I find 90% of Unity tuts are either Scroller, FPS or RPG. It is overkill. I’d love to see a tut on creating either a card builder or a board game as it would teach so many useful skills.
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I like this idea. Hearthstone was made in Unity, so top-selling card games can definitely be made in Unity.
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Blackjack
A 3D table, which teaches card counting and shuffling architecture, laying out cards on the table, managing a private hand of cards, using UI buttons to make simple decisions, and tracking your progress over multiple independent hands. We can make the game 3d and deal with camera positioning, physical layout of the cards, and flipping cards over or laying them next to each other to form combinations. The dealer is out introduction to some very basic and predictable AI logic.
Optional: The game could be made multiplayer from the start. We could make an options menu to tweak some of the rules or dealer behavior. We could save our progress from one playthrough to another. We could make our own player profiles. We could add mobile touch controls.
Go Fish
With our new knowledge of how to handle cards, we take that one step further in interacting with other players. A group of players propose private or public trades or requests. We learn to queue such requests and deal with UI/interface/architectural issues that may come up when different players can make proposals / requests / trades. We reinforce some of the lessons learned earlier, although perhaps we represent the cards a different way this time. (Maybe laid out as UI images on a 2D grid instead of 3D game objects?) Any of the options not covered for Blackjack could be covered here.
Settlers of Catan
With our knowledge of cards, multiplayer, and trading, this seems like a logical next step. Here we build a randomly constructed board of hexes out of 5 hex types and lay thought in a certain pre-arranged pattern. Certain spaces are assigned a numerical value, which correspond to dice results. Of course, here, we’ll need to learn to roll dice. Each player rolls dice at the start of their turn. When any space has a numeric value equal to the die rolled, it activates. Each player who has a city or settlement next to the activated space gets a resource card corresponding to that hex type. Players can trade resources amongst themselves or spend them on their turn to build new settlements, roads on the board (that expand possible settlement placement options), or upgrade their settlements to cities.
Carcossone
This is a tile placing game where each player has a “hand” of tiles instead of cards. The tiles represent the map being build. Players build the board over time by placing tiles in valid areas, based on the features portrayed already on the titles such as city walls, roads, rivers, etc. Players can also place markers down on the tiles and these claim entire geographical formations portrayed on the images of the card. The larger the formation, the more points it’s worth, but only if its completed. Players work to complete formations and often seek to block other player’s placement options. The learning goal of this is to deal with a board that is built in real-time by the players, and build the architecture such that each tile understands where it is being located and the features portrayed on nearby tiles.
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Yes!! This is a great course path.
Having completed the Unity course, I feel these games could be completed with the knowledge and experience acquired. Asset creation is usually one of the biggest hurdles (you have to create each individual card).
However, I would like to see a section in the new Complete Unity 2017 course that implements a simple card game like one of those @Anthony_Juarez suggests.
I like the idea of a board game tutorial - Monopoly is always a popular game but I’d love to bring back some of the older classics but have no idea how.
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From one of my favourite unity YouTubers. Hopefully this will help you get started on a card game.
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Just to let you know I have a couple of instructors who may be interested in this, thanks for the idea!
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We’ve just created a Facebook poll for something similar: https://www.facebook.com/groups/completeunitydeveloper/permalink/1913026772286552/
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There are so many different ways to approach board games and deck building card games in Unity. I’d like to see which approach you would choose. Moreover, designing and coding these games can lead to many different problems and challenges not seen in scrollers, RPGs and FPS games, that would help anyone become a better programmer/designer. These games have momentum right now…GWENT, Hearthstone, Magic the gathering, Ascension and on and on.
I think that would be a great idea! As @Marz_Nova said, most of the course materials - tutorials that are available online are for scrollers, I haven’t found yet a specific course on how to create a board game.
I have some programming experience but a few in gaming sector; I just started your Unity course, so forgive me if I ask something already described in it. Anyway, some of the problems / topics I keep thinking about for a board game implementation are:
- card deck management;
- 2D/3D board scrolling and zooming;
- player hand / secret resource reserve management;
- pawns positioning and moving on a fixed grid or freely;
- “basic” AI: for some cooperative games with a common enemy, or just for playing against CPU;
- “basic” multiplayer, locally or on a network.
Focus on the mechanics of how things work and interact would be best. All boards and cards are about moving pieces (cards, tiles), ocupy spaces, manage pieces… If you do all these mechanics, you can build boards and cards (modern ones by the way).
Hey guys, I’ve just been looking through the forum and delighted to see how many views this post has got.
I’m delighted and excited to announce we now have a Board Game Designer course, here’s a coupon for you to buy it this month…
Can’t wait to see you in there, let my old mate and co-instructor @Yann_Burrett have your feedback.
I appreciate this isn’t in Unity, but this IS how to get your head round the fundamentals.
Enjoy!
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