Play Backgammon with Visio

Still in lockdown on holiday, so I thought I would create a version of backgammon that can be played with Visio for the web. This was inspired by my original Visio tutor, the late David Edson, who created a Visio backgammon document which included macros. Macros are not available in Visio for the web, so I have created one where the dice can be shaken, the doubling cube changed, and the pieces reset, using nothing but ShapeSheet formulas.

Checkout the previous two articles in this series Play Checkers with Visio in Teams and Play Chess with Visio in Teams for more information about how the resetting of positions works works. Backgammon requires a Doubling Cube and Dice shape, in addition to a different board to the previous two.

Each of the Die sub-shapes within the Dice shape, have a User.ShakeDiceTrigger formula:

=IF(ThePage!User.ShakeDice,
SETF(GetRef(Prop.Face),"=INDEX("&INT(RAND()*6)&",Prop.Face.Format)"),
0)

This sets a random number between 1 and 6 on the die face. It was not strictly necessary to have a Prop.Face Shape Data row of Fixed List type, but I was originally going to provide a list to choose from. If the Prop.Face Shape Data row was a number, then the formula could have been:

=IF(ThePage!User.ShakeDice,
SETF(GetRef(Prop.Face),"=INT(RAND()*6) + 1"),
0)

Download Online Backgammon.vsdx and add it to your SharePoint Online or Teams library.

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