Has anybody seen the demos for Microsoft Surface? Here’s a demo they released today: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-06MSSurfaceSamsungPR.mspx
It’s a touch-screen computer in a tabletop that can recognize objects placed on top of it. With a good A&A program, you could do amazing things:
-You could have the game board appear on the screen. Instead of using tokens to represent territorial control, the map itself would change color.
-You could have running totals for each country’s income that would change as you moved your units pieces. You could have a running tally of the total number of various units each country has.
-The game would know the moves each unit had made and could tell you when you’re making an illegal move.
-You could pick up a plane on your combat move, and the table could show you all the possible targets and resulting landing spots.
-The game could record all of the moves and give you a game recap when you finish. You could analyze things like income over time or number of tanks per country.
What would be amazing is auto battleboard setup scanning the IR pieces then displaying an overlay of the battle in 3d over the entire surface. Also automatic dice rolling per round of combat thumbs up
Though one thing I enjoy about boardgaming is that I can bring my board anywhere… whereas with Surface that won’t be possible for some time. Not to mention software+hardware compatibility and other headaches. My board games will never go obsolete due to software.
Has anybody seen the demos for Microsoft Surface? Here’s a demo they released today: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-06MSSurfaceSamsungPR.mspx
It’s a touch-screen computer in a tabletop that can recognize objects placed on top of it. With a good A&A program, you could do amazing things:
-You could have the game board appear on the screen. Instead of using tokens to represent territorial control, the map itself would change color.
-You could have running totals for each country’s income that would change as you moved your units pieces. You could have a running tally of the total number of various units each country has.
-The game would know the moves each unit had made and could tell you when you’re making an illegal move.
-You could pick up a plane on your combat move, and the table could show you all the possible targets and resulting landing spots.
-The game could record all of the moves and give you a game recap when you finish. You could analyze things like income over time or number of tanks per country.
You can do most if this already and some other things too, in TripleA, but……unfortunately, TripleA does not have all of the G40 rules yet. In a few months perhaps…
Yea for 8 grand this is everyplayers dream gaming surface. Would be neat though but a staight up board is nicer to play this game on. If we wanted to do ur idea though maybe a camera looking down at the board with soft ware that can recognize all the pieces and on a tv display all the current game options, battle senerios, and move capabilities.
maybe a camera looking down at the board with soft ware that can recognize all the pieces and on a tv display all the current game options, battle senerios, and move capabilities.
Surface has a built-in scanner, no need for overhead camera.
This would be a dream! With Animations also… Welcome to the Future
You know you guys could always build one for far less. :)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/maximum_pc_builds_a_multitouch_surface_computer
maybe a camera looking down at the board with soft ware that can recognize all the pieces and on a tv display all the current game options, battle senerios, and move capabilities.
Surface has a built-in scanner, no need for overhead camera.
Would probably still need a top down camera. And the screen itself would need to be pretty massive (even AA42 needs chips sometimes). A computer would not be able to handle chip stacks very easily from ONLY below. There’s an I/1 problem here that will need a sophisticated recognition program, not just a simple touch screen that can possibly differentiate one piece from another.
Like you said, the software/hardware compatibility would be a nightmare. The human brain can quickly make these connections, a touch screen…. not so much. That’s a pretty sophisticated program we’re talking about here, unless there’s quite a bit of input from the user at each phase, and then it’s no longer as simple as moving pieces around on a gameboard.
Would probably still need a top down camera. And the screen itself would need to be pretty massive (even AA42 needs chips sometimes). A computer would not be able to handle chip stacks very easily from ONLY below. There’s an I/1 problem here that will need a sophisticated recognition program, not just a simple touch screen that can possibly differentiate one piece from another.
Like you said, the software/hardware compatibility would be a nightmare. The human brain can quickly make these connections, a touch screen…. not so much. That’s a pretty sophisticated program we’re talking about here, unless there’s quite a bit of input from the user at each phase, and then it’s no longer as simple as moving pieces around on a gameboard.
The surface is actually pretty amazing about detecting the shapes of objects above it. If you made AA units specifically for a Surface game, you could put a bar-code or serial number on the bottom of each of your units, and the table could tell them apart.
Instead of using a stack of chips to represent multiple units, the game could record that for you. Like, it would know that the German tank in Finland is really supposed to be four units, and it could represent that by putting a circle on the game board under the actual physical unit. A simple touch interface would let you add “chips” to a unit or split an army into two separate stacks.
maybe a camera looking down at the board with soft ware that can recognize all the pieces and on a tv display all the current game options, battle senerios, and move capabilities.
Surface has a built-in scanner, no need for overhead camera.
Would probably still need a top down camera. And the screen itself would need to be pretty massive (even AA42 needs chips sometimes). A computer would not be able to handle chip stacks very easily from ONLY below. There’s an I/1 problem here that will need a sophisticated recognition program, not just a simple touch screen that can possibly differentiate one piece from another.
Like you said, the software/hardware compatibility would be a nightmare. The human brain can quickly make these connections, a touch screen…. not so much. That’s a pretty sophisticated program we’re talking about here, unless there’s quite a bit of input from the user at each phase, and then it’s no longer as simple as moving pieces around on a gameboard.
The ENTIRE SCREEN is a scanner. Who needs chips? You could simply have a counter tab sticking out from the side of your units (someone will just have to find a solution for tracking unit stacks and splits). Watch the CES videos.
They already have infrared sensors and fibre optic projection. Watch the CES videos.
Watch the CES videos.
You know you guys could always build one for far less. :)
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/maximum_pc_builds_a_multitouch_surface_computer
Compatible with the Surface OS? That’s the key, nobody is going to write their own SDK’s lol.
I have seen one of these tables up close. I work at University of Waterloo, Canada. One of my colleagues had a student writing a table tennis game for it this summer. It worked very well, but the table I saw would only be big enough to hold either the Europe or Pacific game; not global. It was a neat toy, but I doubt it would have very much practical use for anything, especially a board game like A&A with all its tiny parts. Besides, some of us like the board game because secretly it reminds of us of when we were children playing with our plastic army men.
An engineer friend at University and myself were looking into designing digital table top games. Its an interesting field and obviously would be a whole lot of fun!
My interest in developing an A&A one was mainly so that when tiny little territories were holding massive amounts of units you didn’t have that ambiguity of cramming a bunch of stuff overflowing into neighbourign territories - you cuold have the digital screen pop out and in to “view” territories.
Its an expensive escapade, and at the end of the day computer games are a viable alternative so wont be mainstream for a while!
It could facilitate blind games, which are loads of fun but currently very tedious and time-consuming. (I’ve played one on AAR)
blind games=basically you can’t see the units in enemy territory, except perhaps in the ones adjacent to your own. for now it takes 2 separate boards and one non-player person willing to be the moderator to keep the boards synced.
