Wesnoth as a board game

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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

If you can buy such plastic tiles, then yes. Otherwise it would be quite labourous to make.

I have been thinking about a system where the terrain graphics are inserted in some sort of transparent pockets in the one-piece board. With hexagonal grid it would be difficult, but you can make a pseudo-hexgrid out of square grid if you shift every other column for the amount of 50% of the unit length (such grid has the same property as hexgrid, that every square has six neighbours). You could sew such grid on a sheet of fabric with transparent strips quite easily. The benefits are that this system is very cheap and easy to make, highly portable and you can store assembled maps by just rolling them up. It wouldn't lie completely flat on the table, but if the unit pieces are heavy enough, they will weight it down. The paper slips where the terrain graphics are do wear, but new ones can be printed easily. The downsides are that assembling and dismantling maps would be quite slow. Also, the pockets would have to be made out of transparent plastic sheet, and while it can be sewn, the seams rip easily, so the system wouldn't last very long.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by thespaceinvader »

The difficulty, I think, is that people are getting very much ahead of themselves. For a mass-produced board game, magnets and plastic game pieces would be brilliant. But for a home-produced hobby piece, thick card is probably more workable...
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Dragonchampion »

True, and considering he's not answering to this week-long posting session, I dowbt he ever will. Too bad I have no money, Or I would have a go.
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Turuk
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Turuk »

Sgt. Groovy wrote: If you can buy such plastic tiles, then yes. Otherwise it would be quite labourous to make.
http://www.hexart.com/

Use the plastic hex places to outline the board and you can even have maps on a separate backing like you mentioned and overlay the hexes onto the map. Or you can create terrain graphics to stick in the hexes to customize it as you like.

But yes, given that the user in question pops in and out at random, this is getting way beyond his current progress.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

The hexart stuff looks cool, but I'm not sure how applicable it would be for Wesnoth board game case. If the map is already made of hexes (and it would have to be, if you want the terrain stats printed on each hex), then the hex grid on the overlay is redundant. Also, I'm not sure how much security a light sheet of plastic would provide for the loose cardboard hextiles, I can't imagine there being much friction between them. A pane of glass would work much better for that, but would of course not be very portable.
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krotop
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by krotop »

If the map size is fixed, instead of trying to insert each hex in a small plastic enclosure, the whole assembled map of hexes could be inserted in a large enclosure. If the players don't lack too much pieces, then each hex would maintain each other with the border ones leaning on the plastic edge, and removing/moving/reverting hexes should be easy enough to do.

The difficult part may be the accuracy in cutting the good length of the edge, but seeing how well the hexes were cut, whatever technic was used, it should be ok.
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Turuk
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Turuk »

Sgt. Groovy wrote:The hexart stuff looks cool, but I'm not sure how applicable it would be for Wesnoth board game case. If the map is already made of hexes (and it would have to be, if you want the terrain stats printed on each hex), then the hex grid on the overlay is redundant. Also, I'm not sure how much security a light sheet of plastic would provide for the loose cardboard hextiles, I can't imagine there being much friction between them. A pane of glass would work much better for that, but would of course not be very portable.
True, but you can also just use the graphics they have provided or the blank one that they also provide in order to make your own. Fairly easy to do as well would be to use their large hexes that have smaller hexes inside them and then cut and paste the digital Wesnoth terrain to fit, thus enabling you to design your own maps on the computer and print them out.

http://www.hexart.com/graphic_depository.html
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Czestmyr
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Czestmyr »

Hello everyone!

I'm glad that you spawned a lot of ideas in the last few days, but I'm afraid that my intentions were much more modest than you expect. Although I really like some of your ideas (using small magnets etc...), I don't think I will be able to put them into practice. My plans are to create a game system and rules rather than produce the game (although, never say never...). Besides, as few of you already mentioned, I don't have much spare time for this right now.

The current state of the game is the same as I mentioned in my last post. I have my alpha-version rules, two factions with units that don't level up, plus I have the needed game material. I just need to play-test with someone. I will be changin my dorm soon and I found out that there's a board game club in the new one, so hopefully I will be able to find play testers there.

Thanks for your devotion and don't hesitate to try things out yourselves!

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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by f3style »

ancestral wrote:It does look really, really nice. However, I fear that there would be just too many hexes to have a reasonably-sized map (50? 100? How many would you need?)

I suggest having larger pieces composing of 7 hexes (one in the middle and one on each side) so it would be easier to build the map with the smaller hexes drawn in. Also, it would allow to have slightly more unique and overlapping art between hexes, and might help with bridges and rivers which always require certain types of water/bridge tiles.
I had thought this too. Im working on my own game using the wesnoth art and I have come up with the following which may or may not be useful to this project. My game has different rules, for example mountains are unpathable for most units, so the particular examples below may not translate perfectly into this board game, but the concept is sound.

