jack1974
Nov 04, 2015
True, probably I should do it only in the first hand, like Hearthstone you could choose which cards to keep and which ones to discard and draw again. Right now Anima and I are trying to solve a strange bug happening on the very first mission, but will ask him if he can add that
Troyen
Nov 04, 2015
OK I'm almost there. I rebalanced the cards a bit. I also thought to add a "Shuffle" option, which let's you put back one card from hand into the deck: this because you can have max 6 cards in hand, so by very bad luck (also depends how you built your deck) you could end with 6 cards requiring a credit. But you get them only killing enemies, so you could get stuck.
With this shuffle you can get another random card, and unless you built your deck with ONLY cards requiring credits (which would be a bit crazy) you won't get stuck.
How big are your decks?
Hearthstone is 30 and I've had decks that have 15 cards that cost 2 mana or less and still not been able to play until turn 3 (even with the mulligan). Sometimes you just get bad luck.
I kinda prefer starting with two credits for a resource you only gain by killing creatures. Just because you play a card doesn't mean the opponent can't take it out and then you're still stuck with no credits on your initial hand. (If people really insist on not having credits, maybe make this a difficulty-dependent value? 2 for normal, 1 for hard, 0 nightmare)
Franka
Nov 04, 2015
It might be too soon to pass judgment on that. I think we need to see the game and the cards in action first.
jack1974
Nov 04, 2015
Decks can be 30 too, but the problem is that the hand is 6. I limited it to not clutter the layout, but there's no fixed limit in the framework. But I think will keep at that value.
So the only problem was that case in which somehow people picked all cards requiring at least 1 credit, and couldn't play anything. It would be a mistake probably since means people didn't pick any of the common cards, and doesn't make much sense, but I must prevent casual players from getting stuck
In any case, giving just 1-2 starting ones should be enough, since cards can require max 2 credits (the rarest card have other high requirement for the more common resources). And after you summon one, you should be able to kill enemies and get more. So far in all the tests I made, I was never stuck, also because enemies in general don't have high HP, so most of them can be killed rather quickly.
I still think will ask Anima to add the possibility to discard any cards from the first draw.
Franka
Nov 05, 2015
Most games force you to discard a card if you go over the limit. You could force people to discard if they're about to draw card #7.
jack1974
Nov 05, 2015
No I prefer to just not have player draw any card when reached the limit. But I'll do the "keep or replace" for the first hand you've drawn
Anima_
Nov 05, 2015
We ended up with a slightly different approach. (Since I was too lazy for this one.)
You can redraw your hand cards at any time, but you will draw one card less than you had beforehand each time.
jack1974
Nov 05, 2015
In any case since I plan to always give some starting credits, I don't think will be very used. But it's good to have the option available
jack1974
Nov 05, 2015
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTDjnEWUAAA3Prs.jpg:large" style="max-width:100%">
hopefully it's clear enough. I was a bit skeptical at first, but then I tried it in a random battle and works quite well. The 1 less card penalty is enough to make people think twice before abusing it, but in desperate situations is fun to "try the luck"
Anima_
Nov 05, 2015
Laziness is one of the strongest drives towards innovation.
In the last week alone I got almost a hundred mails from Jack. And we aren't even in the Beta yet. That's crazy. Hopefully sleepykitten and Deji can distract him with C14 soon, I could use the break.
jack1974
Nov 05, 2015
OK so I was testing the team talk, I had put it after mission 3 to break a bit from the card game and...
Lola showed up. But she is introduced only later, and so I remembered: since the first 10 missions were tutorial missions, I agreed with writer that the "team talk" was available only after scene 10 is played.
Not a big problem, but this means that unfortunately this weekend demo won't have the team talk. Unless I manage to make all the 10 missions. Now that all bugs/features seems solved, I might even manage to go faster though. We'll see
Troyen
Nov 05, 2015
Hmm...is it possible to split the tutorial missions into two chunks or would that mess up the writing too much? 5 minutes a game x 10 missions is about an hour of playtime before you even get to the story part?
Miakoda
Nov 05, 2015
Hmm...is it possible to split the tutorial missions into two chunks or would that mess up the writing too much? 5 minutes a game x 10 missions is about an hour of playtime before you even get to the story part?
Actually, the story does take place throughout the missions. However, the separate Friendship and Romance dialogues take place after the tutorial.
Troyen
Nov 05, 2015
Okay, that makes more sense.
jack1974
Nov 06, 2015
Yes as you can see in the video I posted here:
http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3729&start=10#p35071
The story is "all around" the missions. I was very careful for this game to not break the story too much like I did with SOTW. Even if you're a newbie of card games, should take you maximum 3-4 minutes each fight before you get back to the story
jack1974
Nov 06, 2015
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTHqEofUkAA_qDC.jpg:large" style="max-width:100%">
the side missions screen. Not sure I'll manage to add this in the planned weekend early demo, but I'll try to!
jack1974
Nov 06, 2015
Okay today was totally nuts
I really worked hard, and I think I'll take tomorrow off, since I'm very burned out. However, I made a lot of progress. There shouldn't be problems to finish the first 5 missions and have a demo Sunday or maybe Monday
kadakithis
Nov 06, 2015
Thank you Jack! We really appreciate it!
pahldus
Nov 07, 2015
Awesome, sounds like things are progressing nicely
