​Interactive Online Board Game - "Scotland Yard"

An app to simulate make-up effects based on computer computer vision framework in iOS system

  • Project Period: Dec. 2016 - Feb. 2017
  • Project Duration: Three Months
  • Project Type: Individual Side Project

Introduction

Scotland Yard is a well-known board game in the world. I redesign the board game into an online version for Top Elite Project, a club leadership program in NTPU (National Taipei University). The participants split into five teams. One of the teams serves as MR.X. Then, Other groups act as the polices and communicate with the other teams in the board game in limited time. Through the board game, the participants can learn how to adapt in a hierarchical working environment.

Purpose Of The Game

People need to work with others while they are working. Generally speaking, most people work in a hierarchical and multi-divisional environement. They discuss the inside affairs in a group and appoint a person to convey messages to other departments. The scenario is also the same as the students' club at a university. The club members in one sector usually communicate with others in different sectors to manage the clubs.
To teach people how to adapt in this environment, I redesign the famous board game, Scotland Yard. Through this game, club members can learn how to discuss the information efficiently in a limited time. At the same time, they have to convey the ideas to exchange useful information with other companions from different groups for completing the missions.

Game Mechanism

1. Participants are split into five groups

2. One of the groups serves as the thief

​3. The space arrangement of the game (Polices are in the center of the classroom and thief is in the corner of the classroom)

​4. The thief team discusses the movement in two minutes

​5. Each police team communicates with team members in a minute

​6. Each team appoints a member to common area. The appointed member needs to convey clues and come up some plans to catch Mr.X

​7. Return to Step 4. until the polices catch the thief or the thief successfully run away from police

System Design

In this project, I created a server and a client programs under the framework of C# ASP.NET. The server program is used to manage all data coming from clients and transfer the data to other clients. The client program includes a user interface and is controlled by users. I implement the network with the TCP socket, a kind of secure and solid protocol for data transmission.

Review

This workshop is my first experience to use a program to combine technology with a general activity. It fascinates me and makes me emphasize on the relationship between human and technology. I also get ideas of C# development such as how to use threads to prevent user interface from blocking on interface and how to create TCP client-server programs. However, some improvements can be practiced in the future. For example, I can use a web-socket to create a server online. A web-socket makes user connect to the server without the local network connection. It could facilitate the user to play in the game in the program.