Monopoly

[+MrFish]

16 hours ago, Stephen said:

How do people deal with real board games?

With real board games... the board can always be rotated. Doesn't happen too often in my experience, partly because the pieces can move during the operation; also, some people have a tendency to put their properties right up against the edge of the board; so, it becomes rather inconvenient.

 

It would be possible to allow turning the board in 90 deg increments; but it would require some modification to existing DLI's and PMG's [Edit: and details of the board bitmap -- not just simple rotation (because the board isn't a true square)] at each stage. Seems a bit of work for a small advantage.

  

16 hours ago, Stephen said:

If the top text is rotated, what about the left and right?

Some versions rotate graphics for the left and right sides too. The version I've seen doing this have no text there, though. Some of the symbols end up looking squished, for obvious reasons.

 

[Irgendwer]

8 hours ago, Stephen said:

How do people deal with real board games?  If the top text is rotated, what about the left and right?

Since the players are normally arranged around the board, there are also advantages while leaving the classical orientation. For the computer version I see only drawbacks - esp. while the tiny font is hard to read and abbreviated.
 

Regarding the texts to the left and right I could cite from a German industry norm (DIN) which defines, that for technical drawings you have to be able to read the texts from below or right, but since there is no mention of games, I won't do that.

But yes, I find the text on those fields also quite hard to read and turning them would be IMHO beneficial (cannot imagine to be readable on a CRT with std. video connection).

 

For us Europeans the policeman points to Siberia, which is famous here for the prison regime...

A solution to solve that could be swapping the orientation for counter-clockwise movement, exchanging the positions of the policeman and the jail, but I guess this is too revolutionary...

[+Philsan]

Eventually it would be nice to add foreign languages versions.

[+MrFish]

13 minutes ago, Philsan said:

Eventually it would be nice to add foreign languages versions.

Start reading here: @Mathy asks a question

 

[+Philsan]

1 hour ago, MrFish said:

Start reading here: @Mathy asks a question

 

Thanks, I am at your disposal for Italian language version.

[+MrFish]

5 hours ago, Philsan said:

Thanks, I am at your disposal for Italian language version.

Just to be clear, my initial intent is to provide a handful or so of relevant (to our community) localizations for the street names and corresponding currencies. With the currencies, Euro will have to suffice in any cases for (appropriate) European countries where equivalencies would cause excess digits to exceed display limitations.

 

A generic model allowing for localized cards and interface is an intriguing idea. I'd be interested to look into it; but my initial thought is that it may fail display limitations of the new (smaller) title deed, chance, and community chest cards -- which are already going to be pushing the limits for English (and are yet unverified). There are a number of cards that are pretty wordy; but I'm hoping I can abbreviate them satisfactorily; although, it may be possible to achieve something similar for translations.

 

At any rate, basic (street and currency) localizations would be nice enough to have. Thanks for the offer; I'll keep it in mind.

 

[+MrFish]

9 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

For the computer version I see only drawbacks - esp. while the tiny font is hard to read and abbreviated.

The main point of adding text to the board (aside from "Tax", which was already on the lower-res version) is to get a closer look to the original board. A lot of versions don't show any text at all for the full board view (like NES, for example); and to be honest, no text at all (aside from "Tax") is a perfectly acceptable approach. I initially considered just mimicking the board text with proportional gibberish that provided a general look closer than adding actual text. I decided that having some real text would make more sense and could at least provide enough of a hint to the full name to make it useful.

 

I considered using two letter abbreviations for everything, and I formerly used caps + lowercase for everything. Using lowercase allowed for more letters to be used; but I decided to go with caps in keeping with what was used on the real board, and for a more balanced look to all the text. Ultimately, the text isn't even really needed on the board. Essentially, the property names are more of an novelty than a necessity. We know values climb as you proceed around the board; and names and values are given by the blowup/detailed view in the lower right and on the title deeds anyway. As I mentioned already, I also want to make it possible to click any board space at any time in order to get the blowup/detailed view on the lower right, for easy reference to every space on the board (in addition to getting the blowup/detailed view for the space occupied by the active player).

