Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

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Velensk
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Velensk »

It may be possible to print stickers with an image of the unit type for poker chips (I've seen this done before) though I don't know if you could get a good enough image on something that small and still have room for a distinct identification number. After that point it wouldn't be hard to use hitpoint chips to show current status (because generally hitpoints will be the only status that needs constant updating).
The problem is that this would be much more expensive and less flexable. If you just use a letter/number system it's easy to say A's are archers, F's are fighters ect and you can use the same chips and adapt it to any faction G's are goblins, F's are Grunts, A's are archers, where if you have the image of an elvish archer on them you would need a lot more chips.

EDIT: comment, personally I have no problem just using counters to represent the cards on the playing field. As long as the counters are easily identifiable for what they are or you can easily clarify what they are I don't have problems using my imagination. However if this is a major problem to you I don't think that I'll have much else to say unless I can come up with an almost entirely new set of rules.
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eyerouge
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

To be honest I'm not even sure that the chips/tokens (that were introduced as a solution to moving terrain cards?) are a solution to what they were meant to solve in the first place. I also share your fear that whatever picture can be printed out in that small size would look like crap and hardly be viewable unless you have it in your hand, close to you, in which case it misses out on the whole point.

Notice another thing: Suddenly we've also eliminated the need for almost any art at all - all those very beautiful looking Wesnoth portraits which I used as card art are more or less unusable in an abstract game.

I don't mean to sound like a boring old grumpy uncle, but who would pick up an abstract game in a local game store when it's next to a million other games that look cool as hell? Not that it's where it would be, but just as a comparison when it comes to appeal. I think one must decide in the target group - is it casual people or hardcore gamers? I know from own experience that normal people seldom play anything at all that they isn't graphical enough and is so in a "pretty" way.
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eyerouge
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

aw your edit just now. I don't mean to discourage you from going with the idea. On the contrary, I just shared my input and how the "market" looks like. Playing it with tokens and reference cards might very well work. Try it out :) I don't see why it shouldn't work since it works for miniature games. I also think that the game would in effect become a real miniature game actually, and I think it's a very exciting prospect and one which I would still gladly have on the WTactics site as yet another game on it's own.

I myself am leaning more in the direction of simple-to-play-simple-to-setup 1h gameplay with cards and minimal token admin.

That said, I really think you should develop the idea further along, as "WTactics - Tabletop Miniature Game" or something. Should I set you up with an account on the site? Would love seeing what becomes of it.
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Velensk »

You can set up an account if you like though I really don't know why you would for reasons I will explain:

I do not feel like you could make a Wesnoth trading card game that would be interesting to me going with a standard CCG set-up. There tends not to be a good way to represent 'position' in these games and IMO you cannot do any sort of game that feels even vaugely like Wesnoth without position. Without any sort of position your game will almost invariably feel like a direct slug-out between two forces and will lose a great deal of it's potential to create variety and use.

Even if you did create a set-up where the relative position of the cards to each other was important it would be somewhat lacking in the feel without terrain and there is not a lot of good way to handle this that I can see if you want to keep deck size below 30 or use some kind of neutral board deck.

I do not have the time to work on yet another project (I'm already quite busy on school, updating content, and creating new content, not to mention all the other things in life) such as this at the moment. It's not all that hard for me if I have a bunch of gameplay ideas to take 15-20 minutes to jot them down and submit them. I do not have the time however to make materials, do play-testing, update/tweak rules/stats. This would have to be left to whomever I'm submitting my ideas to if they wish to use them.

In this particular case, It seems that you are looking for something other than what I have provided and as such it is of no use to me. Therefore there is really no point in me doing anything else unless I can come up with something which fits what you are willing to use that I would like to have you make. If I can think up some system which fits your agenda that I would find interesting then I would submit it however I don't think that I can 'tweak' what I have here to satisfy what you are looking for while still keeping the point for me.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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eyerouge
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

Velensk wrote:I do not have the time however to make materials, do play-testing, update/tweak rules/stats. This would have to be left to whomever I'm submitting my ideas to if they wish to use them. /../ It seems that you are looking for something other than what I have provided and as such it is of no use to me. Therefore there is really no point in me doing anything else unless I can come up with something which fits what you are willing to use
I can relate to the time issue myself, have always plenty of projects going on. A shame though, I think your idea has potential and hopefully someone will pick it up and continue the work.

On the issue of the idea not being what I want: What I want as a person doesn't matter the least, and the project - creating a real game open source set in the universe of Wesnoth that somehow uses cards - has enough room for a lot of games and versions. A miniature game, like I'd describe yours, is a nice concept and I'm sure it can be developed into something nice, while others at the same time work on creating something that's more on pair with a pure cardgame. There are no conflicts of interests, it's actually cool that you pushed it in the direction you did since it shows how much space there is to work within when it comes to making Wesnoth becoming real in various shapes on the tabletop.

Hence, if you get the time in the future, I hope you see the value and the point in your continuation of the work.
Velensk wrote:I do not feel like you could make a Wesnoth trading card game that would be interesting to me going with a standard CCG set-up.
I have no aspirations of creating a traditional CCG with this project, even if I am doing so within the scopes of another one.

