A few days ago, after reading a bit from the Book of Ti'ana again, I remembered the game Gemedet. Since its rules are so simple and almost fully explained in the book, I've always wanted to try it myself. I've done a bit of searching, but it seems that hardly anyone has ever tried playing this game. One or two people say they have actually constructed a board and played a few games, but no detailed reports from them either.

So in the interest of discovering more about this bit of D'ni culture, I'd like to challenge anyone who's interested to a game of Gemedet.

Now this may prove to be a bit difficult. Ideally you'd need a physical 3d 9x9x9 board to play. However, it seems to be tricky and time consuming to construct one. Therefore I'd like to try playing on a 2d representation of the board. I made this pdf file showing the board separated in 9 layers. I know it may not be a particularly easy to use version, since only six-in-a-lines that lie within these layers are easy to spot—other directions will be more tricky to detect. So far I haven't come up with a better system though.

So I was wondering if anyone would be interested to meet up in MOUL and give this a try. The actual gameplay would be as simple as sending over coordinates for each move through chat. You can use a printed version of the pdf file to mark the moves on the board. Whether the game is going to be fun or even playable at all I do not know.

Ps.: I'm new to the forums, so hello to all.

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This sounds interesting! I'd like to try it.

What about creating an application to handle the board and moves, instead of paper? I can't do it myself, but it would probably work better than with paper. What might also work is to buy some four-in-a-line games and set them in a row?: D

Also, welcome

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Dude...I barely remember how to play heek.

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Is there a posting of rules or what the pieces look like? I am very much interested in making a real life Gemedet board game but I need more details on the game before I proceed and buy materials for it.

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Mister Cloak wrote:

Is there a posting of rules or what the pieces look like? I am very much interested in making a real life Gemedet board game but I need more details on the game before I proceed and buy materials for it.

Check the Mystlore article for a start Perhaps the book contains additional clues...

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From the book you can deduce the following rules.

The game is played by two players on a 3-dimensional 9x9x9 board. One player plays with green and the other with red stones. In his turn a player places one of his stones in any one of the still unoccupied cells of the board. The first player to get six of his stones in a line wins.

The exact definition of a 'six-in-a-line' is not given, but it is reasonable to assume it's similar to games like connect four. That is, a six-in-a-line requires six stones in an uninterrupted straight line in any direction (in this case 13 possible), uninterrupted meaning that there may be no empty cells or stones from the other player between any of the six stones.

Marein wrote:

What about creating an application to handle the board and moves, instead of paper? I can't do it myself, but it would probably work better than with paper.

Such a program would be neat, but I don't have any experience with GUI programming myself. I could probably make a simple command line interface that'd check validity of moves and six-in-a-lines. The display of the board would be still limited to a representation in layers though. Also I considered the paper option more practical for a MOUL meeting, since you wouldn't have to switch between two applications all the time.

Jutt wrote:

The exact definition of a 'six-in-a-line' is not given, but it is reasonable to assume it's similar to games like connect four. That is, a six-in-a-line requires six stones in an uninterrupted straight line in any direction (in this case 13 possible), uninterrupted meaning that there may be no empty cells or stones from the other player between any of the six stones.

Note that in the physical Connect Four game played by dropping checkers into a rack, there's the additional constraint that you have to drop the markers in at the top, and they'll fall to the lowest unoccupied slot in the column. The description of this game doesn't seem to mention that (and you probably wouldn't need long tweezers if you're just dropping the stones in at the top).

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Last edited by Mac_Fife on Sun Mar 07, 2010 10:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

You could always mass produce the boards, sell them, and give the proceeds to Cyan...

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Lint Roller- 01050459
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T.L.N.- ?

I VISITED AHNONAY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TREE SHIRT

Mac_File,
I think the game you are recalling is "Qubic". Check out the description on BoardGameGeek.com and Wikipedia. It was also called "Quad" (which is actually the game I recall having). The images on BoardGameGeek show the "Quad" variant as well as "Qubic".

BoardGameGeek URL: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13714/qubic

I had this game too and was immediately struck by the similarity to Gemedet. Just a little bigger, a 9x9x9 playing surface instead of 4x4x4. Guess that's why we didn't need the tweezers. Ah, goof times, good times...

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In the interests of the environment, this post has been constructed entirely from recycled electrons.

Yes, perhaps a 5x5x5x5x5 playing surface would be more in line with D'ni sensibilities. Perhaps there's another D'ni game out there like that, and Gemedet is the 9x9x9 variant? Maybe there's some hidden connection between a base-25 numbering system and 9x9x9 surfaces? Or not. We base-10 folks have 3x3 (tic-tac-toe), 8x8 (chess), 4x4x4 (qubic) and all sorts of other board sizes, so perhaps the D'ni did too.

PS - Sorry I got your name wrong in my previous post. These old eyes...

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Lyle627 - forum
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So far no interest in my challenge yet? The pdf sheet I provided was apparently not very attractive. Therefore I've come up with something BETTER…

Since a physical board may not be an option for many people, I decided to attempt making a software version of the game, despite my lack of knowledge on programming graphical interfaces. Luckily I found a nice library (CImg) which helped me overcome a lot of problems. To make a long story short: download this zip file, which contains the C++ source and a windows executable for my gemedet application.

The game board is rendered in 3d and can be rotated with the mouse (click and drag). Use the Arrow keys and Page Up/Down to select a cell (blue dot). The full view of the board contains a lot of cells, so you can use the X, Y, Z, Q and W keys to isolate a plane through the selected cell (useful for locating possible six-in-a-lines). Press Space to return to full view. Enter confirms a move.

You'll notice that this is pretty much only the bare engine of the game. It still needs to be polished and I'll probably add more features. If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them. You may also modify the code, as it's released under the GNU GPL. If you want to compile the source, you'll have to download the CImg library yourself. It's supposed to be a platform independent library, but I have only been able to test it on windows.

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