CAPTogether – Amazing Race

An online Saboteur web app that allows groups to play remotely and in real time. I did this web-app for my hostel's orientation game, which involved groups playing an Amazing Race style game as they collected cards to play Saboteur.

Software Used

This project utilises PHP, JavaScript, Bootstrap and socket.io.

• PHP is used to interact with the MySQL database, and stores what cards are in play, as well as create a log of everything that's going on.
• socket.io is used to update the other clients whenever a card is awarded or used.
• JavaScript (and jQuery) is used to update the respective segments of the UI whenever new data is coming in.

Image assets were retrieved from http://imgur.com/gallery/gio5M.

Roles Included

There are 3 different UIs available, that fulfill different roles. The game was structured such that there were 2 concurrent boards, each board having several groups playing, and also dedicated Game Masters to control the giving out of cards.

• Normal user: UI found in the root folder
  • Able to see their respective boards
  • Able to play cards on the board or on other players on that board
  • Able to see a log of cards played for that board
• Game Master: UI found in the /gm folder
  • Able to see how many cards each group has
  • Able to give out cards to the groups
• Admin: UI found in the /admin folder
  • Able to see status of all groups
  • Able to see both boards
  • Able to see logs, including which groups played which cards, as well as what cards each group was given during the course of the game.

Features

• Users and game masters log in using unique hashes (designed not to be incredibly secure but increase ease of short-term use)
• Admin log in using password "dragon4"
• Live updates on all 3 UIs whenever cards are given, used or discarded
• Log of all actions done, viewable by users (for cards played) and the admin
• Automatic highlighting of possible places to put cards, and automatic flipping of goal cards when a path is built

Gameplay

• Users must keep the number of cards in their hand between 3 to 4 cards, unless they have requested for the GM to 'close' their group
• After their group is closed, they are also unable to receive any more cards
• Blocking another group requires that group to discard a card instead of playing it
• They can also opt to discard cards without playing them