I want to do an experiment, post various screenshot of the deck-building screen as it gets coded/perfected. This is where we start:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COONBKYVAAA5qnh.jpg:large" style="max-width:100%">

this is the "barebone" stuff, just using Ren'Py default buttons. I am going to do a mockup and ask Loren's artist to draw the GUI. The result should be GOOD

So, beta next week?



More seriously, if we're building decks on this screen, we'll need to see the card stats in addition to everything else in our deck.

Yes I plan to show them Hearthstone-style, with bigger cards with description, and stats on the borders.

Anima sent me a PDF guide to create the cards now comes the fun part, creating all the 100+ cards...!

Meanwhile, have a work in progress card:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COUji6WU8AA1Z7o.png" style="max-width:100%">

the card border/frame seems good, but I'll show to the GUI artist to polish it even more

Anima sent me a PDF guide to create the cards now comes the fun part, creating all the 100+ cards...!

It's already at 11 pages. I'm not sure what's worse. That Jack has to read and understand that all or that I had to write it. There are only a handful of cards that need new stuff though.

Anima sent me a PDF guide to create the cards now comes the fun part, creating all the 100+ cards...!

It's already at 11 pages. I'm not sure what's worse. That Jack has to read and understand that all or that I had to write it.

Well, for me is not a problem. I can always bother you by email

There are only a handful of cards that need new stuff though.

Yes, FOR THIS GAME...

/insert evil laugh

MOUHAHAHA



Jokes apart, great job, I'm enjoying creating all the cards

Sooo well, I made a lot of cards!

However already from early testing it's clear that my ideas weren't that good. I didn't want to copy Hearthstone basics, but I should have.

I had an "armor" value that was decreasing by 1 every hit, but it was very complex to determine how much damage a unit would do, so asked Anima to remove it. Was only causing confusion, making harder to come up with decisions.



Now have another problem, since if a unit is killed by the attack, doesn't retaliate. Which means if I have a strong attack unit on the field, I could kill any summoned unit with low attack values... not an ideal situation for balancing.



Somehow I thought I could come up with better mechanics than a huge team like Blizzard. I was wrong



Of course the game will only share some things, but I think the basic mechanics are good (besides, are similar to what happens in Magic:The Gathering, so it's not like they invented it).



So now will simply be Attack and HP. Attacking decreases HP on both sides. STOP. Simple and intuitive!!

Do both players have Health value that's separate from Card/unit health?

If so can you choose to attack a player if they have cards active or do cards have to be attacked first?



Something interesting might be to allow the player to always attack the opponents health directly but give cards a set armor value that only reduces attacks done to the players health,not the cards,while they are in play.

This would give incentive to attack both the opponent directly and their cards.It would also let you make some interesting decision in what cards to play.Do you play this card with high defense or this one with high attack?

Yes, in this case is not players since you can have up to 3 hero in each battle, but the "Colony HP".

For the enemy, in some cases there is a "boss enemy", in other cases are just waves after waves of aliens to kill

Using your system might work but it's a bit complicated, I wanted something very easy to learn/intuitive.

I've tried now with the new system and seems quite interesting, since there are "Wall" units that are like the Taunt card of Hearthstone, etc.

I'll need the computer AI to cheat badly to be a worthwhile opponent, but that's not a problem since even Blizzard does that for their "adventures". Otherwise beating human AI fairly in a card game would be almost impossible.

Well, Hearthstone has been copied before, by http://www.shadowera.com/content.php.



I do hope you're able to make it a little different though, or at least come up with different kinds of abilities. Obviously Ranged cards can shoot over Walls.

There are the Flying units that can attack any enemy

I made some great cards in past days:

- Demolition Squad: Battlecry - destroy a Wall unit (mouhaha)

- Artillery - every turn deal 1 dmg to two random enemies

- and I have units that deal double damage against other specific units. Like the Laser turret that does x2 damage against robotic unit, or the Flamethrower turret that does x2 to organic units, etc.



I'm still tweaking it as I play of course, but seems already fun to play!

Just a thought:



If you want to further simplify the Hearthstone formula, do away with attack and life and have a single stat, like Banner Saga, let's call it Strength (STR). STR is both life and damage, so if a 3 STR fights a 5 STR, the first will be defeated and the second will now be 2 STR, dealing only 2 damage in the next battle and having only 2 life left.



You could then have Armor that reduces damage, Ambush/First Strike (maybe only when attacking?), healing, etc. Walls could have higher STR but not deal damage (unless a card says they do).

Ah no, I already designed half cards to have attack/HP. I think that's simple enough and also works well, intuitive. Besides doing any other changes now would require also more changes to the framework (like the walls that can't do damage even if have high strength).

I think my main concern will be to make a good computer opponent for those who want higher difficulties and make the various missions varied enough with specific missions conditions (starting or winning). For rules they should be already fun, I played a few matches and was interesting, even if it's all still work in progress.

Well, you wanted simple, it would give different strategies from HS, and maybe mean a better chance to not be called up by Blizzard's lawyer team. Maybe something to consider for making Undead Lily different from this?



Anyway, another suggestion. You don't have to worry too much about balancing, since this isn't a PvP game, so you can definitely buff the AI. Now, you can of course have cards that only the AI can use, and I'd expect to see some, but ultimately it's better to give more options to the players than to take cards away from them, and you have a limited card pool restricted by the amount of artwork.



One way to buff the AI could be to boost existing cards, let's call it the "Medal" system. Say a medal gives a card +1/+1 attack/life. Now the AI can have the same cards as players, but some/all of them are buffed with medals, raising their stats and maybe even giving new abilities the card didn't have before. This would also be a simple way to have a difficulty system, the amount of medals on cards increase with higher difficulties.



A nice developer would allow players to earn medals too (feature creep, I know, but doesn't seem excessively hard to do), which we could assign to cards of our choice. So, if we wanted we could buff a cheap unit for early advantage, a huge unit for extra beatdown, a flyer for more unavoidable damage, etc.



To make this a really interesting addition, medals could be earned through optional objectives, such as winning a fight with more base life than you started with, dealing 15 damage to the enemy base in a turn, or whatever.



I'm just putting ideas out there.

Haha I'm not worried about Blizzard The game is still quite different (there's no PvP just to say the most obvious thing, different resources, and so on).

The card the AI has are mostly different, since in this case is human Empire vs Aliens. There are some alien "mercenaries" that the player can use too though. For UL instead the cards will be the same for both player and AI.



The AI will cheat and I'll also have different starting conditions for the various missions to keep the challenge up (especially on harder difficulty).



An experience system was already in my mind indeed, I was thinking to have 3 levels: bronze, silver, gold, each one adding +1/+1 which in gold would make even an infantry card quite powerful.

Of course I need to talk with Anima about this, but I don't think should be particularly difficult.

Just so you know: I hate both of you!

thanks! haha

Today hit a big milestone: finished coding ALL the Empire/heroes cards (120 in total!!). Many are untested and based on Murphy's Law will break during testing Of course, I still have all the enemies to do, but I'm going to take a break now and write a bit of the QoT robbery missions while I wait for the GUI to be finished!