Design patterns for multiplayer card games

Abstract

Many multiplayer card games have interesting structures that can be exploited while designing a computer application to simulate these games. Critical features that most games have are that they are turn based and have common data types like Cards and Decks. This paper aims to demonstrate certain design patterns for implementing multiplayer card games that are capable of scaling well and are easily understandable and maintainable. Two card games ‘Ace’ and ‘Literature’ were developed from which the patterns were extracted. The patterns explained in this paper, can be applied to any turn-based multiplayer card game and in some cases, to any multiplayer game in general. The two patterns discussed in this paper are represented in small caps to have better understanding.