Looking for suggestions/advice

[Rodney Somerstein]

Geoff,

The virtual card table that you propose would be relatively simple 
compared to what I am proposing. It is really just a first step along 
the lines of what I am hoping to create. Granted, it is more open 
than what I would provide, but the engines to do what you want and 
what I want have a lot of similarities. Where mine gets even tougher 
is the wide variety of components I want to be able to support. Decks 
of cards don't necessarily consist of 4 suits of 13 cards. There may 
be several decks. Some decks don't have suits at all, but cards with 
lots of text. Others might have 10 suits with 20 cards each. Playing 
pieces might need to stack rather than just exist separately. The 
possibilities are endless. I suspect that as people started using 
your system you would get requests for similar kinds of features if 
people familiar with the games that I play were to get hold of it. ;-)

I do want to have rules built in so that the system can help enforce 
them. Why require people to remember sometimes very complex rules 
that are there to make the game work effectively when the system 
itself should be capable of handling them. Why should I have to draw 
3 cards manually each time if a game requires it? If I hit the draw 
cards button in such a game, it should automatically give me 3. Not 
just enforcing rules, but handling scoring for games that have scores 
is also important.

I'm curious how, without codifying rules, you handle dealing cards 
face up/down as desired? Would you require an extra click to flip the 
card? In real life it is one smooth motion. If the game knows how the 
card is supposed to be dealt it isn't an issue at all. If you have a 
UI solution I'm very interested as I will probably use it myself. ;-)

Your ideas are pretty interesting though. It is fascinating how often 
several people seem to come up with similar ideas at the same, or 
nearly so, time. And yes, I agree with you that Rev is well suited to 
such a task.

-Rodney