The Playmat Explained

May 19, 2003

Translating the game play of The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game into a user interface, while condensing it all to fit onto a computer screen and still look good, was one of the challenges that we faced in designing the Online game. The playmat went through several iterations before we settled on the current design, which will probably continue to see revisions when Alpha Testers get their hands on it later this month. When we posted the most recent screenshot, there were a lot of questions about functionality, so we thought we'd give you a little tour of its features.

For starters, the screen shot that we've posted on the site uses what we call a generic skin. As we've mentioned before, you'll be able to pick from over a dozen different UI themes, or skins; one (sometimes two) for each culture, and a generic, or default, skin. In addition to the theme customizability in the playmat, keep an eye out soon for some screenshots of various geographically-themed game lobbies.

Click the image for a larger version

Back to the playmat. Obviously, the tabs running down the right side of the screen (A) are navigation elements that allow you to access other areas of the online game environment, from the trade center to your collection manager. The rest of the playmat is composed of three panels, the Play Area (B), the Control Panel (C), and what wil ultimately be a user definable third area (D) that contains the Card Magnify Window and the Adventure Path.

The Play Area is the largest of the three panels and is where most of your interaction with the cards will take place. The lower section of the panel (E) contains your hand, as well as your draw deck, discard and dead piles, and a button to access your adventure deck (the compass). These decks and piles may be viewed, when allowed by the game rules, in a pop-up window by double clicking on them. In the lower right corner of the Hand Window is a circular pane with a zero in it (F) - this window is the (optional) Twilight Cost Counter - you can select multiple cards in your hand and the counter will tell you the total twilight cost of these cards.

Above your hand is The Free Peoples Fellowship and Support Areas where the active cards of the current Free Peoples player are displayed. Above that are the Shadow and Shadow Support Areas that contain the combined active cards of the Shadow Players. To the right of the main Play Area are three circular windows (G). The largest of these panes is a numeric representation of the Twilight Pool, while the other two panes display the user-defined Avatars of the active Free Peoples and Shadow players.

The Control Panel contains a lot of information in a small space, as well as the chat interface and User List. This is where you can talk to other players, see who's participating in or watching the game, and get info about the current status of the game. To the right is the Phase Dialogue Box (H) where you'll find the Phase Indicator panes that let you know which phase of the game you're in. The phase dialogue box tells you, in general terms, what actions you can currently take and is where you'll find context sensitive buttons such as "Pass" and "Done". On the left side of the panel is the Player Inforomation Panel (I). This panel includes the avatars of each player in the game and important information regarding the current game status of each player. From let to right the icons represent: 1) current site, 2) current burden count, 3) number of cards in hand, 4) number of cards in draw deck, 5) number of cards in discard pile, and 6) number of cards in dead pile. You can double-click a player's avatar at any time to cycle a view of the currently inactive cards in play.

The third panel, the Helper Panel, is intended to be customizable, though we're still working out some of the kinks with it and its functionality. The tabs along its left side (J) will give you some idea of its options, and if you don't want it taking up space on your screen, you can click on the active tab and the panel will minimize on the left side of the screen. This allows the Play Area to expand while the tabs for the third panel are displayed down the left side of the screen, just like the navigation tabs on the right are. You can then reopen the panel at any time and toggle it to whatever view you'd like.

So there you have it, the new and improved playmat. Hopefully this answers a lot of the questions I've seen on the message boards, but if there are any I've missed, post it in the forums!