Board Game Abstraction
How would you model a board game in a sql database? I’ve been overthinking this. I’d probably have a Game model to keep track of whose turn it is, with a lot of Pieces associated with it. But that’s obvious.
To be totally generic, a Piece could consist of string:kind, string:space, and string:color. But what if you were playing a game like chess with a 2D board? You could name the space something like 2-2. What if the piece has meta information like rank and class? You could encode it in the kind, like fire-2. Why bother using data types other than string if you’re just going to fetch all pieces and assemble the board whenever you compute a move?
Or is there a reason to query on meta information and board positions? Would you optimize your game logic by not constructing the whole board each time? Should you create a new model for the kind of piece that exists in each game, like a monopoly piece which moves around the board linearly versus a checkers piece which traverses in two dimensions and can be kinged? Do you want many small tables or few large ones?
