Coding Projects and Duga Heaven :)

Simon André Forsberg

2:25 PM

It's time to create a room for it I think :)

So that all messages are gathered at one place instead of scattered among The 2nd Monitor

bazola

cool :)

have you played a lot of hearthstone?

Simon André Forsberg

@bazola Oh yes, I've played that quite a bit

Phrancis

Well hey there :)

bazola

it blew me away with its simplicity. i think it really refined the TCG idea down to its most basic

Phrancis

@SimonAndréForsberg I love the idea of creating your own cards and such, hope I can help with ideas and hopefully a little programming!

Simon André Forsberg

2:29 PM

@bazola It is indeed significantly easier than MTG. And yet it's not too simple.

ckuhn203

Imagine that.. Programmers who also like TCG? Who would've thunk?

Simon André Forsberg

@Phrancis I'm sure you'll be able to help with something :)

@ckuhn203 Programmers who also want to create a TCG :)

bazola

@ckuhn203 honestly I only got started on this programming thing because I wanted to make games :)

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Simon André Forsberg

@bazola Who didn't? :)

bazola

people who wanted to make more money i guess

the reason I bring up hearthstone though is that because I think that it a great example of a shifting metagame in a TCG. i never really understood the concept until hearthstone

the reason thats important is because it shows just how many unpredictably powerful combinations come about when you have 300+ cards involved

ckuhn203

2:35 PM

@bazola Stargree, but somehow I became an inhouse dev.

So, I need to go play hearthstone?

Is that what I"m hearing?

bazola

be careful, you might get addicted

and its on iPad too so you can play it in any room of the house

Phrancis

^that

ckuhn203

Well, no time for MTG anymore. It's too hard to get friends together for it.

Phrancis

I had to make myself stop playing it after I tried it, otherwise I would never get any work done. I like that it works great on iPad

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 I don't think you need to at all, but I can recommend it. What @bazola says though: It can be addictive.

@bazola I really wish there was an Android version too...

bazola

2:37 PM

my excuse is that I never spent the big money on a magic deck so I made up for it with hearthstone :)

@SimonAndréForsberg i would love a version for iPod iPhone too

ckuhn203

Awwww, no iPhone version?

Phrancis

@SimonAndréForsberg are you conceptualizing a "virtual" TCG or one with real, physical cards? (or both or combination)

Simon André Forsberg

@Phrancis Mostly a virtual one. As that's much easier to make and adjust stuff on without having to reprint a whole bunch of cards. :)

Phrancis

I figured as much but wanted to make sure

Simon André Forsberg

Who knows, perhaps a real, physical, one would be the next step? That's something for the future to decide.

ckuhn203

2:45 PM

So what are you thinking @SimonAndréForsberg?

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 About what?

Phrancis

I thought if you/we wanted to keep track of card data maybe we could set up a SQLite instance, I have a web server with plenty of room and very little traffic I could host it on. Unless you were thinking of a NoSQL approach

Simon André Forsberg

There are some important things to decide:

1. Should the game be open source or closed source?

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2. What platform/framework to use? I'd like to see it playable on Android, Web, iOS, Desktop, I know of a couple of Java libraries that would allow that.

4

ckuhn203

Well, it's a game. There's going to be a lot of proprietary stuff, and a chance to make a profit.

Nothing says that parts of your code base can be open, but in general, it should be a closed source project.

(Just looking out for ya there)

You would want to protect any Art at the least.

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 Well, I'm not primarily in it for the money. If profit is made, well that's not bad, but the main goal for me would be to creating something completely awesome.

ckuhn203

2:49 PM

but, on the other hand, it would be cool to open it up to development.

bazola

figuring out how to split up the money would be the hard part if more than one person owns the thing, and someone has to handle paying the taxes and researching the relevant laws etc etc

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 Exactly. If it's open source, then perhaps that would speed up the development process.

@bazola Exactly. :) It feels like having it open source is a much easier solution, and I think would be better in the long run.

Who knows though, perhaps open sourced and profitable does not have to be mutually exclusive?

bazola

if the game is good then people would want to pay for it in a packaged up format, and only the most extreme pirates would go and download the open source and compile it themselves if you didn't release the exe for free

ckuhn203

Excellent points.

Counter points being, it's easier to find exploits if you can see the source.

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 It's also easier to fix the exploits if you can see the source.

ckuhn203

2:54 PM

But that might not be such a bad thing, so long as people are honest and reporting/fixing bugs.

Simon André Forsberg

^^ That

ckuhn203

Yup. That^^

So, it sounds like what you want is open source. You'll need to settle on a license.

