Ideas for my or other board game apps

I’m a big board game fan. I like to play, I like to paint the miniatures from my games and I just love to spend an evening with friends, dice, tokens, and cards!

My app right now

I’ve started to code a board game logging app, I want to use it to get the classic statistics, but other apps already provide that. However, I have a lot more ideas.

I’ll start by just describing where the app is at right now, to help you visualize how little is done, and how much is possible. You can:

• Add games to the site database
• Add games to your collection
• Create guest user
• Create an “entry” which is a game, players, and some details about the game
• Get some general statistics with the provided data

Here’s an example of the stats on my account:

There is also the skeleton for an invite system, where I can generate invite codes for a guest user, and then send them a link to register and access their stats.

It’s really basic for now, but let’s start diving into some of my ideas, some of them might be incorporated in my app, and some of them might not!

Custom fields set for each game to generate more fun stats and metrics

This one will certainly end up in my app since it’s one of the easiest ones and a big reason I started coding it! Every user should be able to set custom fields for each different game such as “character played”, “HP left”, “cards bought” and “score”. It’s pretty simple, and would allow some fun graphs like “Which character is the most played ?” or “How many times did X win without losing a single unit?“. I think it’d also be a good base for some of the other ideas down there. I’ll add to the app a custom_field table, where each field would have some type (string, int, select), and a table to store the results of these, which might look like this:

id | custom_field_id | entry_id | player_result_id | value

I might have to add some different columns that could be nullable if I’m playing with different types (value_str, value_int, value_select_id) just to simplify the SQL queries that will aggregate those… But I think it will be clearer as soon as I start implementing and shipping it (Probably with a blog post).

Campaign mode

It’s the second straightforward idea and might leverage the custom fields system. I just want to be able to link some play together in a campaign, most of the custom fields might stay the same between games, so it could carry them over. Some loot or general stats might also be good to save between games instead of some random notes in the boxes…

Site Navigation & Usage

Not a feature per se, but I want to create a neat experience while using the website. Currently, it’s very simple and pretty ugly. The first focus is usability. But I want at some point to have other people using my app. And for that, I’ll get a killer UX! Right now, I’m thinking of something that gives a sci-fi vibe, with panels and sections sliding in and out as you need them. Probably desktop-oriented, but I’ll have to make it usable on mobile as otherwise, plenty of people won’t log their games! This might be my biggest challenge, as I’m not at all familiar with what makes a good experience and even have trouble with just making a simple good-looking UI, but if I manage to do only half of what I have in mind, it’ll already be pretty cool.

Turn by Turn recap for a play

Starting to get into the more complex ideas, it would be cool to be able to see the progression of some games after each turn. By seeing the state of the score and the units, with some pictures of the board or cards played. Some of the requirements for such a feature to be useful is that it must be super simple to add some actions and save the state of the game. I don’t want to spend half the game just writing stuff down.

RPG detailed history

Similar to the last idea, but more oriented towards Role Playing Games. Would be useful to be able to save inventory, used spells, hit points, or any of the game resources (using the custom fields !). And being able to go back and see what we had at a certain point, where we gained it or just to remember what happened in the last session would be good. For this, I want to do some Event Sourcing. I’ve already read some code using the pattern and went through one implementation on a friend side project. Now would be my time to implement it, while being super generic which may make things interesting (letting users define their events ?!).

Animation of a play

Now things get wild. This idea first came to mind after a few games of Senjutsu, but I think it could be interesting in any fighting game. Using some very precise data from the Turn by Turn recap of a game, I would love to get an animation/video showing the movements of the characters, the attacks, misses, and blocks. It would be a sick way to finish a 1h game with a 30-second video. The animation/script would have to be coded from scratch with new assets for each game but it would be a very fun (& challenging) project, with a very visual output.

With Senjutsu as an example, we could see the character’s movements in the resolution sequence, the hits, the misses, and the parries. As well as any changes in stance or focus.

Wargame Tracking, Smart Overlay, and Positional data

Piling on the Turn by Turn recap of a play and applying it to wargames could bring some interesting and more complex outputs. There are too many units in most wargames to spend the time to track their positions. And there is no grid system anyway, so we’d need to use some kind of abstract positions. But what if I put a sensor under the base of each miniature? If the board is delimited itself, I figure that it shouldn’t be too hard to get the position of each unit. But this is unknown territory for me! At the start of the game, once the sensor is linked to its unit, we could also get some data and events concerning the active units! For games streamed or recorded, this could enhance the viewer’s experience! I know that I’ll write some posts with plenty of pictures about some games, but I may also try to do some videos someday!

_{Thanks to Anne-Sophie Tanguy & Emmanuel Micard for helping me share my ideas more clearly. Thanks to Justin Rérolle for pointing out I had broken my blog on mobile with some giant images.}