AnyBoard emulator - A tool for testing and debugging during develop-ment with the AnyBoard platform

Abstract

Previous work and research on hybrid board games have resulted in the development of the AnyBoard platform. The AnyBoard platform seeks to lower the investment of time and money required by aspiring hybrid board game developers. It does this by providing the developers with a framework that implements some of the most commonly used board game concepts, as well as suitable preassembled hardware/tokens and accompanying drivers. Whilst the platform supports speedy development with a well-defined library and hardware, its deployment tool and currently limited amount of hardware restricts the developer's ability to test and troubleshoot the developed games. The aim of this thesis is to expand the developer's possibility to test and debug games by enabling them to test games without having the hardware available, achieve game states and make available effective debugging tools. The work in this thesis has resulted in three drivers capable of creating virtual tokens that support the functionality of the AnyBoard hardware and an emulator capable of deploying games developed with AnyBoard in a web browser while simultaneously interacting with these tokens.