I would recommend something that doesn't allow derivative commercial works.

Simon André Forsberg

Yeah, but that's just what I want. I'm not alone in this :)

ckuhn203

This would be a good place to start looking.

List of software licenses

In computing, software that is copyrighted and licensed under a software license is done under a variety of licensing schemes. For end-users there are various licenses ranging from very restrictive proprietary licenses to open-source licenses. There are also different licensing schemes for access to and use of source code. To address special intellectual property issues regarding source code, open-source licenses, and special licenses, such as copyleft, have been created. Not all software is licensed, or even copyrighted, and this article is thus not an exhaustive list of the terms under which...

Simon André Forsberg

I'd also like to see what skiwi and nhgrif has to say, I think they're also interested.

Also: choosealicense.com

ckuhn203

2:58 PM

Open source doesn't mean that you have to allow people to sell your software though.

They can use it, they can build on it, but they can't sell it.

Because you may, at some point in the future want to sell it.

Simon André Forsberg

True

bazola

would we want the theme to somehow reflect that the players are creating the cards? like races of mana eating shape shifters or something

one other thought about the overall design, maybe we could restrict it to a subset of rules with associated costs rather than unlimited free creation? that way we could try to balance the way those rules interact together. and the list of options could still be pretty big. just an idea

the other part of that would be, maybe there are a few different types of base cards, and each of those is restricted to a part of the subset of rules, so certain rules that we know would never work together for balance could be separated

Dagg Nabbit

3:13 PM

sup honkeys

bazola

howdy

ckuhn203

Also @SimonAndréForsberg, there's always the option of dual licensing.

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 That is true

ckuhn203

Under circumstance X, the code is under license Y.

Dagg Nabbit

licensing for a TCG?

MIT license is my favorite OSS/commercial license most of the time

it's very short and understandable

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in

That's the whole thing

then you can attach the disclaimer too

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

Technically the disclaimer is part of the license but it doesn't need to be

bazola

3:21 PM

that looks pretty good

ckuhn203

@DaggNabbit That's fine if you're never going to want to sell it yourself. Personally, I would want to keep the option open if it was me. I'd also be uncomfortable with someone else making a profit with something I wrote, but wasn't making any money at.

I'm sorry if I'm a business guy at heart all.

Dagg Nabbit

Well that's the thing... I think you either open source it or you don't

ckuhn203

There's free as in freedom and free as in beer.

bazola

oh wait i read it wrong, i thought it was excluding the ability to sell it

ckuhn203

Open source can be either.

Dagg Nabbit

3:22 PM

It doesn't exclude the ability to sell

the problem with doing that is you end up with a viral license like the GPL

the problem with GPL stuff is it can generaly only be used with other GPL stuff

anyone trying to make money essentially can't use GPL stuff in their product

If you were going to dual license you could go GPL/commercial but that's not going to make you many friends

The thing about open source is it can (should?) depend on a different kind of business model

you shouldn't have to sell the software, you can sell support and so on

bazola

so no open source games are being sold right now?

Dagg Nabbit

no I don't think it works for games

Games are pretty much either open source or closed source / commercial

There are some weird fringe exceptions like maybe an open source Quake engine that someone took and compiled for mobile and is selling in the iTunes/Play store

bazola

I'm no expert, but I don't understand why you can't license under something like GPL, write all the code yourself, and then just sell it? if you don't use any of anybody else's code is this still not allowed?

Dagg Nabbit

you can

but

well yeah you can

in practice though people are going to rip you off even if you told them not to

like, take something like Minecraft... not open source, but might as well be since Java is so easily reverse engineered, and there are tons of knockoffs

Can pretty much guarantee they looked at the (disassembled) code at some point

bazola

most of the games i buy, i specifically want to give money to those developers to support them

minecraft is so easily ripped off because the idea is so simple, imo

Dagg Nabbit

3:32 PM

no, it's not just that

bazola

a cubic world filled with blocks, some ways to combine those blocks

Dagg Nabbit

the code is disassembled and reassembled by large groups of people on a wiki where they pick through everything with a fine toothed comb

bazola

do you think their games even made 1% of minecrafts revenue?

