Creating a "Sandbox" for Roll-and-Write Games

Hello everyone,

haven´t been here for a long time, but was a heavy user of C2 many moons ago.

In the recent years I was mainly active in Boardgame Design, which I really enjoy as it is not so heavy related to programming skills (which I don´t have besides Construct and which always limited me) but which can benefit from my design background. :-)

So I created like 20 different Roll and Write Games, continuesly growing. Here ´s a definition of what a Roll and Write game is for all that don´t know.(https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/213815/roll-and-write-games)

Stumbling over the new C3 3D-feature (because of the possibility to create rolling dice) I was directly hooked again by the idea to turn these games into a digital version that you can play on your tablet.

No complex calculations, just the drawing feature of C3 as well as some dice which can be rolled and placed on some places on the board.

A recreation of an analog game into a web-app that I can play and offer on tablets etc. Pretty much what Tabletop-Simulator does.

Now my questions regarding the "sandbox":

As all games are quite similar, I would love to create some kind of sandbox which includes the core mechanisms, so that I just have to change the background, music, some effects and maybe 2-3 placeable objects (drag and drop cards, circles...) and dices for every game.

Core mechanics would be drawing (with changeable colors, erasing etc.) as well as dice of course. The amount varies from game to game and they need to be rollable and placeable on the game matte as they sometimes represent stats etc.

How do I set up an project like this?

My goal would be to have a website page for each of these games, where you can click and it instantly loads.

Do I make one game from it with different layouts for each game?

Do I make a separate game for each of the roll and writes to have less data to proceed?

If so is it possible to later merge C3 games together if I ever decide to put them back into one App or whatever?

Are there any good sources or template files for the drawing and dice roll/placement mechanic already?

Before I start something I would really love to tackle this project the right way, so that it is a solid base to work on. :-)

Looking forward to your answers and to dig into Construct again!

Cheers,

Rob

Hi,

Nice to see your familiar art.

I’d recommend testing the 3d in construct a bit more. Even though the default texture for the 3d object is for dice, there is a big limit. You can only rotate on the z axis, so full 3d rotation isn’t quite possible without more work. There is a pay for 3rd party plug-in to be able to rotate fully in 3d. Or you can utilize the mesh distort feature to move the corners of sprites around in 3d. The closest to an example of dice with some physics is here, but it needs a lot more work as it’s only one dice.

construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/how-do-i-8/create-3d-dice-rotation-167723

The rest of what you’re after should be much more doable. You can use the canvas for drawing. Sounds like you’d be just writing down the results yourself but with more events I suppose you could make it do that in a more automated way.

Even though they are similar games I’d say start with one and just tweak it for the others. The event system is largely the same in c3 as c2.

Hello ROJO,

nice to see that you are still around. :)

Right after posting my initial thoughts on this I did some more research into the 3D feature and found some posts like yours that it´s not as easy as I hoped it would be.

Maybe I will go for a 2D implementation as 3D would be a nice feature but no necessity.

I also like the idea of automatization of some basic things with easy code and will see how far I can go with it without loosing on the "boardgame-feel" to much.

I guess the hardest part will be to make a cool drawing tool box in C3. Did some research here as well and there seems to be no Plug-n-Play solution yet.

Well maybe I can find some example game or template online.

Will keep you updated. :-)