Table of Contents

Setting up a Grid and Board

A classic checkerboard with two teams arranged on the board.

To learn more about Grids, see the documentation page for Grids.

In this example, we will use sprites, although meshes can also be used.

1. Configure the Camera

Set the main camera to orthographic, set its size, and choose a background color.

2. Make cell and piece prefabs

Make the cell prefab:

  • Create a square sprite (10x10), and make a prefab from it.
  • Call it Cell.
  • Add a Sprite Cell component to it.

Our game will feature only one type of piece, which will be differentiated by color for each player.

Make the visual piece prefabs:

  • Create a circle sprite (10x10), and make a prefab from it.
  • Set the Order in layer to 1.
  • Call it Red Visual. Make it red.
  • Add a Grid Game Piece component to it.
  • Duplicate the prefab, and call it Blue Visual. Make it blue. [Should we make two pieces?]

Make the logical piece prefabs:

  • Create an empty game object, and make a prefab from it.
  • Call it Red Logical.
  • Add a Grid Game Piece Settings component to it:
    • Set the Owner Player ID to blue.
    • Set the Piece ID to piece. If this was chess, the IDs would be "rook", "knight", etc.
    • Link in the Blue Visual prefab.
  • Add a Any Open Space Rule component to it. Verify it is the OpenSpaceMoveRule.cs script and not the OpenSpaceAddRule.cs script. (A different tutorial covers piece rules. This rule allows pieces to be moved to any open square without any additional configuration.)
  • Duplicate the prefab, and call it Blue Logical.
  • Change the Owner Player ID to red, and link in the Red Visual prefab.

3. Create the grid

Grids is a powerful system that allows for a significant amount of customization. In this instance, we will use the simplest setup, which is a 10x10 grid of cells arranged in a rectangle.

  • Right-click on your project and select Create | Grids | Presets | Rect Grid. This will create two objects, the shape graph (this determines the cells and logical layout) and the space map graph (that determines how the cells are positioned in space). For the purposes of this tutorial the defaults are good: the shape is a 10x10 Parallelogram and the space map is a simple Rect grid (which means the logical parallelogram will be positioned to form a rectangle).
  • Create an empty game object and add a Sprite Cell Grid Builder to it.
  • Link in the shape graph, space map graph, and the cell prefab on the Sprite Cell Grid Builder component.
  • Hit the Build Grid button on the Sprite Cell Grid Builder component. You should see a grid of cells in the scene view, which will appear as a single large square due to their uniform color.

4. Set up a checkerboard coloring

  • To the grid, add a Sprite Grid Colors component.
  • Delete all colors, except for two.
  • Set the color function: x0 to 2, x1 to 1, and y1 to 1 for a checkerboard pattern. For other patterns, see What are Grid Colorings.

5. Add pieces to the board

  • Add a Grid Game Manager component (Grid Game Rules will automatically be added).
  • Add the logical piece prefabs to the Pieces field in Grid Game Rules.
  • Setup the Initial Pieces in Grid Game Manager, using the player IDs red and blue, and piece ID piece that you used before. Since this is a simple rect grid, you can use coordinates (0, 0) to (9, 9) to place the pieces.
  • Click Build Grid to have the pieces added.

Note that the pieces will disappear when you run the game, which is the intended behavior. The pieces are added at runtime during a step not covered in this exampl.