process. The first sounds like it would be woefully inadequate and probably uninteresting. The latter sounds like it could be both difficult and potentially lead to frequently handing my ass to myself by proxy, without being educational as to what approaches work better. Input from the video game programmers who occasionally read this blog would be most welcome. <\/p>\n

Assuming the AI wasn’t ass-slow, it’d probably also be much faster than playing with humans, because a) the computer would handle the fiddly bits and b) I’d be the only one taking my time to make a decision. <\/p>\n

The programming language I know best is C (though it has been years since I wrote anything of substance in it). But, not knowing any libraries for such, I’d imagine it would not be good for creating visuals. My understanding is that Java would work better on that front (and as an added bonus be cross-platform compatible), but be perhaps somewhat slow\/inefficient for the actual guts of the programming. Since it is not too very distant from C in form, I could see that. <\/p>\n

Legal Question<\/i><\/p>\n

I’m also somewhat concerned about the legalities. I was told by some non-lawyer geek friends of mine that board game copyright is about the art, not the rules. I do not want to publish the game, just play it by myself at home. I couldn’t care less about the art; I have no desire to copy it. I just want to replicate the mechanics of the game. (though I have some ideas for different games, some even inspired by this one, that’s not the point here). <\/p>\n

This obviously wouldn’t really get started until May. (Other ideas for pastimes include learning spanish, camping, and reviving my failing athleticism, but those are more expensive and higher effort \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve developed one of my board game manias for Through the Ages. I haven’t had it this bad since the Scepter of Zavandor. (btw, I am _so_ over Scepter) I can tell I get a little off-putting with my enthusiasm. Especially since both games take hours to play. In order to work this mania out … Continue reading “Board game emulation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}