Keyframed Dice Rolls
This is a technique I saw ages ago somewhere and I always use it for on-screen dice. This is also how I made selectable card suits in my previous what cards are they holding? tracker post. You start with a composition where every frame shows a different die value, then you drag that composition into your main composition. Now remap time on the die comp and make a slider control for your input. Use an expression to hook the time remap to the slider and because it reads time in milliseconds, we'll convert your input from frames to milli to make it more useable (in this case I'm running at 23.976fps, so 1 / 23.976 * slider value). Time values that land between keyframes will blend your die frames so you should either hold the keyframes or round to an integer.Now you can just enter a number and the dice will show that number. Pretty neat!
Checker Grid
I mathed out a grid for the checkers to align with so that I can just give it a point and a number of checkers deep into that point and it'll drop the checker in the right place. Okay, this one might have been faster and more visually organic to just drag the checker where I want it, but I had grids on the mind at the time. Also with this method, if someone moves a checker 5 points, you can just enter "+5" into the point input field and you don't even need to look at the board, so it has its advantages.I also have a checkbox rigged into the opacity so that when a player scores a point the checker can be fully removed from the board without any fuss. This had the unfortunate byproduct of stacking assets on each player's home board, because that's where they all end up before being removed, so I generally pushed the checkers up a bit or locked the layer so I couldn't select it again accidentally.
Control Panel
This is my primary control layer where I've built out a controller property for basically every variable that changes on screen, with a couple exceptions. This way, when a new move is made I can consult GNU Backgammon (where I got all of my stats from), click on one layer and just run down the list.For the first half of the edit, I had all of these controllers on the layers they controlled, but centralizing them all into one layer made my life a lot easier.
Equity Grading
So this value isn't a measure of true equity, it's equity relative to the best possible move you can make. I chose that because I think it's easier for new players to appreciate, even though it doesn't tell the full story. So because this is relative equity, that means all of these values will always be negative and typically on a scale from 0 to -1.So I made the input field to automatically convert an integer to be the thousandths place, which allows me to use my numpad to just quickly enter the numbers I see instead of having to format it each time. Saves me a couple of key presses for every equity update, and more importantly, smooths out the process so I have more energy to edit. Give me one less thing to worry about.
It also automatically color codes the number based on GNU Backgammon's default equity ratings. I never would have had the time to do this manually, so it's nice that after setting this up I never had to think about it ever again.
The move rating just above "#14 of 14" also automatically updates text and background color based on the equity of the player's selected move at any given time. No keyframes on that bad boy, just some good ol' expression work.
Dynamic Move List
When a player's move starts, I first update the total number of possible moves. If it's less than 6, the move list hides the unneeded moves, if it's more than 6, a table break appears automatically. The move notations have to be manually updated, it's just a text layer, but it's alpha matted to the object layers behind them so that when those disappear, so do the moves associated with them.When a player makes a move (whether they stick with it or are just sketching out ideas), I match the "chosen move" property with that player's move as seen in the move list. Each move box is rigged to read this chosen move, and if they match, the background highlights purple. The move quality box relies on this property to know which equity to look at to grade the player. If the chosen move is greater than 5 but less than the number of total moves, a second table break is added.