Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games • Hacker News Board

Re: Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games

#41

Post by eru » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 11:53 PM UTC

comrh wrote: post #38

lfowles wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Tabletop Simulator only about physical simulation? VASSAL seems much closer to what parent is looking for (but there's still very little on the rules verification front there).

I think you're right, Tabletop Simulator gives you an environment to do anything but doesn't help you define interactions and rules as far as I know.

As far as what you care about most games go, a chat room with the ability to send private messages to each other and a (human) game master is all you need to play almost any game online, if you don't care about automated rule verification.

Re: Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games

#42

Post by crobi » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 12:50 AM UTC

andymeneely wrote: post #27

crobi wrote: post #26

What I like: - Data driven - High-quality output - Raster and vector output What I don't like: - Complicated to set up (install Ruby, install multiple dependencies, compile code). This will scare away many potential users. - Complicated to use (edit text files and run command line scripts). While I like this workflow personally, I feel this will again scare away some people. - There's already many generic tools where…

I simply made a thing that I wanted to use. And then made it open source in case anyone else wanted to contribute. I've used a ton of tools for this task for nearly 10 years now - most notably nanDeck, but trying out just about everything else. I kept saying, "this is cool, but I want to do it in Ruby". I also wanted an open source alternative to nanDeck. I love nanDeck, and Andrea Nini has been amazingly responsive…

Your project is certainly interesting, the comments regarding ease of use were just meant as a hint for how you could attract even more users.

Consider a hypothetical web application (no setup) where you write the same Ruby code and get a live preview (no need to explain windows users what a command line is) - this would take lots of work and money, but would probably be more popular.

Look also from the perspective of a person who is looking for a card design tool, is not emotionally attached to your project, and does not prefer Ruby over other languages. For these people, you compete against solutions like Tikz or Processing or some Python script, which are also capable of defining the content and layout of the cards separately. That's why I thought it might be a good idea to mention some amazing advantage of your tool in its short description.

If you want to create a community around your project, how about opening a gallery with examples, like the one the Tikz project has (http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/all/)?

Re: Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games

#43

Post by Schwolop » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 1:10 AM UTC

rodw wrote: post #25

I've never used it, and believe I'd prefer a text-based declarative framework like Squib for this task, but just an FYI for everyone, there is a GUI program called nanDeck [1] that is often used for this purpose. For what it's worth, I've occasionally used a little LaTeX framework derived from [2] to create fairly high-quality prototype cards. Perhaps a LaTeX or PS output from Sqiub would be a useful extension. From…

I did the same thing as you with Python + LaTeX + Tikz. I think I used the same stackexchange question as a starting point too... Here's a view of my deck: http://1drv.ms/1LREWSM

There's also http://paperize.io/prototypes which has recently opened up for a beta testing phase.

Re: Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games

#44

Post by evolve2k » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 6:24 AM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #37

eru wrote: post #9

Oh, I was hoping for a DSL for prototyping the rules to play these kind of games on a computer (and perhaps train a neural network as an AI opponent). I've been working out how to do these things recently.

Yonatan Bergman gave a talk last year at GoGaRuCo about building a really rudimentary AI to test a board game prototype in ruby: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcnvbsXdbtI

Just watched his talk, def worth a watch (Thx for the link).

The repo is below, he added disclaimers that it's rough code and was enough to help him make some useful decisions mainly around game length and balance as he developed his game.

https://github.com/yonbergman/missiles_and_microchips

Re: Squib: A Ruby DSL for prototyping card and board games

#45

Post by zem » Tue, Jun 30, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

Marazan wrote: post #12

egeozcan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't talking about a new one, but using an existing one to generate card-style pages. One could then run a script to render them to svg/png images by using something like Phantom.js. Just an idea.

I gathered, however I passionately believe (through personal experience) that making an existing Static Site Generator do _exactly_ the thing you want is more pain and effort than just writing one from scratch. Writing one from scratch is also fun and instructive as a programming exercise. A classic Input->Process->Outout problem, so many ways to approach it, huge scope for elegant engineering and, once you are done,…

http://prog21.dadgum.com/56.html agrees with you:

I still like to implement my own ideas, especially in fun languages like Erlang and Perl. I'm glad I can program, because personal programming in the small is fertile ground and tremendously useful. For starters, this entire site is generated by 269 lines of commented Perl, including the archives and the atom feed (and those 269 lines also include some HTML templates). Why? Because it was pleasant and easy, and I don't have to fight with the formatting and configuration issues of other software. Writing concise to-the-purpose solutions is a primary reason for programming in the twenty-first century.