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piecepack

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Last Updated: 21-February-2002

The piecepack ...

... is a standardized set of components that can be used to create tabletop board games. It is intended to be to board games what a pack of standard playing cards is to card games. You can find everything there is to know about the piecepack here: www.piecepack.org.

Recently, I had the idea of creating a Windows COM DLL to do for the piecepack what the Cards32.DLL does for Windows card game programming — make it easy to create piecepack games for Windows. The first step in the process is to create an adequate set of graphics. Below, you will find my current graphics set to be used in the DLL.

Feel free to copy and make use of these graphics for any reason ... especially if it helps in the design and development of new piecepack games — for tabletop or computer.

Tiles ... everything starts with the tiles, of course. I've made the tiles 100 x 100 pixels in size. First is your generic tile back, followed by all of the tile faces (I've decided that I like my crowns in green):

Coins ... next comes the coins. These get a little more complicated, since the pip on the coins can point in any direction. So, I made a few decisions: First, I decided to show the coins only pointing in the 8 major compass directions. Second, I had to separate the coin graphics from the suit and value graphics. Third, I needed to find a way to show what suit a coin was for a null value — this lead to my putting the values in reverse color, as you'll see below. And, fourth, I couldn't find a good spiral for the Ace, so I used an "AT" symbol ("@"), which I thought was fitting for a computer version. Coins fit within a 50 x 50 pixel square -- exactly a quarter the size of a tile. First comes the coins, followed by the suits for their backs, and the values for their faces. Black and white masks have been included for using Windows GDI drawing routines:

     

Dice & Pawns ... pretty straight forward. Dice are 30 x 30 pixels, and the Pawns fit within a 50 x 50 pixel square:

The DLL ... hasn't even been started yet, but I figured the graphics would be the toughest part for me — so I'm happy with how far I've come. When completed, the DLL will only consist of a handful of calls to draw each of the above objects. It will use the standard Windows GDI to do the drawing, so it may not be overly quick — but it should be easy to use. We'll see how it goes ... ;-)