Dagg Nabbit

it's essentially the same thing you'd get from open sourcing it

no probably not but with the sales MC does even 1% is cutting into their profits

and their mobile edition passed up the regular edition in sales a while back and that's where all the knockoffs are

I don't play MC btw but I've been keeping a really close eye on them bc I'm interested in "one-hit-wonders" like this

I guess my point is if something is popular enough people will rip it off no matter what

bazola

i agree with that definitely

GreyFox

3:36 PM

^This is very true. Across the board really. There are an immense amount of CoD knockoffs just on the mobile outlets alone.

bazola

and if you are talking about survivalcraft on mobile, i hear it is way better and i don't think the guy who made it ripped off the code directly

the nodders for mine craft were adding stuff that was way better than the original game within the first few months

*modders

GreyFox

Yeah, that's true too. they have full RPG style minecraft servers now where essentially everything you do levels with you. Even some that have pokemon you can catch, and all kinds of crazy other things.

Dagg Nabbit

yeah, I was keeping a really close eye on that community for a while, to the point where I was a mod on their public issue tracker and hanging out in IRC with the core dev team :p

bazola

unfortunately for mojang it doesn't seem like they are going to come out with anything awesome again

Dagg Nabbit

no they were working on a TCG-like thing

and some other little stuff

but I think the thing that worked for MC was the open-world thing plus modability

if you think about it, most things that have been mod-able have been pretty successful

bazola

3:41 PM

wasn't the TCG thing Scrolls and didn't it get release? i haven't played it though

Dagg Nabbit

because the community just kind of builds itself around the game

Scrolls, yeah

I don't remember if it was released or in private beta when I was hanging around there

probably released by now

anyway that's why I really like this "moddable" TCG idea

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I think modability is huge

ckuhn203

I like it too. It'd be awesome to have some say in what cards I'm playing. Like building a fantasy team, only it's really a fantasy. I'm not stuck with "real" players.

Open World FTW.

GreyFox

I know it's just a base idea right now, but are you looking into a single player campaign or something more PVP related like a strictly MP style??

Like the first releases of Hearthstone

Dagg Nabbit

hmm it would be interesting to be able to play it solo

I think the core mechanics should somehow prevent infinite combos, that's the biggest thing I'm worried about

seems like it could be done with a simple rule like effects can only be applied once per turn

bazola

how do you definite infinite combos?

GreyFox

3:52 PM

I agree, that is the biggest problem with most TCG games as a whole. If you find one solid exploit and then build a deck around it, it becomes really hard to counter. I hadn't even though of essentially putting an ability limit on your turns, that's a great idea (only lifelink once per turn, only haste 1 creature, etc.)

Dagg Nabbit

@bazola check out this thread: mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/commander-edh/…

bazola

do you play hearthstone? would miracle rogue count if you do?

Dagg Nabbit

no I haven't, I need to

GreyFox

That would counteract a lot of "oops, now I have 50 token creatures out because I buffed this one thing a million times this turn" haha

bazola

stuff like that is what makes TCGs unique though

GreyFox

3:54 PM

Hearthstone is great, and the way they handle the mana is much more efficient than MTG, in my opinion. there's no chance you get flooded and only have lands in your hand.

Dagg Nabbit

I spent a while looking through that thread last night trying to see what everything had in common

how do they do that? That's something that always bothered me about MTG

although it does give the player more choice, build a mana-heay deck or a unit-heavy deck

GreyFox

I agree with you Bazola, but there has to be some sort of cut off or balance, or you ar e setting up a game that is very competitive friendly, but not so accessible for the people that can only sit down and play 1 or 2 games a day.

You get 1 mana each turn. Ex. turn 1 you have 1 mana turn 2 you have 2 mana, etc. And it caps at 10 mana.

Dagg Nabbit

ahh, so there are no mana cards?

GreyFox

Nope, and there is a 30 card deck limit. It streamlines a lot of the things that can be irritating about MTG sometimes.

bazola

the hearthstone mana system is indeed ingenious

GreyFox

3:57 PM

I think the mana side of Hearthstone plays so much better than MTG because you get to focus on your strategy more so than your draws and praying for more mana.

Dagg Nabbit

and the mana is depleted when you use it, right? Like if you use 5 mana you have to wait 5 turns to get it all back?

GreyFox

No, it all reset your next turn. If you spend all 5 mana on turn 5 then you get 6 mana starting on turn 6, just like your untap step in MTG

Dagg Nabbit

hmm interesting

so after turn 10 everyone has 10 mana every turn

bazola

some classes get cards that give a mana crystal permanently, or take one away. the starting player also gets 3 cards, the second player gets 3 cards plus a card that gives one extra mana the turn it is played

GreyFox

Yeah, it really help in keeping play moving steadily and no one gets shut down because of lack of mana. There is an abiliy called overload which has high cost creatures cost less, but it makes you start your next turn with less mana. EX; turn 5 you play 5 mana to play a 7/7 with overload 2, and the next turn on turn 6 instead of starting with 6 mana you start with 4 because of the overload 2.

