Description:

Just Dice is a dice game of strategy rather than chance. Players take turns rolling any of their own dice two positions each turn. Battles between neighboring dice of opposing teams are resolved in favor of the die with the highest number on top. Losing dice are captured and removed from play. The objective of this game is to capture all of your opponents dice. The following exceptions apply to dice with the stated number showing on top:
    1   - Assassins - beat neighboring 6s
    2   - Scouts    - get an extra move
    3,4 - Archers   - can captures distant enemies (as a knight in chess)
    5,6 - Warriors  - nothing special

Screenshot:

Links: download blog and comments

A few weeks ago I read a comment about how nobody would publish chess, if it were designed today for the first time. I don’t think I completely agree with the comment, but it does raise some interesting concerns. Primarily, should chess have been designed differently/better in the first place, or could it be updated now to better suit modern tastes?

I'm very interested in hearing any feedback or comments you have regarding the design of this game's rules.

Thanks in advance.

I suspect the rules of chess came about of many hundreds of years of 'testing' with lots of variations before the final design was created.

Making games of strategy like chess and checkers has some interesting theoretical background - there has to be no obvious winning or drawing strategy otherwise the game loses interest. There has to be enough variation that the game doesn't get boring. Adding in a random factor as you have done can also aggravate as many people as it attracts.

So for your game you need lots of people to play it... i would also suggest a way to record games and then an option for people to upload the games to you so that you can do some analysis to look for flaws in the rules or ways to keep it interesting.

Right now i agree with nick that the perma rotate is annoying and actually causes a flaw in the movement. If you get the camera around 45 degrees then the control keys stop working.

Nick: Read the rule about scouts. You get extra moves for showing a 2. Though i can't see how that gives you up to 5 moves.

Otherwise facinating and beautifully simple... very hard to play by yourself and learn a strategy... time to make it a 2 player game I think.

Here is the history of chess... seems my hundreds of years was a little short... earliest origins of similar games are 6th century and that game probably wasn't the first http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#History

One other think to consider would be to add a texture to the dice to remind me of each faces special powers and possibly a 'hint' display that shows the 4 surrounding faces maybe hovering next to the die otherwise i have to keep spinning to see what my options are.

Excellent game idea!  It's better than checkers, and at look how many people play that. :-)

My only suggestions are:

1. Make the selected die indicator different somehow.  There's something about the tinting I don't like.
2. Start the dice in the 1st and 8th ranks rather than the 2nd and 7th, and start the black dice on the black squares and the white dice on the white squares.
3. On the squares adjacent to the selected die, show the number (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) the selected die will become if it moves there.  Otherwise, the player must rotate the camera around his die to decide which move to make.  (I would do this graphically by putting white dice' pips on adjacent black squares and black dice' pips on adjacent white squares.)

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Adding in a random factor as you have done can also aggravate as many people as it attracts.

What random factor?  I do not see one.

Shieldshock:

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Adding in a random factor as you have done can also aggravate as many people as it attracts.

What random factor?  I do not see one.

Good point... i saw the dice and assumed the initial positions are random when they are not. Well spotted.

The ZMan [MVP/Moderator]:

Well spotted.

As dice are wont to be.

Thanks for all the great feedback guys...

Regarding the camera controls, how would you suggest changing them? Only moving the camera durring the mouse drags, or allowing the player to click in and out of the camera movement mode? Regarding the keys not working when the angle is near 45 degrees, this seems like a better option than allowing the player to move, because they may not get the result they are predicting (at least that's been my experience with similar controls in other games). I could certainly tighten those ranges up though...

I had hints about where the selected die could move in an older prototype, and can see how helpful they are to learning how the dice move around to change numbers. I'll make sure to put that back in before adding the networking code. Also the look of the dice and the selection display are definitely works in progress. I was going to add perlin noise based marble/wood textures but need to simplify them down to work under ps_2_0 because my other dev box is out of commision. I think feedback about which die captures the other(s) is also going to be really important in helping player learn the rules (especially with the archers in there). 

The board size, initial placement, and number of dice per team is something I'm really interested in feedback on. Swordshock, I'm curious about your suggestion to move the dice back to the 1st and 8th ranks. I left them on the 2nd and 7th for two main reasons: 1st) so two dice would be neighboring after both move forward (like pawns in chess), and 2nd) so dice could take a defensive move back, or to roll onto a 2 that would allow them to move farther to either side. I was actually thinking about adding a 9th file so the dice are centered and more semetric looking at the start. There are some nice things about the starting configuration too, but I'm very open to ideas and expect that much more playtesting will help inform these initial design decisions.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and keep any new ideas comming. I'll update this thread when I get the hints, and network code integrated (along with any changes to the camera controls).

LiquidAsh:

Regarding the camera controls, how would you suggest changing them? Only moving the camera durring the mouse drags, or allowing the player to click in and out of the camera movement mode?

Sorry about that -- I had the impression that the dice started on random numbers.  Leaving them on the 2nd and 7th rows is fine.  However, I still suggest either

• starting all of the dice on the black squares in their respective rows, or
• your idea -- adding an extra column (on the left side with respect to the picture).

If you do neither of these, the player starting positions are technically not the same.

Thanks again for all of your kind words and feedback on Just Dice.

I've just posted an updated version that include many of the above suggestions: read about the most major changes here on my blog. The network support is still in the works, as are some puzzle levels that should help players learn the game and develop strategies. Any new thoughts or suggestions will be gratefully welcomed.

Best.