Standing Y

Let’s be honest -- I was pretty lazy with the Y post. I mean really. I was in a hurry to get it done so I literally just copied the graphics I did for Hex and shoved it out the door. I did not do it justice in the graphics department, and for that I apologize. One of my favorite games, too! I can excuse myself for my fairly lazy artistic work for “lesser” games, but I feel too guilty for Y. So I return to it, in an attempt to do it justice.

A Standing Y board (if you have a better name for it, please let me know. I’ve tried everything. VerticallY, Yrect, you name it). Oh, and click for full size.

This is a design that I thought of not too long ago, and it is the Y board I wish so badly that I had. Unfortunately there is nowhere I can get it (obviously), and I do not have the requisite skills of a woodworker required to make it, so I shall have to content myself with the design alone. Perhaps some kind saint will come along and start producing these (call me), but until then pictures are all I can offer you.

Anyway. I believe this to be superior to a standard flat Y board for three main reasons (Yes, this pretty much reads like a sales pitch. It kind of is. Be warned that what follows is a designer defending his design, and will come off as very self-serving and arrogant. You have been warned):

1. It takes up much less space than a traditional Y board. Let’s be honest, the triangle is a fairly inefficient shape as far as fitting on tables goes. And since Y requires a relatively large board to be enjoyed fully (a minimum of fifteen spaces to a side, I’d say), it’s difficult to make a board big enough to see but small enough to use.

2. It can be used as a standard Y board if you really want -- just take it off of its stand and set it down, then play normally -- viola. It’ll look something like the old CON-TAC-TIX board, and no one would say no to that.

3. It looks cooler. I mean, come on. There’s something so beautiful about an upright triangle, something vaguely symbolic and monumental...I would love to have a large (3-4 feet tall) version of this resting on my coffee table. It’s a functional sculpture, in way.

In order to play it with the traditional alignment (laying flat), another set of stands is necessary, one at each corner. This prevents the bottom from becoming scratched and also ensures that the pegs can be pushed in to the correct distance and don’t stick out the top too much (the height of the stand is exactly equal to the width of the extruding pegs).

Supine Y. Click for full size.

Finally, it gave me a unique and interesting idea. Since the two players will be looking at two different sides of the board, they could easily be looking at two different things, right? I mean, no one would know the difference. Thus I got the idea to use the reversible “pills” that you might remember from Ataxx instead of traditional pegs, which allows both players to play the same color at the same time -- or did I just blow your mind??

Both players would place their pieces with the white peg pointing towards themselves, but your opponent would always see it as a black peg. It’s a little hard to explain, perhaps. Basically what you see as white your opponent sees as black, and vice versa, so to both of you white is friendly and black is enemy (or the other way around).

This makes the Pie Rule a little more interesting as well: after the first person plays, the second person doesn’t switch colors, but assigns colors -- and assigns both players the same color. So the first peg can be put in with either side showing, and the second player will say something like “We’re playing black,” which means that both players will be playing with the black tokens as theirs.

I hope that this makes sense -- it isn’t something that I’ve explained to a lot of people, so I apologize if I sound like I’m talking to a child. It’s really something you have to see more than hear, I think. Or maybe you get it. Whatever.

Anyway, that’s all there is to it. I realize that this is a bit of a departure from my traditional posts, but I hope it marks the start of some more interesting content. No longer will you just see game rules (and the occasional random Semibreve post), but perhaps some more design, history, strategy, etc. We shall see!

Introducing Semibreve

I wish I could have done this much, much sooner, but unfortunately I just didn’t have time. On Monday I started a full-time internship for the summer and it’s been eating up pretty much all of the time I usually have for Tabletop. So for that I apologize. Hopefully I’ll get a few real updates soon, and if not there’s always the weekend.

But anyway, to the point: last weekend I started working on a project that I’m pretty excited about. It’s been fun, and I hope that I’ll get a chance to finish it soon, especially if there is very much interest in it. It’s a program I’ve written, a fairly simple one, that I think fans of abstract strategy games will enjoy. (This is kind of long. If you want to cut to the chase, there’s a screenshot at the bottom that sums up a lot of what I have to say.)

Semibreve

In a nutshell, it's a game annotation program. Yes, it's been done before, but I don't like any of the current programs. I wrote the program that I wanted to use, and hope that you might feel the same.

Basically, I think that annotated games are a great way to learn new things, but that they just aren't very approachable, especially for beginners. Sure, Chess experts have no problem playing famous games out on their chessboard, but try getting a beginner to do that to learn the basics of strategy -- it is unlikely that they would be interested. Perhaps if someone came along and wrote a program that could play every move out for them with full annotations for each move people would be more willing to give strategy a chance.