A traditional CCG has a zillion of cards, most of which are crap, collectible, and it has plenty of future expansions etc. Although this is all built into the terminology itself, I'd rather let the abbreviation stand for "customizable card game" or "complex card game" instead of "collectible card game" if it was up to me. I think it better catches the spirit of the genre, or at least what it should be about from my own viewpoint in contrast to the industry's.

The ways WT, as I imagine it with "my" rules, will differ are as follows:
  • Spatial - somehow the spatial aspect must have a major impact on strategy. That far we both agree I think. While some CCG:s have a spatial aspects, most don't. More in this soon.
  • Low on randomness, keeping it skillbased.
  • Limited and a low amount of cards (probably won't go over 60 -100).
  • Not collectible & No planned expansions once all cards are released.
  • Edit: Maybe not quite so anymore... >> Only one single cardtype - creatures. This is probably unique and unseen in other CCG:s.
Velensk wrote:There tends not to be a good way to represent 'position' in these games and IMO you cannot do any sort of game that feels even vaugely like Wesnoth without position. Without any sort of position your game will almost invariably feel like a direct slug-out between two forces and will lose a great deal of it's potential to create variety and use.
Now I understand a part of the background for this discussion. I believe there has been some kind of misunderstanding here: With my original ruleset (orc, which is still crap btw) I never intended to create a game that is even vaguely similar to BfW (the computer game itself). The purpose for me was not to replicate or convert what's already a very good digital product. It was rather to create a game standing on it's own feet, but with a natural connection to the relatively rich and established Wesnoth universe itself.

So, you are correct: I think that a miniature game or a game played with anything else but just cards is probably a better idea if one tries to capture the spatial strategical depth of BfW. I myself would still love to play a miniature game that's anchored in the Wesnoth universe and plays on some kind of gridsystem, and I also think having the cards as references with info etc on them is the right move if one would create such a game.

On a sidenote, I'm not sure I agree with you yet on that a pure cardgame can't use the spatial aspect well enough to make the game varying and strategical, with depth. I willingly admit that it as a real challenge and that I haven't solved the task, but on the other hand I also think that's a part of the dev process - to try out ideas and see how they fare.

Personally I would really be disappointed if we ended up with what you describe as just a game of slugging and no strategy that is connected to the utilization of the space. That's not my goal, and I firmly believe it should be avoided.

Question is perhaps also where the lines is drawn and why we have certain game elements or not: Is a game good or varying or strategical just because it has the spatial aspects? The answer is "no" of course, it would depend on the rest of the game. The ideal case for me is one where the spatialness (is that even a word?) does matter a lot in a CCG and where it's implemented in a way which makes it easy to utilize and which adds strategical depth to the game, while at the same time keeping the better parts of the CGG-genre intact, thus avoiding a scenario where "Axis & Allies" played purely with cards ;) is created.

Sadly, I do believe you're right in your skeptical approach. Integrating the spatial dimensions in a CCG is hard and can never be done in the same smooth way or at the same scale it exists in a non-ccg (like BfW). A game that is spatialy based an dplayed with grids/meeples/etc will naturally always have an advantage for what it is over a CCG, if one is looking for that kind of player experience.

That said, is it doable somehow at all? Can a CCG get a deep and yet simple enough and easy to administer spatial system? And how would that look like?

The answer is in the future, as it always is under development. :P

(P.S. If nobody picks up your idea I will do so in the far away future, and will harass you then to get your input on some ideas. It's really appealing and a shame if it's left alone to die..)
Last edited by eyerouge on March 20th, 2010, 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Velensk
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Velensk »

You might wish to look up diskwars. I don't know if you have the resources to work on a project like diskwars (rather than printing cards you would need to create cardboard disks.) but it defiantly has all the aspects of a CCG (including unfortunately the bad ones) as well as an incredibly strong spacial sense.

Diskwars problem was that it released too many expansions without much testing for balance/abuses and the base rules had a few negative quirks (such as ranged units costing activations and the spell casting system being wonky) that were never resolved. I imagine with what you are doing you won't run into at least the first problem and hopefully you can do a better job on the second.

EDITED to correct a double negative.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

*looking at it*

Nice recommendation. I had never seen or heard about that game before :) Some of the discs look really good, not that it matters for the gameplay, but still. Will check out their rules - love checking them out for different games even if I don't play them.

The only thing that struck me directly is the choice to make the discs variable sizes and also, even more, making them circular.

