cardboardio

Jul 2020 – Nov 2020 · age 38

What it was

The start of a client library for playing board games online: "cardboard" as in the games, "io" as in the domain. It began as a ReasonML attempt abandoned the same day, became a JavaScript prototype, and then a small TypeScript library. Shapes know their bounds and test whether a point is inside, polygons by a winding-number count. A helper solves for a regular hexagon inscribed in a rectangle. Items place shapes with hover, press and click state, a scene holds them, and an engine owns two stacked canvases: the low one for the scene, the high one for the selection band, so dragging never repaints the board. Three modes, Static, Interactive and Edit, decide what a mouse-down means. The demo connected to an early Adama server running a hex exploration game and drew a 7-by-6 hex board. The next step was making a piece move, and there the log stops.

Wins, for the age

At thirty-eight, Jeff drew the right line for multiplayer board games: the rules live in a server script, and the client only draws and clicks, the division Board Game Arena (2010) had already proven. A primate with a hex grid put the rules where they belonged.
Split the scene and the gesture across two canvases, finding on its own the layering KineticJS and Konva (2011) made common.
Inscribed hexagons by formula and hit tests by winding number, the classic geometry done cleanly in a 611-line library.
Abandoned the day's first framework choice the same afternoon it failed. Admitting a wrong turn quickly is rarer in this species than it should be.

What it taught

Strict TypeScript and webpack UMD output.
Most of an editor is deciding what a mouse-down means.
Once the rules live on a server, the client is the small part of an online board game.
A hard-coded login in a demo is fine on a laptop and a habit to unlearn before anything ships.

Genealogy

Ancestors: none on record. A fresh start on the client half of a game table. Descendants: BSG Prototype: rules on the server, a board drawn on canvas. Hearth: the server owns the logic, the client stays thin.

Epitaph

Here lies cardboardio, which drew a perfect hexagon grid and wired it to a server that knew the rules, then went quiet before the first piece moved.