Tagua Releases its First Alpha

Tagua, a generic boardgame for KDE, is approaching version 1.0, and the developers decided it's time to get the word out on this exceptionally cool application by releasing a first Alpha. Read on for more!

A little less than two years ago, Paolo Capriotti started developing KBoard, a generic application supporting all kinds of board games. His intent was to create a definitive platform that would make it easy to develop board games and variants. After some time, Maurizio Monge joined the project, contributing with exceptionally innovative ideas. Development got a big boost after aKademy 2007, and currently it doesn't even seem to compare to the old KBoard anymore. The name was thus changed to the more original and less boring "Tagua".


Tagua smoothly in action

The current status

The Free Software world doesn't have a decent, good looking Chess game which is properly network aware, so Tagua is focusing heavily on good looks and online play. Being a generic board game, this of course also benefits all other games built upon it. And boy, does it look good. Everything is animated smoothly, pieces explode, and the move history is very fun to play with. The theme engine is very powerful, so hopes are high that artists will create some great looking things.

Currently it features 2 games (Chess and Shogi) and some variations on them, like 5x5 chess and simpleshogi. But it is very easy to write new games (the 5x5 chess is just 20 lines of simple code) so this is expected to change as well.

Online playing is possible, but some work is still to be done on the usability front. And playing against the AI is already implemented, it just lacks a GUI. So, we can expect some improvements still, but the game is already very playable, and it's time for users to start submitting new themes and implement new games! The developers have promised that the best ones will be shipped with KDE 4, so go nuts.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by The Vicar (not verified)

Now that my desire for chess is satisfied, I hope some kind KDE card game developers will create a version of Bezique for me.... :-)

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

If you know the rules it's not that hard to make Tagua support this. Maybe contact the developers and get it going...

by David C. (not verified)

When you mentioned the word "boardgame" my eyes went immediately wide open. I thought about the thousand boardgames that are listed in boardgamegeek.com . I thought about playing "Settlers of catan", Carcassone, and others, like in www.brettspielwelt.de . But you only think of chess and checkers! Well, it's a beginning, though it could get better. *Much* better.

by Hagai (not verified)

You made me gasp with The Settlers. Would definitely be cool.

by Tim (not verified)

There is pioneers (I think pioneers.sf.net) but the AI isn't great and there aren't ever any people online to play with (probably because it is linux only).

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I must be the only one on the planet who finds Settlers extremely disappointing. Other than the fact that it allows me to shout "I have wood for sheep!" it is too simplistic for my taste. I might prefer network play, but when you play with your buddies, you learn their strategies (who goes for longest road, who tries for armies, etc) and what you should or shouldn't trade them.

Personally, I'd love to see huge, extremely dynamic games like Talisman get ported someday.

by Tim (not verified)

Surely their strategies depend on the game situation? Maybe you should get some better friends!

by Senthil (not verified)

Is this project aiming to be compatible with GGZ http://www.ggzgamingzone.org/ ?

I hope it grows to be as varied as the now defunct GTKBoard.

http://gtkboard.sourceforge.net/indexold.html

Best of luck to the developers.

by Stéphane Magnenat (not verified)

qgo (http://qgo.sourceforge.net/) is nice but far from the KDE4 style.

by iax (not verified)

tagua will do it, probably. every PvP information complete board game could finish there. classical ones like Go are the most probable.

They are actually changing the code to be less Chess-specific, and accomodate other types of game. Remember that at one time they implemented Chain Reaction (like KJumpingCubes) and four-in-a-row...