Developing a computerized version of carcassonne, need help with 3D modelling.

[nahoj84]

Hi there.

I'm developing a computerized version of carcassonne which I plan to release under the free license Gnu GPL. The basic rules and the original and river tilesets are finished and some rudimentary user interface. Plans are to make it playable over internet, to add a browser version and to add computer players. This will be a kickass-program...

I'm quite a good programmer if you ask me but I suck at graphics, could never make them look good. I would like to do a 3D version of carcassonne and would therefore need help from someone who knows how to make 3D graphics look nice. You do not need to be a programmer, you only need to be able to create 3D models of the carcassonne tiles and followers and share them with me (and you need to be devoted to this and implement all the tilesets). You should be ready to release your work under a GPL-compliant license and will therefore probably not get any money out of this but you will of course be attributed properly.

So if you're interested, email me with sample images of your favourite carcassone tile modeled 3D.

Peace.

[Scott]

Were you thinking 3D tiles as they are in the real game, or were you wanting the features on the tiles to be rendered in 3D as well? The simpler method would be a lot easier not only for the person doing the models but also for you. It might even be possible to create the tiles with OpenGL and just apply the textures instead of modelling the tiles. That would just leave modelling the figures.

I wish you luck with this. I've been disappointed with the computer-based Carc games I've seen so far. Although I'm a programmer as well, my experience is mostly writing web-based apps. I'm terrible when it comes to games.

Anybody wanting to give this a shot, grab yourself a copy of Blender

[nahoj84]

Well, as you say, the easy thing to do would be an app looking like the actual tabletop game and that would probably be what I would aim for in the browser-based client but if I find someone willing to do the work with the real 3D features of everything, that would be my wish. For me, it would not be that much extra work and it would still enable us to do another version of it with the flat tiles with textures as you say, the textures being the models rendered from above or something.

Just out of curiosity, what did disappoint you in the other games? What is important to make the game good? I wanna make a good game so this is crucial...

[Scott]

It's been a while, but I'll see what I can remember...

I think the biggest problem for me was the quality of the graphics. Each of the games I looked used original artwork for the tiles, possibly for copyright reasons, but the quality was below the actual tile artwork. I would prefer the original tile artwork if possible, because that's a large part of what makes it Carcassonne.

I also think it's important to have a well-designed user interface, but it's hard for me to get more specific about this right now. One thing I remember is that this one game had a feature where it showed you the possible locations to place your tile. I suspect it's not a lot of effort to add such a feature, since you'll have detection code to check for valid placements anyway, but I think the feature should be something that a person can turn off if they prefer to think for themselves where their placement opportunities are.

On the subject of user interfaces, it should be easy to pan around the playing area. I don't want to feel like it is a chore. But also don't make it too easy such that it pans when I'm not intending or pans too quickly. Of course, you don't want to pan too slowly either, so it's definitely going to be a balancing act. Most people will probably expect to pan by moving their mouse cursor to the edges. Being able to pan with the keyboard might be good to have too, but not to the exclusion of panning with the mouse. Also, you may want to include zooming, both with the keyboard and with the scroll wheel on the mouse. And of course you'll need to have rotation of the playing field. That might be even harder to get right than panning.

One of the games I played had annoying sound effects whenever you placed a follower. I think the only sound if any should be a recording of the sound of a meeple being placed on a tile. I want to feel like I'm playing Carcassonne.

Some of the games I played didn't support every expansion, which sort of detracted a bit from its appeal. Sounds to me like you're intending to include every expansion and future expansions, so I'm not worried.

Finally, none of the games I played had support for variations, but part of me wonders if it would be a good idea. Some of them would be pretty easy to code. eg) More tiles in hand, fewer followers, Count movement, etc. Taking the idea of customization even further, what if it were possible to build custom tilesets? That might be a lot more work; maybe in a later version. I was just thinking that with a lot of customization options, Carc fans could play test their own designs for house rules, variants, custom expansions, etc.

Ok, I know I said finally at the beginning of the last paragraph, but I just had another thought. It would probably be best that the playing field not be limited, though I'm not sure everyone would agree. Part of me is also thinking it might be cool if areas without tiles were grass, though the other part of me thinks it might be hard to see empty spaces between tiles unless the background was black or something distinct from a Carc tile.

I suspect I'm going to have a lot of feedback over the course of development. I hope you'll keep us aprised of your progress and post screenshots once you've got something to show.

[Gantry]

I'm excited about this, and appreciate you bringing it to the community's attention!  I've done some game development myself in the past but nothing specific that would be of any use in this case.  I do however have one concern, and that is with the general idea of using obviously copyrighted materials to produce a computer game of it.  I don't know if you've sought permission, or have legal advice, but the left side of my brain suggests that before you go to a huge amount of work, it might be useful to follow up on that.  But of course we already know there are other Carc computer games out there (not including the XBox version which isn't on the list but is licensed!), so the precedent has been set.

I for one would be happy to help out, in fact I think I speak for anyone of us in the Carc community that it would be great fun to help playtest and offer our own ideas and suggestions.  Feel free to use the forums here if you want for the project assuming there is no legal obstacles to doing so!

[mjharper]

Interesting discussion so far, and I can only express my appreciation for your efforts.

But: nowhere has it been mentioned what language you plan to use, or platforms you intend to support. Java? Or will the game only run on Windows? (if so, you're going to have to deal with deeply disappointed Linux and Mac users - myself included).

[nahoj84]

Oh my. Thanks for all the responses. I will definitely post links to a webpage here as soon as I publish anything. In fact, the only thing holding me back right now is the dismal user interface which would immediately scare people off. The "customizeability" I recognize as being an important feature. I already have kind of a structure for custom tilesets, but the rules cannot be customized right now. That would probably require some kind of hook system or something, which wouldn't be too hard to implement.

As for legal issues, I do not think writing a clone is illegal since an idea of a game is not copyrightable. A specific implementation is, though, as is the name carcassonne and therefore the program cannot use it.

When it comes to language and environment I've written the core in Ruby (www.ruby-lang.org, the best scripting language so far...) and the simple player client I use for testing in Gtk (although I might change Gtk for Qt or something else when I implement the real client which I expect to be a complete rewrite of that part of the code...). I've only run this on my own linux box yet, but I have run other programs written i Ruby/Gtk on windows so that should not be a problem. I do not know about OSX though. Maybe anyone can give me a pointer there. A browser client may have use ajax backed by some apache mod or something.