Considering hiring scripters to create in world board games.

[Sorina Garrigus]

I am considering hiring scripters to make a line of board games. I am not ready yet but I wanted to get an idea of what the cost on average this sort of thing would be. I am looking to making board games inspired by more modern board games which Second Life is very much lacking with the last real attempt was ages ago with a very old version of Settlers of Catan. Super hold ... it is over 200 prims with an ungodly amount of scripts. 

I would like to create a list of scripters able to do this kind of work. If you know your board games I am thinking starting simple with games inspired by the likes of Carcassonne, Tsuro, and Sushi go. Not direct copies obviously but games inspired by.

I have a game store in real life so I am literally surrounded by a couple 1000 sources of inspiration. 

If you think this is in your capabilities let me know and let me know of a sample of your work. I am not talking pay and win skill games. But those able to make a game with moving parts, or party style games etc. So we are talking a variety of complexities. 

[Quistess Alpha]

It's certainly possible, and I believe you've bought some examples of board games I made.

Board games are a bit complicated though, as a rough ballpark I'd probably charge 20,000L$ to 50,000L$ (very rough estimate, not to be taken as a final quote) to script one from scratch.

And me specifically, I'd rather not 100% copy an already existing RL board-game unless it's a traditional well-known thing (of which there'd probably be a copy on SL anyways so less reason to commission another SL version)

Edited August 25, 2022 by Quistess Alpha

[Sorina Garrigus]

On 8/24/2022 at 9:44 PM, Quistess Alpha said:

It's certainly possible, and I believe you've bought some examples of board games I made.

Board games are a bit complicated though, as a rough ballpark I'd probably charge 20,000L$ to 50,000L$ (very rough estimate, not to be taken as a final quote) to script one from scratch.

And me specifically, I'd rather not 100% copy an already existing RL board-game unless it's a traditional well-known thing (of which there'd probably be a copy on SL anyways so less reason to commission another SL version)

By traditional I imagine you mean something like Chess or Checkers or Parcheesi etc. Or possibly a Monopoly knock off. Yah I wouldn't bother with those. I wouldn't do a direct copy either though more inspired by or heavily influenced. I know you can do a good abstract game with some complexity interaction based on what you made before. 
Outside of the exorcise of it ... I am not sure why there are so many Tic Tac Toe games ... I mean it's a broken game for anyone old enough to be in SL. The only purpose it really serves is to teach a kid strategy and when they stale mate every turn they learned what they needed to learn and it should go in the trash after that. 

[Quistess Alpha]

10 hours ago, Sorina Garrigus said:

The only purpose it(Tic-ta-toe) really serves is to teach a kid strategy and when they stale mate every turn they learned what they needed to learn and it should go in the trash after that. 

Actually the next step would be to play "Pull distinct numbers from 1 to 9 until someone gets a set of 3 that add to 15". Much more interesting until you figure out it's actually the same game.

2 9 4
7 5 3
6 1 8

 

[Sorina Garrigus]

On 8/26/2022 at 9:38 AM, Quistess Alpha said:

Actually the next step would be to play "Pull distinct numbers from 1 to 9 until someone gets a set of 3 that add to 15". Much more interesting until you figure out it's actually the same game.

2 9 4
7 5 3
6 1 8

 

Not bad. It also would serve as good game to teach kids simple math skills. In my RL game store we sell something called Gobblet Gobblers by Blue Orange Games. It basically fixes Tic Tac toe by placing these game pieces of various sizes that stack like Russian dolls. So on your turn you either place a piece or move a piece. It turns into a memory game as you are trying to remember what might be under the other pieces. It has the goal of playing 3 in a row. The original version is called Gobblet which is a 4x4 instead of 3x3. And has a less kiddie looking appearance made of nice wood cylinder type pieces. 
 

[Quistess Alpha]

6 minutes ago, Sorina Garrigus said:

Gobblet

Yeah I actually own that one. Quite fun, but I've not had anyone to play it with in some years.

[Artorius Constantine]

I added a "Blank" tile to Tic-Tac-Toe and call it Tic-Tac-Toe War.

You can reverse a tile from X to blank or O to blank, but not a tile your opponent just changed.

Added a fun new element to the game. Takes awhile to play now too and has a lot more strategy involved.

Simple games like that I can do, more complex stuff, not yet. 😃

[Quistess Alpha]

7 hours ago, Artorius Constantine said:

more complex stuff, not yet.

The only real "trick" to it is finding an adequate way to represent the game state in a way that's accessible enough to the script. Sometimes that can be encoded in texture information on the object (Note: you can't read texture info on no-mod objects), but for most things you probably need a somewhat involved list (or JSON) structure, and some basic "bit-hacking" to keep the memory usage down.

[Artorius Constantine]

Yeah I just started playing with lists this month. Pretty powerful.

[Sorina Garrigus]

On 8/28/2022 at 3:36 AM, Artorius Constantine said:

I added a "Blank" tile to Tic-Tac-Toe and call it Tic-Tac-Toe War.

You can reverse a tile from X to blank or O to blank, but not a tile your opponent just changed.

Added a fun new element to the game. Takes awhile to play now too and has a lot more strategy involved.

Simple games like that I can do, more complex stuff, not yet. 😃

I am not sure if there is a good game creator group but their should be. If there isn't I would be happy to start one. I criticize Tic Tac Toe as a game because it is broken as a game except to teach kids about strategy. But it is probably a good exercise for scripting for people starting to learn. I would go with a 4x4 though or I have one in my board game cafe in SL that is 3D. Basically multilayers. I have this version in real life in my game store's library. I have a ton of games out if you want to see what is possible and always looking for more. Abstract games I imagine are fairly simple to script relatively speaking. But things that have card effects would be more involved. I am not sure if it is still around. I forget the name of it as I am still digging through my inventory after being away for years but there was a Collectable Trading Card game comparable to Magic the Gathering in SL at one point. In real life games with a lot of card effects you are basically introducing a new rule to the game with that card. 

If you ever seen the game "Settlers of Second Life" (Basically Catan) in world it shows what could be done even early on when scripting was much more limited. It is so old I can't tell you when it was made as the scripts are so old they don't have acquired on dates on them. I might guess sometime in 2006 or 2007 though. The game is a monster prim and script wise. over 250 prims and a script in most of the prims. I talked to a well known skill game maker recently he said he could probably make it today with 20 prims ... maybe less. 

If you want to have your mind blown Komikaze is crazy impressive. It is basically a fully scripted version of Asteroids.