Perhaps?

Now, I'm not the first person to think of this, obviously. But I think I have a...better implementation than those who have come before me. Although I realize it sounds a bit like a sales pitch, I present to you the reasons why I stand behind this program:

• The file format is completely human readable
• Almost all abstract strategy games can be represented by it (yes, Chess and Go and Hex)
• Annotations include text comments and markings on the board
• Completely customizable display of the board

That first one is my main selling point. The "files" that the game uses to store these records look pretty much like, well, normal game annotations might. For example, here are the entire contents of a file that represents an annotated game of Tic-Tac-Toe:

Game: Tic-Tac-Toe

---

0: Setup

This is a sample game made to show off the syntax.

1:

drop a 2-2

The classic opening, guaranteeing black at least a tie if he's careful.

2:

drop b 2-1

An unusual response. More typical would be a corner. Let's see if black can extort it.

3:

drop a 3-3

Nope. Had he played adjacent to the white stone, he could have forced victory. Let's see how this plays out.

4:

drop b 1-1

mark 3-1 r

Forced move to block the diagonal three in a row, while simultaneously creating a threat to black.

5:

drop a 3-2

Black thinks he has clenched victory, but he missed white's top row threat!

6:

drop b 3-1

mark 1-1 g

mark 2-1 g

mark 3-1 g

White seals the deal and pulls out a win.

That's literally all there is -- no tags or ugliness or info to the program. As you can see, it looks a lot like, well, how you might write it out yourself. Each turn consists of a list of commands specifying what to do -- in this case always "drop," but other commands include "take," "move," and "pass." The drop indicates what is dropped ('a' or 'b') and where it's dropped. Moves look like "move 2-3 to 1-1" or just "move 2-3 1-1" (in the final version, coordinates like “a1” or “c5” will be supported). The syntax is very simple.

After that there is a list of marks (if you choose to include it). Here you can see that a red mark was placed in turn 4 to represent the white threat, and three green marks to represent the three in a row in turn 6. Then come the annotations -- also optional. And then the next turn.

Anyway, once you write the list of commands, you can load it up into the program and you can step through each turn, viewing a rendered image of the board, complete with all the marks drawn correctly. Simple, no?

Source Editing

The main thing that I wanted to do with this program is make it easy for everyone to use -- not only to write your own games, but to view them as well. And what's easier than downloading a file containing the code and then loading it into the program? How about copying and pasting the code in directly?

Which brings me to the source editor. Built into the program is an extremely simple editor that allows you to compose a file and then directly load it into the display program, or to copy code from a web page or text editor and load it straight in. It has a built in syntax checker that will tell you if your file is valid and allow you to load it directly from there. So you could (if you had the program) just copy the text above for the Tic-Tac-Toe game and paste it into your little source box, hit sync, and you'd be in business.

To Do

What can't it do? It does have limitations -- it cannot represent 3D games (like Pylos or Druid), games using dice, cards, dominoes, or other weird pieces, or games using stacks or piles (like Focus or Mancala), or games that use weird and unique boards (I mean really weird...Ludo weird. Xiangqi is completely fine). I don't think that any of these are major problems, though, and if there is any real desire to see support for any of these it wouldn't be a huge change to make (I'm starting small, though).

Most of what remains to be done is fairly simple. I’m updating the graphics (they will be much better in the final release), making things more configurable, and making the source files even more flexible. Look for Semibreve...some time. I have so little time now as it is that progress will be slowing down, but I certainly hope to finish at some point.

If you have any suggestions for features you would like to see or ideas to make the program better, please don’t hesitate to let me know! Contact information is at the bottom of the site, and I welcome all feedback.

 A very short, simple example of an unfinished Go game. Click for full size.

Introducing Game of the Month

As you may have already noticed, something new is afoot: Game of the Month! What is it? In a nutshell, it’s, you know, Game of the Month. Each month Tabletop will be selecting a game that has previously been written about and bestowing upon it this highest of honors. For the duration of that month it will get special attention, not only by being featured on the sidebar, but you also might expect to see more games or articles related to it.

Take, for example, this month’s game: Hex (in case you didn’t already see that). Expect to see a few more connection games soon, perhaps some Hex variants, and, if there is enough interest, a beginner’s guide to Hex strategy. I think that, if people better understood the game, they might be more willing to try it.

As always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, just let me know -- there is now email contact information on the bottom of the page so you don’t have to go through Twitter if you don’t want to.

Introduction

Greetings, citizens of the Earth. My name’s Ian and I like board games, cards, dice, whatever. Stay tuned for good things -- expect to learn the rules to some games you’ve never heard of, explore some game philosophy, and download and print some games for free. Get excited!