So here’s something I’ve been meaning to share for a while. Back in January, I signed up to part of the control team for the Cleveland Megagame Council‘s annual event. What’s a megagame? Imagine a board game that involves over 40 different players with about 5-6 controllers riding herd over the whole thing, and you’re getting close. At the first control team meeting, though, I found out that there really wasn’t a solid, maintainable way set up for people to view the whole of the game board — a hex map that would update on a fairly frequent basis. This struck me as less than optimal.
So… forty-eight hours later…
Short story, I wrote a quick, fast-and-dirty Node.js/Express app that would display and update the game board as it changed more or less in real time. The data source was a Google Sheets spreadsheet that any member of the control team could update. It made running the game a whole lot smoother. Not to mention, it was the first Node app I’ve written that’s been exposed to a greater audience. (Much thanks to the folks at Heroku for hosting everything!)
The code is now up for public view on GitHub. While you’re at it, you can take a look at the interactive replay of the megagame’s events (also my work.)
All in all, a successful little side project, if I do say so myself.