Dagg Nabbit

4:00 PM

ahhh ok that sounds pretty good

bazola

and one class has a card that gives 2 mana on that turn only, so on turn 10 they can play up to cost 14 (15 if they have the second player card too)

GreyFox

Yeah, they balance everything really well. And yes, once you hit turn 10 everyone has 10 mana. But there are druid cards (wild growth) that give you an extra mana crystal, putting you a turn ahead of your enemy on mana.

Dagg Nabbit

yeah mana ramping up at the same rate for everyone almost sounds too linear without mechanics like that

GreyFox

Agreed.

bazola

probably a lot of new games are going to rip off that mechanic i imagine

GreyFox

4:04 PM

I wouldn't be surprised, it's one of those "why didn't we think on that?!" moments. Though Blizzard said they did work with Wizards of the Coast to design some mechanics in hearthstone

*of

Has anyone here played Card Hunter by any chance? I got to play the beta before it was released, and it's really amazing.

All browser based as well, whic is a plus.

Phrancis

Be curious to look at the source code for that. Hopefully it's not php LOL

Dagg Nabbit

checking it out now

or not

> Adobe Flash Player 11.2 will be the last version to target Linux as a supported platform. Adobe will continue to provide security backports to Flash Player 11.2 for Linux.

GreyFox

It's awesome. It's a tactics TCG game. Essentially all of the equipment you put on your character puts certain cards in your deck which are your actions. I was mega hooked on it.

:(

Dagg Nabbit

I'll try it in a VM later

hmm that does sound interesting

way to make yourself even lass relevant, Flash

2

GreyFox

It's a really fresh idea. Think Final Fantasy Tactics style grid combat, but your cards in your hand are the actions you have available. There is a single player campaign which is pretty massive at this point and full multiplayer. You creat your party, and there are different races/classes etc.

Hahaha

Dagg Nabbit

4:13 PM

hmm so "board position" is actually important?

bazola

I'm definitely going to try it since its free

Simon André Forsberg

Card Hunter? Never heard of it. Will check it out today if I find the time (still need to pack some more things...)

An idea I had about the TCG is to use a permissions-similar system, like Stack Exchange sites. For example, some "reputation" requirement for creating cards, some rep required for voting on cards (if that would get added), some required for creating a unique game mode etc.

3

About the single-player vs. multiplayer thing: Primarily it should be multiplayer, I think. Some single-player modes can be nice though, such as "Adventure" (Nexrammas in Hearthstone) and "Challenge Puzzles" where you are faced with a situation and have to use your cards correctly to win the situation this turn (as exists in some MTG applications)

ckuhn203

I'm looking forward to playing this someday.

penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/11/06/thornwatch3

Simon André Forsberg

@ckuhn203 Are you talking about our TCG game or about Thornwatch?

GreyFox

I thinks that's a good idea Simon, make sure people are active before they get all access.

ckuhn203

4:21 PM

BOTH

GreyFox

@DaggNabbit board position is very important and the maps are all varied depending on the quest you are doing. It's essentially like playing a D&D themed card game.

All of your attacks and spells have range. So you have to find the sweet spot for each class to be effective.

Dagg Nabbit

@GreyFox I definitely want to check that out, I sort had this idea of board position being at least somewhat important

idk if I'd go all-out grid, but was thinking more along the lines of row of tanks in the front, row of casters in the back or something

so the units up front would take more damage or whatever

GreyFox

I think it should be, but I'm not sure how to make board position effective in terms of a straight TCG like MTG or Hearthstone.

Dagg Nabbit

That's the thing, it would be great if it could be played with regular cards, even if it never is. I think the analogy just translates better, or something

GreyFox

Gotcha! That makes more sense. Have a front line of walls and heavys and have your attack force in the back. That'd be neat. Plus you could make it where if certain units are next to each other or behind one another they get a synergy bonus. (Front line catapult, back line foot soldier + 2 catapult damage)

Making a War strategy card game where positioning is everything.

(But more fantasy, of course)

Dagg Nabbit

4:26 PM

yeah i like that too... so you wouldn't have to worry about keeping your stuff neatly lined up in a grid, but it's pretty clear what's next to what

also AOE and stuff, yay

GreyFox

Yeah, definitely. The Synergies would make the positioning important. YES AOES

Yeah it would probably be advantageous to NOT have everything lined up, especially if there are AOEs, but it would be a necessity for bonuses/synergies. So there is a give and take there.

