WPF layout for complex card game

Question

As my first WPF project, I am attempting to build an application to play a card game similar to Magic the Gathering. It is not clear to me how to lay out the main play area. You can see some examples that are similar to what I am attempting by looking at example 1 or example 2. The chat/info areas on the right would be separate user controls.

The cards must maintain their aspect ratios, and each play area would start with 10 columns and two rows of cards. As more cards are played, the number of columns and/or rows may change. Each player area may have a different number of columns and/or rows. Cards may overlap, and may be placed sideways (tapped). Cards in all areas should be the same size (although they may be cropped in some areas). Cards do not need to lie exactly on the grid (they do not necessarily snap-to-grid).

When the user hovers the mouse over a card, it should expand to a significantly larger size using an animation. A card in one player area may overflow into the other player's area when expanded (but only as long as the mouse hovers).

Given these requirements, I am tempted to use one large user control derived from Canvas with image objects for each card (along with other shapes to delineate the areas). This implies that I will be doing a lot of work during the OnRenderSizeChanged event to position the child items within the canvas (manual layout).

Using a grid does not seem feasible to me, due to the free-form placement and overlap.

Decomposing the play area into smaller user controls would leverage the WPF layout capabilities, but it seems like decomposition would prevent the cards from expanding into adjacent user controls during the mouse-over, so that doesn't seem feasible either.

Is there a better alternative to one large canvas-based control? It seems wrong to be doing manual layout in WPF, but I cannot see an alternative.

Answer 1

I recommend you take a look at this guys project . In java I know but if I was to go the route of building a card game. That would be what I would go off of.

Answer 2

A lot of canvases inside of a grid could help you here, the canvas will allow the content to render outside of its bounds, as long as you turn ClipToBounds to false, and you will be given much more control over exact placement of the cards than with other schemes. You will also get the powerful functionality of a grid control, allowing you to add and remove columns and rows as needed (though you will also have to dynamically add and remove canvasses, though this isn't too difficult.

If you're worried about the contents of your "Card" moving around when the box is rescaled, surround it in a viewbox. It will manage all your scaling for you, and ensures your card uses as much real estate as it can get. Alternatively you could use a RenderTransform, but a lot of these might slow your program down (Experts: does the viewbox operate using RenderTransforms? If so this point is moot)

To ensure the cards maintain their aspect ratios make sure each Image's Stretch attribute is set to "Uniform", making them all keep the same size could be done by designating a master card, and binding heights and widths of all subsequent cards to this original card, though that is a little messy and doesn't allow the cards to expand. Another solution is to set a single size for each card manually, animating this when you want to expand or shrink.

Answer 3

This sounds like a great scenario for Composite Application ala Prism. It provides solid framework for implementing regions, modules, sending message between modules etc... From looking at your screen captures, developing a shell with different regions and dropping modules into them would probably greatly benefit your layout. As for the cards themselves, perhaps they could be modules as well?

Check out: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649780.aspx

Particualy good examples come with the download package including a stock market like application and event aggregator example.

Answer 4

You said:

Decomposing the play area into smaller user controls would leverage the WPF layout capabilities, but it seems like decomposition would prevent the cards from expanding into adjacent user controls during the mouse-over, so that doesn't seem feasible either.

But this is not correct. Decomposition is absolutely the right approach to take, and this would not prevent the cards from expanding into adjacent user controls. The reason being that you can use a RenderTransform rather than a LayoutTransform. See this example, by Charles Petzold, or this article, to visualize the difference. Because a RenderTransform is applied after the layout has already occurred, your cards would be able to expand outside their bounds.

Given that decomposition is the right approach, I would arrange your various card collections into a Grid, with each collection being an ItemsControl. The ItemsControl should bind its ItemsSource property to some collection, and then you can provide a custom ItemTemplate that would display the image and any other information. I would be hesitant to use a Canvas, as this would restrict you to hard-coding the positions for the cards (which is a very WinForms-like solution for a problem that can be far more elegantly solved). Take advantage of WPF's fantastic layout engine and use nested grids and items controls to create a dynamic layout. This will ensure that your game board looks good at any resolution and when stretched to various sizes.