Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

abstractboardgames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#61

Post by johnecheck »

barbs wrote: post #44
johnecheck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like the time to mention my unreleased board/video game, Star Gambit! It's a turn-based abstract space fleet battle coming to your browser in 2026. It's already playable over the internet w/ time controls and ratings. If that interests you, join the discord for updates and playtest invites! https://stargamb.it https://discord.gg/f3MUSkJjFx

Looks interesting. What engine/framework did you use to make the game?

Dart/Flutter, custom engine. I've been very satisfied with it; does everything I need for a 2d game. Once it can natively use shaders/GPU on web it'll be perfect.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#62

Post by abstractbg »

tasuki wrote: post #52

What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards! Feature requests: - TwixT - just TwixT PP like on LittleGolem is fine (much easier to implement). - Quoridor - a delightfully incomprehensible game. - Larger board sizes. Hex starts being really fun at 19x19! Questions and suggestions: - On red…

Wow, beating a 100 bot is still impressive in my book.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions!

Yes, the networks are size dependent right now. It's a great idea to copy-paste and then adapt the KataGo network architecture since it isn't size dependent and has been proven to reach superhuman strengths.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#63

Post by kkukshtel »

Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

The space is being actively developed but it also requires you know where to look.

This is a journal that tracks a lot of new abstract stuff: https://www.abstractgames.org/

Notable recent releases:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/352238/turncoats

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2655/hive

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/272380/shobu

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/430875/high-tide

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#64

Post by aidenn0 »

Paracompact wrote: post #47
aidenn0 wrote: post #42

The name of my favorite abstract strategy game escapes me, but it is played on a solitaire[1] shaped board, with lines connecting the dots indicating valid moves (all lateral moves are allowed, diagonal are somewhat restricted; I can draw the board from memory). It starts with the offense occupying every spot except for the nine that make up one limb of the cross (the "fortress"). Defense has two pieces only, placed…

Asalto? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asalto

Bingo!

That looks exactly like the game I'm thinking of, but it was not named that. What I played was in one of those books that came with checkers and had different board-game printed on each page, and I'm guessing "Asalto" is trademarked or something.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#65

Post by krapp »

vkazanov wrote: post #45
krapp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have such an aversion to capes? There's no rule saying you have to play as a character in a cape. If you're asking if there's a version of D&D that's pure math and no roleplay, the closest thing I can imagine would be Dragon Dice, or something with the mechanics of a very basic roguelike. The math in D&D itself such as in combat is affected by your character's stats and the encounters created by the DM, so…

The thing is that dragons and magic and Harry Potter all become irrelevant at some point in life. Power fantasies do have an expiration date. Now, the genre itself, all the storytelling involved, can easily be adapted to more serious, or even abstract, thinking. In fact, it was, and there are plenty of alternative rpg universes. But, similar to how serious non-marvel movies are a niche, serious rpgs are also less pop…

They're all games. They're all escapist power fantasies. No one wants to role play a character who doesn't matter to the story, regardless of the genre.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#67

Post by tasuki »

abstractbg wrote: post #62
tasuki wrote: post #52

What do I think? It's amazing! Got crushed by a 300 bot in Hex, then beat a 100 bot, then again lost against 200. It's great how one can see the review immediately afterwards! Feature requests: - TwixT - just TwixT PP like on LittleGolem is fine (much easier to implement). - Quoridor - a delightfully incomprehensible game. - Larger board sizes. Hex starts being really fun at 19x19! Questions and suggestions: - On red…

Wow, beating a 100 bot is still impressive in my book. Thanks for the feedback and suggestions! Yes, the networks are size dependent right now. It's a great idea to copy-paste and then adapt the KataGo network architecture since it isn't size dependent and has been proven to reach superhuman strengths.

I'm about 1950 on littlegolem, but trying again, I just lost a couple of games in a row against the 100 bot.

A couple more questions/remarks:

- It seems everything is happening on the client? My CPU (I'm on a laptop without a real GPU) goes wild during analysis. But also I don't notice any big bag of neural-net-weights being downloaded. Mind sharing how it works?

- Care to share more about the networks? How long did you train the networks for and on what GPU? Circa how many params? Any and all details you'd like to share :)

- This Tumbleweed game is fun! This game seems somewhat inspired by both Hex and Go, and the author lives in Warsaw. Interestingly, I lived in Warsaw in 2020, am very active in the Go scene (4 dan), and at least know the names of the people who play Hex, and yet somehow never heard about Michał or Tumbleweed before...

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#68

Post by hermitcrab »

Have you come across the Mancala family of board games? I learned to play the Hus variation in Namibia:

https://mancala.fandom.com/wiki/Hus

It is fun how it is deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. I implemented a game engine for it. Can discuss if you are interested.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#69

Post by baruchel »

Paracompact wrote: post #4

As a longtime chess and go player, I was just doing some research the other day into what modern abstracts are out there. I was disappointed by how dry I came up. Even if you expand the search criteria to include video games, there just aren't many deeply strategic discrete-time games that weren't invented centuries ago and have players online at any given time. Here I exclude games that are perpetually changing and/…

May I suggest the Greenchess website? https://greenchess.net/ It certainly has some huge potential: nice minimalist interface and probably about 50 or 60 chess variants for all tastes. Some of them are obviously more or less "recent". You can easily start a new game or accept a pending invitation. I would call the set of players quite "active" and certainly motivated. But it is true that the pool of players remains small and you generally play against the same players again and again.

Re: Show HN: Play abstract strategy board games online with friends or against bots

#70

Post by mNovak »

vkou wrote: post #16
dgrin91 wrote: post #15

As a lay boardgamer, what makes a board game abstract?

Chess is an abstract proxy for a wargame, but is not in itself a wargame. 'Abstract' is somewhere on the chess side of the spectrum between Go and moving miniature battle tanks around and flipping to page 237 of Appendix E to look up how much water the average Italian soldier needed to boil his pasta in the Tobruk campaign.

As an aside, I have a slightly masochistic desire to implement an online-playable version of Campaign for North Africa. It bothers me that they can credibly claim there is no documented case of someone finishing the game.
Post reply on HN