Strange Eons is a powerful tool for creating and customizing components for paper-based games. It started out as a research tool for investigating human creativity, but has since grown into a comprehensive toolset for game enthusiasts and creators.
Strange Eons 3 is a free, open source tool for creating paper game components, such as cards, tokens, boards, and boxes. It is primarily intended to be used to create homebrew expansions for existing games, but it can also be used to create entirely new games from scratch.
Strange Eons is designed to let you focus on the creative aspects of game design while it takes care of the technical aspects of layout and design. It also has tools to support creativity, such as "spinning off" designs, design guidance (where supported by the component type), and a philosophy of not starting you on a "blank page" but instead providing a starting point that you can modify to suit your needs.
Strange Eons is scalable. You can create a single card, a whole deck, or even an entire board game. Collections of cards and other components can be laid out as printable decks, either manually or automatically. You can design each component individually, or use a factory to build a set of components from a template.
Strange Eons is extensible. It has a built-in development environment and debugger for creating plug-ins. Plug-ins can be used to add support for new games, component type, tools, commands, and more.
Typical users can download and install Strange Eons from the Strange Eons download page. A user manual and other documentation remain hosted on the original project's site if you would like help getting started.
This GitHub page is for developers and other experienced users who want to try the latest features or contribute to the project. The rest of this page assumes that description applies to you.
These are the tools you'll need to build Strange Eons from this repository:
-
Git (to clone the repository). If you are new to Git, you may find the GitHub Desktop client easier to use than the command line. (Your IDE might also have support for Git, either built in or as an extension/plug-in.)
-
JDK 25. The main branch requires Java 25 or later. You can download a suitable JDK from Adoptium.
The project ships with the Gradle Wrapper (gradlew), so no separate
Gradle installation is needed.
To build the project from the command line, you can use the following commands:
Build the project:
./gradlew :strange-eons-app:buildStart the main application:
./gradlew :strange-eons-app:runStart the script debugging client:
./gradlew :strange-eons-app:runDebuggerNote: The script debugging client is used to debug script code in Strange Eons, typically plug-in code. This does not start a Java debugging session to debug the main application. Do that as you normally would with your IDE.
See build.gradle.kts for additional tasks.
To work with the project in an IDE, import it as a Gradle project and
let the IDE drive the build through Gradle's tooling API. Any IDE that
understands Gradle should pick up the JDK 25 toolchain, the JUnit 5
test classpath, and the :strange-eons-app:run task automatically.
If you want to contribute new code, you may also need the following:
-
NetBeans: This IDE is essential for UI modifications. The NetBeans form editor was used to design most interface elements. These are stored in
*.formfiles alongside*.javasources. NetBeans also generates code within Java source files, which should not be manually altered as it's automatically overwritten upon reopening the form in the design tool. -
Node.js and npm. Tooling in
build-toolsuses Node.js. These are used to:- build the custom tokenizers used for syntax highlighting by the code editor
- update the TS language service library that Strange Eons uses to edit and compile TypeScript code
- compile and update the
java-bridge.tsfile that Strange Eons loads to communicate between Java and the TypeScript library
You can build an all-in-one JAR file (equivalent to what is distributed for "other" operating systems than Windows, macOS, and Linux amd64/arm64) by running the following command:
./gradlew :strange-eons-app:shadowJarThe JAR file will be found at deployment/assembled/strange-eons.jar.
Contributions (pull requests) are welcome. By making a pull request or otherwise contributing code or data, you agree that your contribution can be combined with, and made available under the same license terms as, the rest of the project.
The user documentation is also open to contributions. It can be found in the separate se3docs repository.
There be dragons... I don't want to deter anyone from contributing, but I do want to give fair warning on a few points before you dive in:
Strange Eons began many years ago as a simple editor for a single type of game card, with some features meant to help users find more creative designs. These early versions were developed to support research connected to my doctoral dissertation, and contain some of the first Java code I ever wrote. Although it has grown beyond its humble beginnings, as you might expect it contains some... sharp corners and unfortunate choices.
Source code is found under
src/main/java
and
src/main/resources,
organized into standard Java packages. Here is an outline:
ca.cgjennings.*
Contains the bulk of the application code. The application proper
is mostly found under ca.cgjennings.apps.arkham.*. (The name
arkham is historic in origin; the original app created characters
for a board game called Arkham Horror.)
gamedata.*
Contains only those classes used to register new content with the
application.
resources.*
Contains binary resources, string tables, and the libraries that
support scripted plugins. Also contains a few classes related to
loading and managing those resources, such as ResourceKit,
Settings, and Language.
See the release notes in the user manual for a detailed history.
Original source code in this repository is licensed under an MIT license. Third party components are licensed under the terms in the relevant source files and/or their description in the About dialog box.