We've played around with detecting various hand and arm gestures to digitally reveal/hide hidden information, but none of our launch titles ended up needing it. If you've got an idea that requires it, happy to work with you to make it happen!
There's currently a Unity SDK, we're just super focused on our launch and haven't been able to flesh out those pages. We'll be fleshing it out over the coming weeks, email developer@board.fun to hear about it the moment we update!
The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration, and would love feedback one way or the other if this is critical for you. If you want to be notified the moment it hits, email us: developers@board.fun
> The SDK is open-source, no fees required. Coming in the next week or two. We're figuring out the specific details regarding registration
It sounds like you've already figured out that the registration would have to be optional, as you're planning to make it open-source (it will be open-source once you release it, it isn't open-source yet :) ).
Yeah, I guess they could offer a downloadable .tar once you've filled out your email on their website, or email it to you or whatever. Not sure you'd wanna add that sort of friction at that stage though, makes more sense to ask before publishing what you've built.
Cool! I don't have any concrete plans yet, but I'm looking forward to checking out the SDK when it releases. I'm relieved that you aren't going for the Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo approach.
1. This is absolutely the case for the launch portfolio. These games are super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you? Super useful feedback!
2. The piece sets can be used as is for new games/apps, especially for prototyping! However if it’s super promising and you want to bring it into our (future) store, we’d love to work with you to make a bespoke set of pieces to go with the game. Whether the launch sets are modular enough as-is is really dependent on the ergonomics and aesthetics of the game you want to make. We’re excited to make ourselves available to devs who want to explore this though, and happy to work with folks to figure out ways forward.
> 1. super unique experiences that are really only possible from mixing the physical and digital in this way. Does the site not make that clear to you?
Yes most of those game don't look like they significantly add anything to the experience over similar already existing games that have or easily could have tablet versions. Even if they are doing a bit more website makes them look like cheap versions of well established computer games.
Bloogs -> that's just lemmings
Spycraft -> doesn't look like something you couldn't design touchscreen controls with little effect on puzzles
Omakase -> you are selecting positions + direction within grid, don't see why press and swipe on touchscreen wouldn't work
Mushka -> the tamagochi style game. All that the special pieces achieve is select an action which could easily be done with touchscreen menu and afterwords positioning it with finger
Cosmic crush -> again one more game where all you do is move single game piece per player on a grid
Space rocks -> asteroid like spaceship shooter
Snek -> just point the finger directly on touchscreen without special game pieces
Out of all them maybe 2 look like they are trying to consider unique strengths of the physical game pieces. The cooking game and 3d block game. And even for those it feels questionable whether it provides sufficient improvement compared to existing games.
By it's nature product like this means that you get worst parts of niche gaming console and a physical board game. Niche console means that the set of available games will be very limited with many of them either being ports from other platforms using generic pieces (meaning you can just play them on those other more popular platforms) or the gameplay isn't as good due too limited budget. Hardly any developer is going to spend years to design unique game for niche platform with very limited player base.
And like with physical board games you need to buy the pieces in physical store or have them delivered.
Tilt-5 also tried to fill the gap between digital and physical board games. They had much more interesting value add but that wasn't enough.
Not the OP, but in the TechCrunch Disrupt launch, founder Brynn Putnam says, "capacitive material manufactured into the pieces."
If you put capacitive material in a unique pattern on the footprint of each piece, and the rest of the piece material was conductive enough to carry your body's charge to register a touch, the shape of that touch could be unique per-piece.
There's no mention of syncing pieces, charging pieces, keeping pieces in view of a wide-angle camera, anything like that, so that's my bet. (This would also mean moving a piece using a non-conductive material would be a way to cheat by having it not get registered!)
I just shared this on LI this morning, linking back to a video showing showing related touchscreen explorations I did for a colleague in early 2013, sensing different coins by their radii as you touch them: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vmiliano_a-vertical-triptych-...
This is nearly bang on correct. The pieces don't contain any electronics or sensors, they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house. Our custom software stack processes the raw data from the device's touch sensor using embedded ML on the NPU, which detects and tracks the pieces in real time.
That said, the device can detect the pieces whether you touch them or not. Touching them absolutely does change the response, and we pass that along as a parameter to the SDK.
Your coin exploration is seriously cool, please hit me up when you're next in NYC!
> they have a conductive pattern built into the surface using specialized materials and a manufacturing technique we developed in house.
Would this be something a home 3D printer could do? I'm not a maker but I could see the value of others being able to quickly build a universe of playing pieces if that was possible.
It's possible to make your own pieces with a multi-material 3d printer (our early prototypes have been made with Bambu X1C & H2D printers), though it's pretty finicky to do so, and requires some rather expensive filament. Happy to help anyone along though!
Looks really cool though did not see what the SDK is or languages it requires? I've built game tables before with flat panel TVs and web tech, but have wanted to integrate miniatures, position, etc into the apps.
Just launched today at TechCrunch Disrupt. Our 12 game launch portfolio was all developed in Unity using our sdk, and we cannot be more excited to see what developers can make with our launch piece sets!
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