The Ancient Game of Ur
Published April 06, 2019
Chris Hayes
Screenshot of the online Game of Ur Screenshot of the online Game of Ur
Bringing an ancient game to the modern web
After watching Tom Scott's video about "The Game of Ur", a centuries-old game, I felt inspired to build a digital version of it. It looked pretty fun.
Hosting
The project is currently hosted on surge.sh (opens in a new window) , which I chose as a way to familiarize myself with diverse hosting services. Although Surge is convenient for its free tier, I may switch to Netlify or Vercel for their additional features.
Tech
As for the technology stack, I used Angular (opens in a new window) 6, THREE.js (opens in a new window) , Bootstrap (opens in a new window) , Angular Material (opens in a new window) , and SASS (opens in a new window) .
UI
Bootstrap and Angular Material were used to speed up the creation of the user interface. This would however be one of the last projects I use Bootstrap on. I've since moved to TailwindCSS (opens in a new window) for its utility-first approach.
3D Elements
The 3D dice were modeled with TinkerCAD (opens in a new window) . I then exported them as OBJ files that I could render with THREE.js. This was a fun way to learn to use TinkerCAD for modeling.
SVGs
I've always enjoyed doing image work in Inkscape (opens in a new window) . I used it to create the SVGs for the game's chip pieces.
Future Plans
My long-term plan for early.games (opens in a new window) is to include more games from antiquity, as a sort of fun and educational project about history.