Game Box Creation - The Library
| Game Box Creation edit | |
The "buildingBlocks" sub directory of the gamebox repository contains two sub directories containing tile and token images. These two subdirectories have been replaced by an expanded directory structure placed under the "library" sub directory of the gamebox repository. This section discusses this new library.
Of course, this library can NOT contain all possible tiles and tokens. Any missing tiles/tokens, that you need, should be added to the library before you start creating the tile/token sheets. If a tile is in an on-line tile library such as the [Blackwater Station] master tile list then you can use one of the tile adjust scripts to format the tile for BOARD18 and then add it to the tiles library. In the rare case that the tile does not exist anywhere, you may have to create it from scratch or by hand modifying an existing tile.
Please share any tiles or tokens that you create with the BOARD18 project so that they can be added to the library in the gamebox repository.
Standard Tile Colors
Some of the early game boxes that I developed contained tile images from disparate sources. This resulted in tiles of a given color that did not all have the exact same shade of that color. To correct this I decided that the tiles in this new library would all comply with the same color standard.
The standard shade for each of the four tile colors is given in the following table:
| COLOR | Red | Green | Blue | Hex RGB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | 255 | 255 | 0 | ffff00 |
| Green | 84 | 216 | 43 | 54d82b |
| Brown | 170 | 114 | 42 | aa722a |
| Grey | 179 | 179 | 179 | b3b3b3 |
These are the same shades as those used by the Blackwater Station tile encyclopedia.
The Blackwater Station tile encyclopedia is the prefred source for all tile images that are added to this library.
The Library Directory Structure
The library will have the following directory structure:
library -
|
|-typeFtiles -
| |
| |- brownTiles
| |
| |- greenTiles
| |
| |- greyTiles
| |
| |- yellowTiles
|
|-typePtiles -
| |
| |- brownTiles
| |
| |- greenTiles
| |
| |- greyTiles
| |
| |- yellowTiles
|
|-tokens -----
|
|- {game box name}
|
|- {game box name}
The "typeFtiles" Directory
Map boards that are in "Flat Side Up" orientation will be referred to as Type F map boards. Such map boards require tile sheets that contain type F tiles. All type F tiles in the library are stored under this directory. No type F tiles are stored in the old "buildingBlocks" directory.
The "typePtiles" Directory
Map boards that are in "Point Up" orientation will be referred to as Type P map boards. Such map boards require tile sheets that contain type P tiles. All type P tiles in the library are stored under this directory. Type P tiles are also stored in the old "buildingBlocks" directory, but they should not be used in preference to those stored under this directory.
The "tokens" Directory
All tokens are grouped by the game box in which they are used. So there will be a sub directory for each game box. Some tokens are also stored in the old "buildingBlocks" directory, but they should not be used in preference to those stored under this directory.
File Naming Conventions
Library tiles should all be in .png format. Tile names should all begin with "tile". Please note the lower case! This should be followed by the tile number as shown on the tile. Finally different tiles with the same number should be differentiated by one or two lower case letters. Thus tile 14 would be named "tile14.png". If a second different tile was also called tile 14 by a different game designer then it could be called "tile14a.png" or "tile14xx.png" or some such other name.
Library tokens should all be in .png format. Tokens for a given game are stored in a directory with that name. Thus tokens for 1830 would be in a directory called 1830. Each token in that directory would be named uniquely. Tokens with two sides would be stored twice and suffixed with "f" and "b". For example, the BM token would have two image files named "BMf.png" and "BMb.png".