MonoGame.Samples/CardsStarterKit

Card Game Starter Kit

This sample is a fully-functional Blackjack card game for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android that is built on top of an easily-extensible card game and animation framework you can use to build your own card games.

How the Sample Works

The full game of Blackjack that can be built and played from this sample is built from a number of different underlying components, each of which can be separated out and extended to create new functionality:

• Classes from the GameStateManagement sample to handle the loading, updating, and transitioning of screens.
• The AnimatedGameComponent class, inherited from DrawableGameComponent, to handle animating the position, scale, and text drawing of in-game objects.
• The Cards Framework, represented primarily by the CardGame, CardPacket, Player, GameTable, and GameRule classes, that provide generic card game functionality and are extended by the Blackjack classes to provide the specific game logic.

Upon starting the game, the GameplayScreen creates the BlackjackCardGame, passing in a BlackJackTable and initializing BlackjackPlayers. Per-frame, the BlackjackCardGame handles the input per-frame via the GameScreen.HandleInput method, and passed via the InputState object to all of the other classes it manages.

The various phases of gameplay are handled by a state machine inside BlackjackCardGame, deciding when to start dealing, when to add and resolve rules, and when to start a new round, based primarily on user interactions with the various input buttons, which are AnimatedGameComponent objects.

Drawing is handled by the objects that inherit from AnimatedGameComponent. Each object is responsible for drawing itself and updating its animation states per-frame. Many of the objects, including the GameTable, derive from AnimatedGameComponent.

Extending the Sample

If you are interested in creating a different type of card game, extending the Cards Framework is a good place to start:

• Create a new class that inherits from CardsGame.
• Create a new class that inherits from GameTable.
• Create a new player class that inherits from Player.
• Create any new GameRule classes you need to judge card values specific to your game.

You can then modify the GameplayScreen.Initialize method to call your custom CardsGame.Initialize, add the necessary Player objects, and start a round of play.

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