card games with a dummy hand

[fw_slim]

Hello, I am interested in developing the 2-player variant of 99 (trick-taking card game). There is interest in the BGA community in having this variant. The 2-player variant uses a third "dummy" hand that is controlled throughout the play of the hand by the (real) player who won the prior trick. So, unlike in bridge, for example, where the dummy hand is under control of a (predetermined) declarer player, the player who is able to play a card from the dummy hand will shift throughout the game. It appears that the platform's concepts of "current player" and "active player" could be leveraged. Dummy would essentially be a third player (player[3]), added after the first two real players.

I would like to use the current 3- or 4-player game as the starting point: state machine design, basic board layouts, etc. I have the source code from the current game developer, QuasarDuke (https://boardgamearena.com/player?id=85638054), who suggested creating this as a net-new game, rather than a settings-variant of the current 3-player game. I am fairly new to the BGA developer platform, but have plenty of prior programming experience in other contexts.

So, before I get too far into the weeds, I would like to find out from the community if anyone has some idea of the complexities involved in controlling a "dummy" player's actions as a current player. Any thoughts here?

[Tisaac]

Hello, I am interested in developing the 2-player variant of 99 (trick-taking card game). There is interest in the BGA community in having this variant. The 2-player variant uses a third "dummy" hand that is controlled throughout the play of the hand by the (real) player who won the prior trick. So, unlike in bridge, for example, where the dummy hand is under control of a (predetermined) declarer player, the player who is able to play a card from the dummy hand will shift throughout the game. It appears that the platform's concepts of "current player" and "active player" could be leveraged. Dummy would essentially be a third player (player[3]), added after the first two real players.

I would like to use the current 3- or 4-player game as the starting point: state machine design, basic board layouts, etc. I have the source code from the current game developer, QuasarDuke (https://boardgamearena.com/player?id=85638054), who suggested creating this as a net-new game, rather than a settings-variant of the current 3-player game. I am fairly new to the BGA developer platform, but have plenty of prior programming experience in other contexts.

So, before I get too far into the weeds, I would like to find out from the community if anyone has some idea of the complexities involved in controlling a "dummy" player's actions as a current player. Any thoughts here?

That's usually pretty horrible in term of complexity but your game seems simple enough here so should be doable.

[RicardoRix]

So, before I get too far into the weeds, I would like to find out from the community if anyone has some idea of the complexities involved in controlling a "dummy" player's actions as a current player. Any thoughts here?

You won't really be making a dummy player, just making a hand of cards that both players can see.

It's easy enough to control which player goes next, or if the same player needs to play twice.

[fw_slim]

Thanks for the advice! Much appreciated. It would be nice not to have to create the dummy player[3]. However, the dummy hand also gets a score, based on tricks taken against its bid cards (selected randomly from the originally dealt cards); dummy's score affects the other two players' scores. I will look into ways to implement that without creating a player[3].