  

9 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

But yes, I find the text on those fields also quite hard to read and turning them would be IMHO beneficial (cannot imagine to be readable on a CRT with std. video connection).

Actually, it's quite decent on a CRT. Even composite is surprisingly good. There's still enough there to get a hint of the property name. One thing I imagine is that discernment is somewhat down to familiarity. I'm quite familiar with the property names in English; so, it's not difficult at all for me to come up with the name from the text as provided (even upside down); and I imagine this to be true for a lot of people.

  

9 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

For us Europeans the policeman points to Siberia, which is famous here for the prison regime...

Yeah, I thought of writing that in my response; but it looks like he's pointing more towards some remote land masses in the ocean instead.

 

9 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

A solution to solve that could be swapping the orientation for counter-clockwise movement, exchanging the positions of the policeman and the jail, but I guess this is too revolutionary...

I'm not against taking some liberties in order to improve usability/playability; but some things would just ruin the original character of the game for me. I'm willing to accept some limitations in order to maintain authenticity.

 

[www.atarimania.com]

2 hours ago, MrFish said:

Just to be clear, my initial intent is to provide a handful or so of relevant (to our community) localizations for the street names and corresponding currencies. With the currencies, Euro will have to suffice in any cases for (appropriate) European countries where equivalencies would cause excess digits to exceed display limitations.

Bummer... I guess that rules out Zimbabwean or Venezuelan editions then...

[+MrFish]

17 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Bummer... I guess that rules out Zimbabwean or Venezuelan editions then...

Venezuela will be alright (Spanish); however Zimbabwe can expect to be left high and dry.

 

[+MrFish]

A few enhancements (dice, cards, & info panels). No such enhancements for the board; it's decidedly 2D, flat colors.

 

 

[Goochman]

Looks fantastic - cant wait to try it

[www.atarimania.com]

1 hour ago, MrFish said:

Venezuela will be alright (Spanish); however Zimbabwe can expect to be left high and dry.

I guess it wasn't a good joke to begin with... I was referring to the extreme inflation rates in the two countries, meaning you wouldn't be able to have too many digits on the screen  

[Wrathchild]

4 hours ago, MrFish said:

11 hours ago, Irgendwer said:

For us Europeans the policeman points to Siberia, which is famous here for the prison regime...

Yeah, I thought of writing that in my response; but it looks like he's pointing more towards some remote land masses in the ocean instead.

On the UK board he points more toward Free parking anyway

[Clint Thompson]

2 hours ago, Goochman said:

Looks fantastic - cant wait to try it

but is this actually being programmed or is this just the concept art on-screen and working?

 

I agree though, would be a blast to have and play on a real Atari 130XE!

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, Wrathchild said:

On the UK board he points more toward Free parking anyway

Yeah, same as all actual Monopoly boards. I was referring in comparison to my board, where he's coincidentally pointing to jail (based on the unique placement/orientation). The main point being, he's not pointing in the same direction when you flip him around like @Irgendwer was suggesting.

 

[Edit] I'm pretty sure the policeman is supposed to be pointing at whoever it is that he's arresting. He's blowing a whistle, and so I assume he's also pointing at the person he's blowing the whistle at (do police use whistles anymore?). So, it wasn't so much that I was saying he needed to be pointing at the jail (as he seems to be in my version), but more so that he seemed to pointing out to "no man's land" after being rotated, as was suggested.

 

Actually, it's relevant to the discussion that you're showing the UK board, since it interestingly shows property names and costs in two orientations (and a very different train).

 

I did attempt to put pricing on the bottom of properties on the board. There's room for it, but I found it to look a bit cluttered, for such a small representation like this. So, I'm not sure I'd attempt emulating the dual-direction names used in the UK version for the same reason.

 

[+MrFish]

2 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

but is this actually being programmed or is this just the concept art on-screen and working?

