Overview of the Examples

The examples supplied with protograf attempt to highlight or demonstrate how different functions or features can be used. They do not attempt to be comprehensive and cover all features, but they do give some ideas as to what can be done — and how.

In most cases, you will need to look at the example script itself to understand how the output has been created.

  1. There is a somewhat random tour of various elements in protograf available as a PDF file - it is based on the demo script

  2. Abstract Boards and Commercial Boards - construction examples for games

  3. Counters - counters are really just “tiny square cards”!

  4. Cards - different kinds of decks that can be constructed

  5. BGG - how to retrieve and display data that can be accessed from the BoardGameGeek API

  6. Assorted - examples of various “real world” things; usually constructed using multiple different elements of protograf to give ideas of how these can be used together in a game design

Hint

All the examples are stored into a single ZIP file which can be downloaded and extracted.

If, in a Terminal, you navigate to the examples directory, you will find two batch files:

  • For Windows, you can run the all.bat file

  • For Linux, you can run the all.sh file

These batch files process each example script in turn and save the output from each as a PDF file:

  • In Windows, to a subdirectory Temp\protograf under your home directory

  • In Linux, to the tmp/demo subdirectory

You may notice that each file is called with the --no-png option. This is prevent PNG images being created; the reason for this is because the directory names in some of the example files will likely not exist on your machine.