The images below are composed of the same 7 tiles arranged randomly to produce 3 random maps. The tiles follow the same 'rules' on their edges (forest here and here, roads here here here and here, mountains, rivers, etc). This is so that the half hexes always match to make a coherent full hex.

With a system like this, even a simple 7 tile map has incredible potential variety when the tiles are taken out of a pool of 20+. The tiles are very easy to make, I banged out 40 in an hour as mockups. If the idea is useful, run with it, otherwise not.
ExampleMaps.zip
Example maps rar file. 3 jpg maps.
(111.44 KiB) Downloaded 458 times
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Kalajel
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Kalajel »

Hi, I hope this is not thread necro…

I've stumbled upon this and found it highly interesting. I don,t know if you guys made any progress at all in this project, but I'd like to offer some help adn advices.

First, I think you should highly consider check out Titan if only as an inspirational source. I also found that some of the mechanics already proposed for combat were somewhat similar to what is already used in Titan…

Second, as for units counter, perhaps you could use something similar to what was used in TSR's A Line In The Sand. The counters where folded up little cardboards inserted in a slightly rubber-ish plastic stand, like so.
Image
This also allowed another counter to be inserted inside for the purpose of tracking wounds/hits/damage, like so.
Image
I once was thinking of using a similar setup to keep track of units level in another board game I thought of…
Now this may not look like much like this, so I'll try to borrow my mom's digital camera and take pics of the counters and put them in a future post…

Lastly, here's some thought about some of the game aspect;
• Movement: I'd keep it simple like all hexes cost 1 point of movement, but certain units could consider certain terrain to be "difficult terrain" for them, which would result in those particualr hexes costing an extra movement point for those particular units to enter. Had you kept a wider selection of terrain, I might also have suggested some units treat some terrain as "unpassable"…
• Damage and HP: I'd make each hit score 1 damage point to the opponent, this would simplify the hp calculations a lot. To make up for the fact that now "all attacks are the same", you could introduce a simplified version of Wesnoth's attack type, where certain units are weaker/stronger vs. certain form of attacks (ex: undead vs. bashing or cavalry vs. piercing) which could add or subtract 1 point of damage on the overall attack…
• Currency: A lot of games use small counters (which are supposed to be coins or credits) with various values written on them… Of course, I usually end-up never using them and just write the amount on a scrap of paper and do my math there… But this could be done, with counters with values of 1, 5, 10, 50, or some other values. This would allow players to have upwards of 200+ gold pieces without having to print thousands of counters… :wink:

Edit: Oh, almost forgot; @czestmyr: what is a .odt file? What do you need to open/read those?

Edit 2: Re-read this thread a bit more indepth, and here's my thoughts on a few more subjects;
• Dice: I'd agree that d10 dice seem more appropriate for this kind of game. Sure d6 are a lot more common, but after d6 and perhaps d20, d10 are, IMO, the mostly used dice in board games. Also, I feel d10 approximate the % algorithms of computer games better than d6.
• Hex tiles: I really don't see the need to try a bunch of gimmicks to lock the tiles together. A lot of board games already use normal cardboard tiles, and to my experience, they hold still quite nicely. Of course, the more tiles, the more chance of accidentally moving them during play. Also, good quality cardboard will sustain wear and tear quite nicely… But if you guys insit, I guess another solution would be to make the hexes in a similar materials than those 3d puzzles from Wrebbit. You know, this foam-like material with a thin platic sheet on top?
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by jzombi »

Hi!

It's a very good idea to create a board game for Wesnoth (i was thinking about it myself, and then found this thread), and i want to help (sadly i don't have too much spare time).
Some thoughts:
Probably the rules could be differ more from Wesnoth (the Computer Game), to make more playable as a board game:
- i think the combat should be simpler, probably without counting HP's and XP's. It could be as simple like in the card game Magic the Gathering.
- there could be some extra changes to make it more diverse. An example: the map is unknown and the players are building it through the first half of the game, like in the board game Carcassonne. Another idea: extra cards for special spells, enchance units, etc. (edit: i see there are some rules like this in the current 0.1 version).

@Czestmyr: have you heard about VASSAL? You can create your board/card game using it and then play with others through the internet, but it doesn't do any rule checking, it's just a plain engine.

@Kalajel: you can open .odt (Open Document Format) files with OpenOffice, it's like .doc files for MS Word.

Edit: I share Kalajel thoughts about the tiles and magnetic/plastic/etc. stuff. Just look at these famous games: Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Palace of Alhambra.
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Re: Wesnoth as a board game

Post by Kalajel »

Hi jzombi. Thanks for the tip!

[shameless plug] You can always come and check my attempt at a Wesnoth boardgame. [/shameless plug] :D
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