I know there is a game that is probably still at sale and maybe even in production that's also a cardboard/cardbased and that's a miniature game in paper form. Last time I saw it I didn't find the looks of it appealing, but it would be interesting to read their rules as well.. just have to remember it's name... :(

A game where you actually have a small grid (played on a sheet of huge paper, mat) and miniatures and really heavy strategy for it's simplicity is Dreamblade. It's discontinued, but it's probably one of the better games I've ever played. It died since Wizards of the Coast made it collectible and expensive... even though it has very solid game play.
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Velensk »

Incase you cannot find the rules or find them confusing I've created a summery with brief explanations for you. If you want I can elaborate on where the problems come in but this should contain most of what you need to know if you want to create something similar.
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"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Ardent »

I just scanned the previous posts shortly - don't really have much time. The idea was just to use what Velensk proposed but make it a bit more playable ... but well there is also the option of going with a linear battlefield (like ST:CCG or LOTR) - one terrain on both ends of the card; 3 possible targets for each unit, one could even make a sort of ZOC with some rules (even if different then in "normal" BfW). The units are on the players side of the terrain card, so you would have 3 lines of cards (yours, terrain and oponnents).
Just my 0.02 $.
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by King_Elendil »

Wow, someone else had the idea of a card game too (Great minds think alike)! I had a similar idea about a month ago, but never pursued it. I have to admit, from what I've seen, I'm glad you did it and not me, as I could not have done such an amazing job :wink: .
If you would use some kind of tokens to identify units on the table, you wouldn't have to move them around - so you would have a line of units, each with a token identifying it placed atop the unit and on the "map" (cardboard with numbers for tokens?).
I do like the Idea of tokens, but they just dont look good. :? I have an idea on how you could represent units on a board, would something like this work? :hmm: ...
This is a crappy picture that i put together in like 30 seconds. The idea is to have small pyramids to represent the units. The pyramids would have the unit's image on all 4 (or maybe 3) sides (maybe with a cool background?)
This is a crappy picture that i put together in like 30 seconds. The idea is to have small pyramids to represent the units. The pyramids would have the unit's image on all 4 (or maybe 3) sides (maybe with a cool background?)
square_pyramid.png (41.8 KiB) Viewed 7042 times
It was just an idea and if you don't like it that's fine with me. I hope your project goes well, and if I have any more ideas, I'll be sure to post them :wink:
I'm finally admitting that this will be a very long (if not permanent) Wesbreak. Thank y'all for the great times, and may Wesnoth rise to become one of the most popular games on the planet.
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

Just got a prototype online play going. Looks like this:

Image/ Image

(also included this in the original post)

All is available on the WT-site.
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

(0. Developers & nerds ;) wanted, as usual.)
Project >> http://chaosrealm.net/wtactics

1. What do you prefer - the artwork with drop shadow or without drop shadows?
Please compare and share your thoughts. (Yes, the third pic has no drop shadow on the artwork. The other two have.)

Image

2. Will re-using unit art work for the instant/magic/events?

Yes or no? Since we lack art for "instants" we've decided to give this a try... but I'm not sure if it's a turn off or if it would work. In most CCG:s art isn't re-used on different cards. However, because we use Wesnoths great art we seem to be out of options since we only have arond 120 art pieces. Look at the shot below and share your notions...

Image
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by Kalajel »

1. The drop shadow cards look better.

2. Hmm… well, wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that were limited to 120 recent portraits? We do have a host of older portraits, sceneries, etc…
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by ancestral »

I think the font you’re using looks stale and very… unfantasy-like. Perhaps something like Gentium would look better?

Also, why not use pictures of the types of attacks? Would probably negate needing to mention the type of attack it is.

Here’s a quick mockup of how things could look:
druid.png
druid.png (183.23 KiB) Viewed 6959 times
Wesnoth BestiaryPREVIEW IT HERE )
Unit tree and stat browser
CanvasPREVIEW IT HERE )
Exp. map viewer
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eyerouge
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Re: Wesnoth Tactics: Strategical Cardgame

Post by eyerouge »

Nice with feedback!

Kalajel
It's true there is more than 120 portraits available and it is appropriate saying so. It is also not helpful for this project since we strive to let it look coherent when it comes to the artwork. Mixing old and new art would in most cases break that coherency, not to mention there was a reason Wesnoth choose the newer portraits over the old. The old portraits also don't really help much when it comes to the issue of having art work for the Event-cards, since they mostly are just that - unit portraits... and that we have already.

ancestral
Thank you for you mock-up and suggestions. :)

The damage type:
This will probably be removed alltogether from the rules I work with. If somebody else would use it, I agree that what you suggest could be one way of doing it. Personally I'm not at all pleased with the aesthetical result and also question the functionality of it if there would be many damage types (a player would then have to learn a zillion icons, like in example WoW CCG, which is a design disaster from at least that perspective.)

Stale font:
Agree that the fonts used aren't very exciting. I think it's an aesthetical notion, if it looks fantasy like or not. For me most serif fonts can easily be connected to fantasy, much more than without serifs. I share your opinion that Gentium looks "more" fantasy and less stale. In a way it also looks less "mature" even...

I do however believe it does something with the readability of the cards, especially the unit cards ability text. Please view the picture below in it's original size (press it twice): The images on the left are the "normal-fonted" ones. The images to the right use Gentium.

Readability seems to suffer much, and let's remember the playing cards are rather smalled when printed. What surprised me is that Gentium seems to work very well on the Event-cards (i.e. Rebirth, in the image). Perhaps because the font is reallu huge on them and because the event cards look even more like a fairy-tale than the unit cards. However, all numbers and names look bad in my opinion, so only place I'd consider using Gentium is the card text on the Event-cards, while at the same time letting the Event-cards keep their current font for name/cost/casters.
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