Throughout the month of June the iGDA.SSC held about 5 coaching workshops on XNA and software engineering for games. Here are the screenshots of what were done; we’ll release those games as Open Source when they ready!

Hamilton Graph Game

The first gme is the Hamilton Graph Game (obligatory Wikiepida link) where you have to spot a Hamiton Path and click on the nodes to solve the puzzle.

Up next is a Sudoku game in XNA. The designer has even implemented a pencil tool where you can jot down the numbers 1 to 9 for reference.

Sudoku in XNA

One of the important aspect of the workshop is not just program a 2D game in XNA, but also to explore the concept of agile development and software engineering. Over the next few weeks example snippets from the source code will be used to demonstrate those principles, so stay tuned!

Head off to Invisible City - and you will find it to be a website that release a free board game almost every month. Each of the board-game features pieces and boards which you have to print out yourselves to play; but that’s not the point. The point is that those people creates them in their free time.

They are not the only one to do so. Do a Google search for “Print and Play Board Games” and you find that they aren’t the only one. If you check out Game-It-Yourself, you find a massive list of board games people make in their free time. The point is? If you are interested in games development, you don’t have to do it on computer all the times. Try out your ideas with some other medium or just try out some other medium.

A deck of 52 playing cards have given rise to endless variations. There are more than 1,000 variants of Chess listed on the Chess Variants Home Page, where you find rules for new pieces, new board, pieces with new abilities (like a piece that takes on the property of the piece which it has just captured) and more.

So for budding designers, here’s a consideration. Design a lite, mini-boardgame just for exercise or for portfolio. Think of a variant of an idea, try modding existing board games and so on. It doesn’t have to be about the computer all the time.

PS. Just for the record, I am doing a board game in secret, Pondwater did a board game before and one of our friend in NS was doing a fan-based card game based on Command and Conquer. Yes, we do practice what we preach.

Tom Vasel, from the Dice Tower, is a famed board game reviewer, and surprisingly, he gave Saint Petersburg a 5.5 out of 10. Why? Due to the fact that the game doesn’t stand up long-term play. After a while, playing Saint Petersburg is almost mechanical; and sometimes, right from the third round you can guess who is winning.

After thinking through the issues, it seems to be that because the game has no player interaction between each other (unlike Citadels or the recent Kingsburg). There’s going to be an expansion soon (later the year?) for a fifth player, but will it fix the player’s interaction problem?

Anyway, here is my variant on Saint Petersburg on the scoring aspect. Putting in player’s interaction could be a larger change in mechanic (like my own Dynasty, which so far is still in alpha and still deemed unplayable).

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There are now 2 slots left for the XNA One on One Coaching workshop. Do hurry; respond to the post or email to me if you are interested in learning XNA. Basically, you can learn yourself, but the workshop has the advantages of me breathing down your neck (to make sure you do some work) and that if we get stuck, we can solve problems together instead of relying on forums.

So hurry, book your slot!

A lot of people has long known the fixation and love I have for the game Saints Petersburg. It’s a light to medium city building game in which you try to amass basic industries, build up Saints Petersburg and recruit noblemen to your cause in an attempt to gain the most points at the end of the game. It is light, casual and fun, and have quite a number of interesting rules; applicable to computer game too!

So after playing almost a dozen games (someone help me keep count please!) , I have decided I want to do a game of using the same mechanics but with a different theme. At the same time, a different theme leads to a different premise, and different premise, to mechanics.

The name of the game is Dynasty. In a cradle of civilisation unrecorded by any historians or listed in any chronicles, four civilisations struggled to dominate the area. From small settlements, such as fishing villages, crossroad towns and mining settlements, they form into cities and towns. With such permanent places of settlements, they begin to expand their city and gather people who are the pillar of any great civilisations - laborers, scribes, warriors, merchants, noblemen and even mystics. But there come a point when the cradle is too small for four teeming civilisations  and it comes down to conflicts.

War is one form of the conflicts possible, but one thing I wish to experiment, as in Petersburg, is the multi-prong approach to victory. After all, it is the amount Victory Points (or Dynasty Points, in this game), which influence if your civilisation is going to last the ravages of time, or would just disappear from the surface of the world, perhaps mentioned in a footnote in some obscure tome of lore. Hence buildings and character cards allows different variety of actions.

The original Petersburg has four phases - Industry, Building, Aristocrats and Trade. Sean “th15″ Chan has long pointed out that there is no much direct competition; and considering that its premise is of building, direct competition does seem out of place. Dynasty, however, is about 4 civilisations vying for supremacy, and some form of direct competition is expected.

Dynasty has two extra, optional phases - planning and conflict. The planning phase is where you spend resources to buy Action cards - and what characters and buildings you have built and recruited influence  what actions you can play. The conflict phase is where all things go wild. War, assassinations, political schemings, double-back-stabbing, calling down of heavenly fires etc — all come into play.

But the thing that is puzzling about the conflict phase, even as I am planning for it now is, the victor is not necessary who endures. Remember, Dynasty Points is the only measurement of victory. Having a large army at your bid and call is not.

Well, this is just a quick brief on what Dynasty is about. However, the mechanics used in Saints Petersburg or more or less duplicated here. It’s interesting just how a change of premise (which leads to a couple of new mechanics and direct competition) may come up with a different game. I believe Dynasty will is about 1.5 times to 2 times more complex than Petersburg, and the direct competition aspect 100% more!

There is no mistake in that combination of sound industry knowledge and wise business decisions for achieving commercial success in your games. That is a definite granted.

There are however, those who consistently view this as a struggle against the fundamental passion of it all. If you’re one of them you’ll know it.

1. You’re flooded with extraordinary ideas for making games.

2. You eat, drink, sleep, breathe, see, touch, thrive on making games.

3. If you were born in another time, another world, you’d still be making games.

4. If you were born in the renaissance, and because you were there, you’d influence Michelangelo and his contemporaries into making games.

5. If there were no money in this business, you’d still be making games.

6. If you had to pay for it rather than earn from it, you’d still be making games.

7. You hate programming, but for your passion, you’d pick it up so you could be making games.

8. You want to motivate the deaf and put smiles on cancer patients by making games.

9. You made the mute speak by making games. (”I won!”)

10. With regard to 4, I’m like talking the whole Sistine Chapel emanating game design concepts.

Essentially, you know you really are passionate when deep in your soul you long for that ideal circumstance - where no financial concerns existed in the field of your game production. Which brings us to

1000. You’d retire to make games. And not make games for retirement.

Not talking about a trip to the Russian city, I’m afraid. But better than that — it’s all about our recent fascination with that 4 year-old board game.

It’s beauty lies in its delivery of satisfying strategies in the simplicity of play. You do little else but make purchases, yet the complexity arises from deciding what to buy and when. It’s about a balance of investing in your economy or your cultural advancement - the cash is merely a tool; victory lies in the progress.

The thing about it which makes me smile the most, is that it’s a constructive game involving indirect competition. It’s nothing about diminishing the achievements of others, but rather a race to overtake and maintain that pace of development above the other players. It’s wholesome, friendly, warm and immersive in 18th century Russia.

And that’s why it makes me smile. Just a little tribute here. Perhaps someone with the more analytical mind would be willing to go into a critique in Game Philosophy further down the road.

I yearn for many more rounds of St Petersburg in the days to come. Thankfully, a copy of it being in possession of ExtraKun means that the SSC has that privilege of benefiting from its easy availability. Yayness!