 

I agree though, would be a blast to have and play on a real Atari 130XE!

As with the majority of my stuff (at this stage in life), this is only design work that's being proven through Graph2Font; but I do have serious interest to work on programming it when I'm able to in the future. I'm not just dabbling here; Monopoly is a game that I would seriously want to play on the Ataris. So, plotting out a viable path is a key concern. There's a lot of design work that will go into the Chance and Community Chest cards, for instance. That won't be very fun for me unless it can all be used in a real game; but I would surely work on programming a proof of concept before going further with that portion of the design work.

 

[+MrFish]

Some people might find the larger dice better and/or easier to see; but dice of this size are more proportional to the board, cards, etc. No reason why dice size couldn't be an option -- it might matter on a CRT, composite connection, or something. The larger dice were really just an easy carryover from the lower-res version. Dice of this size couldn't be done there. The larger dice were basically the smallest possible, decent-looking dice that could be rendered in lower-res.

 

 

[+MrFish]

16 hours ago, MrFish said:

For the computer version I see only drawbacks - esp. while the tiny font is hard to read and abbreviated.

16 hours ago, MrFish said:

I formerly used caps + lowercase for everything. Using lowercase allowed for more letters to be used;

 

Here's one of the earlier versions of the board where I was using capitals and lowercase.

 

It offers some additional readability in some cases; but overall not much more than what I'm using now. I thought it looked pretty good, considering the font size.

 

 

[+DjayBee]

Is there a reason why railway stations' and chests' texts are not top-aligned like utilities' and chances'?

IMHO this looks somehow "unstable".

[_The Doctor__]

Only chest need be raised a smidge. Then it will look 'stable'. Chance stands out no matter what.

[danwinslow]

Very nice looking.

It would be interesting to develop a 'board game server' via fujinet that could connect instances of people playing this or other board games. Server itself would just connect the various instances together and who is playing with who and pass the game packets along as necessary. Likely would be suited for a small linux instance on some device. Peer to Peer(s) game play with one instance selected as 'primary'.

The games would have to be written to support it, of course (or maybe extensively modified if they are already multi-player). This would be a great game to start with.

[+DjayBee]

21 minutes ago, danwinslow said:

Very nice looking.

It would be interesting to develop a 'board game server' via fujinet that could connect instances of people playing this or other board games. Server itself would just connect the various instances together and who is playing with who and pass the game packets along as necessary. Likely would be suited for a small linux instance on some device. Peer to Peer(s) game play with one instance selected as 'primary'.

The games would have to be written to support it, of course (or maybe extensively modified if they are already multi-player). This would be a great game to start with.

This is already being worked out.

Check Fujinet's homepage.

 

The basic server exists and you can already play 5 Card Stud Poker and Reversi.

[+MrFish]

5 hours ago, DjayBee said:

Is there a reason why railway stations' and chests' texts are not top-aligned like utilities' and chances'?

IMHO this looks somehow "unstable".

53 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Only chest need be raised a smidge. Then it will look 'stable'. Chance stands out no matter what.

 

I'm balancing some texts out more individually, based on the graphic that goes with them; but I'll see how lining texts up more consistently with each other looks. There is a certain imbalance to the current look.

 

As far as Chance goes, the size of the question mark is pushing the text further up than any other board space. I've been wanting to redo it smaller, but I just haven't gotten to it yet.

 

[+DjayBee]

4 minutes ago, MrFish said:

As far as Chance goes, the size of the question mark is pushing the text further up than any other board space. I've been wanting to redo it smaller, but I just haven't gotten to it yet.

This by itself does not disturb because the text is inside the range of the color bars.

If you align all fields without a color bar to Chance's position, it will look balanced.

[+MrFish]

Here it is with everything more aligned (except Chance, until I get to it); Inc. Tax will remain unique.

 

[Edit]

I'm speaking specifically of Chance on the upper and lower rows. Chance in the right column is already spaced properly.