I really like that idea.

bazola

did anyone play combat monsters? that sounds very similar. you have one hero, you can play cards for equipment to buff them up, and you can play cards to summon other creatures, all on a tactical map

GreyFox

I've never heard of it, but it sounds cool. Was it web based or mobile?

bazola

mobile and pc

i was super addicted up until they started adding new content and then i couldn't play enough to keep up, or pay enough to get the necessary cards

really fun game though

GreyFox

That sounds cool, I will have to check it out. That was what was nice about card hunter everything was 100% free. You could pay for certain things, but nothing that was game breaking that would give you a massive advantage.

bazola

4:36 PM

this game was free with a coin doubler for 2.99. then you could buy packs for 1.99 or something for 3 or 4 of them, or pay like 19.99 to have packs that guaranteed some of the rarest cards. grinding out gold in game did not take nearly as long as it does it say hearthstone

Dagg Nabbit

here's my thing with IAP

they make a great business model

but they can ruin the balance

so they have to be done right

here's an analogy for a space dogfight PVP game I was thinking about

instead of letting people buy huge nukes or whatever to obliterate their opponents

bazola

its gotta be one of the biggest challenges because people are so against parting ways with money for games these days, even games they like

Dagg Nabbit

yeah i think so

instead of letting them pay for OP stuff

you let them pay for stuff that gives them more options

but doesn't make them higher powered

my idea for that game was there would be a pve element and a pvp element

in pve they could capture randomly procedurally generated ships

GreyFox

Agreed. I HATE any IAP that have to do with "turns" or "energy" even with a F2P games. If I take the time to download your game, free or not, I don't want to have to either wait, or pay to play it more. especially if I really enjoy it.

Dagg Nabbit

they could keep the ships they captured in their hangar

the ships would be more or less balanced

the thing they would pay for would be more "hangar slots" to store the ships in

they can still only pilot one ship at a time so you're not giving them an in-game buff

you're just giving them more choice

shit I captured a cool ship but I already have 3 cool ships

and my hangar's full

time to buy more slots

bazola

4:41 PM

planetside 2 has a similar setup as far as you are paying for more options that may or may not be better than the cheaper options. the problem is that to unlock everything would cost like hundreds of dollars and if you don't pay money, its months to earn a single new weapon

Dagg Nabbit

yeah that can work too... they can buy a big fat missile that does lots of damage but it's slow

you don't just sell them OP stuff, you sell them balanced stuff... you're selling them more freedom of choice basically

I think the hangar slots thing could translate pretty easily to TCG

your deck is a fixed size in play but you can have reserve cards up to a certain limit, and you can raise that limit (indefinitely) by buying more slots

GreyFox

You mean you can pay to increase the size of your side deck? Or just the amount of cards you can have in your vault or whatever?

Dagg Nabbit

yeah in your "vault"

and maybe you even capture new cards in PVE instead of paying for them

if we do have a solo mode

so once your vault runs out of space you can either scrap cards you don't want or buy more space

at some point you won't want to scrap anything and you'll buy more space

GreyFox

For sure. I think that's a good idea.

Dagg Nabbit

there could be other premium features they pay for that don't affect game balance

or buffs that only work in PVE

bazola

4:50 PM

its a cool idea but I could see the downside being pissing the player off. for example, they have full slots, unlock and extremely rare card, and have to trash it because the mortgage is due

GreyFox

Yeah, the mechanic shouldn't auto scrap cards when your area is full. It should give you the oppurtunity to scrap something to make room for the epic card if you are full.

I think paying for PVE enchancements could be a good idea, because you can be as powerful as you want in that mode. But there would have to be some sort of balance is that can be used as a card unlocking mechanic, because you don't want someone getting all the best cards because they are rampaging through single player, haha.

Dagg Nabbit

yeah, true

right it would never auto-scrap cards, it would put them in some kind of holding area

maybe with a 3-day time limit or something, then they get scrapped

but you have plenty of time to scrap something else and move them into your vault

GreyFox

the initial size of the "vault" (for lack of a better term right now) should be moderately generous. You don't want to play for a day and be capped out and have to pay some money.

That's a great idea. Let them think about either paying to increase their size or getting rid of something else.

Dagg Nabbit

I'm thinking if decks are 30 cards, maybe the vault is like 50 cards (minus the 30), so they have 20 extra slots

you want them to hit the paywall after maybe a week or two

could even be separate vaults for different card types or tiers or something, idk

GreyFox

So you want a player to be running with one deck only, not multiple deck for certain situation?

*situations

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