Monday, June 01, 2009

Do you ever?

Occasionally, I run across something when looking for something else; invariably I file it away in my head—and then I can't find it again when I want to revisit the idea.

Ever since I introduced the Google Toolbar into my life, and started using Google Bookmarks, this hasn't happened with as much frequency; because I can file things away and even if I've rebuilt my computer, my bookmarks are all still there.

I bring this up because I just spent an hour or two trying to locate something, and I cannot remember what it was called to save my life.

Ages ago, I wanted to try playing Carcassonne on the computer. About the time I had decided to buy the computer game, they discontinued it. So I was just looking for alternates—I knew there were several unofficial versions of Settlers of Catan, and was looking for an unofficial Carcassonne.

I found something, I downloaded it, thinking it was an unoficial computer game—what it turned out to be was a program that allowed for the playing of board games over a network exactly like playing at the table. No automatic scoring, no helpful hinting at where you can place the tiles. You had to download the base program and then the graphics set for whatever game you wanted to play (they had several).

The Carcassone one, when launched displayed a virtual table (grid) and had some placeholder "buckets" for the pieces. One bucket had all the tiles in it and the others had the different colored meeples and scoring track. If you connected via network or internet with the same set you could use this to play the game, by dragging and dropping pieces onto the virtual table, and it was just like the real game, you had to do it all yourself. I thought it was interesting, but not what I was looking for.

Recently I've been trying to do a game mashup of Zombies!!! and Savage Worlds. I think I'm ready to do some Game Testing with the modified rules I've written up, and this program would be perfect. I could just scan the tiles and cards into it, take some pictures of the zombies, I think it had a dice roller built in, I could use whatever custom art I need for additional cards without having to print anything out or have play testers read my handwriting. But I can't find the program—I can't remember what it was called.

Do you know?

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