My latest project -- a digital collectible card game

[Dave]

As a note: I recently finished playing the available campaigns and am now looking to check out multiplayer. I can see that there's another player online but I have no idea who it is and they're likely involved in the campaign.

Yeah this is a problem. I think there are a number of things that need doing. To begin with I think I will make the "Multiplayer" tab glow or something to indicate there is a player actively looking for a game.

[johndh]

First, I got a crash just after registering:

Code: Select all

['CAMPAIGN']},'session_id': 8000187,'type': 'registration_success','username': 'johndh'}
in level constructor...
building...121887
done building...121887
done building tile_map...121887
done building hex_tile_map...121887
done level constructor: 1
SET STARTING CYCLES: 0
RUNNING GARBAGE COLLECTION FOR 13 OBJECTS...
PASS 1: 9 OBJECTS SAFE
PASS 2: 11 OBJECTS SAFE
RAN GARBAGE COLLECTION IN 0ms. Releasing 2/13 OBJECTS
CONSOLE: ['BBB', null]
CONSOLE: 'event window_resize'
ASSERT FAIL: src/formula.cpp:768 ASSERTION FAILED: Unknown identifier 'markup_text' At /home/john/.frogatto//dlc/citadel/data/objects/text_area.cfg 12:
where fragments = c.markup_text(_text, text_width)
                    ^----------^

Identifiers that are valid in this scope: arc 
arc_negative 
clip 
close_path 
curve_to 
draw_svg 
emdash 
fill 
image_dim 
layout_text 
line_to 
move_to 
new_path 
new_sub_path 
paint 
paint_image 
paint_with_alpha 
parse_special_chars 
pop_group_to_source 
push_group 
rectangle 
render 
reset_clip 
restore 
rotate 
save 
scale 
set_font 
set_font_size 
set_line_width 
set_linear_pattern 
set_operator 
set_radial_pattern 
set_source_rgba 
show_rich_text_multiline 
show_text 
stroke 
text_extents 
text_path 
text_path_in_bounds 
translate 



At /home/john/.frogatto//dlc/citadel/data/objects/campaign_controller.cfg 218:
spawn('text_area', px(10), px(10), {
^


---
---
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'fatal_assert_failure_exception'
Aborted

... and subsequently whenever launching, with a similar error message. This is after following your instructions for Linux with the github version.


Second, a failed login attempt shows the attempted password in the console output, which is probably not desirable.

[Dave]

I got a crash just after registering:

This sounds like you are using Anura from the master branch, not the trunk branch?

[Dave]

Second, a failed login attempt shows the attempted password in the console output, which is probably not desirable.

This is fixed now!

[Dave]

As a note: I recently finished playing the available campaigns and am now looking to check out multiplayer. I can see that there's another player online but I have no idea who it is and they're likely involved in the campaign.

I've pushed out an update which makes it so that when a player starts queuing for a game, online players who aren't already in a multiplayer game (e.g. they are playing against the AI, or in the library, etc) will be notified. Hopefully this will improve our chances of finding multiplayer games!

[Ravana]

Seems that marauder negates assassinate. Also, this happened http://puu.sh/gBvZ8/8c87bf9494.jpg.

Janus still affects fortifications.

What happens with crypt?

[Dave]

Okay fixed it so Janus doesn't affect fortifications.

Tactical Blunder shouldn't be usable on lands or fortifications so fixed that. Hopefully will fix the crash too.

The crypt is simply your discard pile, where cards are you have played.

[Anonymissimus]

Are you updating the windows binary available in the starting post, then (there are no version numbers) ? You are getting lots of bug reports, logically.
I don't want to be bothered with the bugs or with compiling it, especially not on windows.

[Andrettin]

Are you updating the windows binary available in the starting post, then (there are no version numbers) ? You are getting lots of bug reports, logically.
I don't want to be bothered with the bugs or with compiling it, especially not on windows.

The binary updates itself It is awesome like that.

[Dave]

No need to build on Windows. Just get the binary on the initial link. It works exactly as Andrettin said -- when you run the game it automatically updates itself to the latest version on startup.

[Andrettin]

I just played a bit with Velensk (multiplayer and Ancient Alliance). It was very fun

There seemed to be some issues, however. My goblin card (the one that summons two guardian units; sorry, I can't remember the specific name of the card just right now) didn't seem to summon the guardians correctly. I placed it in the center lane, but no guardians appeared. This happened twice.

The co-op (Ancient Alliance) played nicely, but the game seems to not have registered our victory in the scenario, at least for me (it says 0 wins of 0 tries for me). Also, the "End Turn" button would appear for Velensk in the usual position (which made it appear on my part of the screen), rather than on his part of the screen. Velensk also noted that 40 HP for such a wide battlefield in the co-op game seemed too little. I agree with him, possibly 60 or 80 HP would work better.

[Velensk]

After having played around a bit I actually have a few suggestions now (granted, I’m still no expert but then who is at this point?). I’m going to first suggest something related to a mechanic, then give suggestions on individual cards, then talk about about other general suggestions. Then I’ll ask a couple questions. Some of the suggestions I give would naturally require other things to be rebalanced, I don’t go into detailed thoughts on those but I’m aware they exist. I won’t be offended if you don’t agree with my suggestions but I do generally like to know what you think of them.

———————————————-
After some experimenting I do agree that Gaea rush decks are probably a bit strong to be beaten consistently by most deck styles (to the point of requiring very specific counters and not necessarily doing too poorly against them if they draw well), however I think the scope of the actual problem is limited to a select two cards. I think a large amount of the issue particularly for one of these cards can be eliminated by altering one way the game works. The second I’ll talk about later but for the moment I want to point out Furious Rampage.

Furious Rampage not only allows a Gaea deck to trample through defenses relatively cheaply but also increases the damage of doing so. True there are other cards that let both gaea and other suits bypass defenses but none else do it while destroying the guardian and increasing the lethality of doing so as much (Assassinate special aside).

There is a fix I think that might not only help balance this card but also consolidate a concept in how the game plays generally. I’m not sure how much of a hassle it’ll be to re-impliment things to work like this but I figure that if this kind of change is to be made then now is the time to do so.
>Rather than having it so that any creature attacks once per turn, make it so that each creature deals damage up to it’s attack per turn (this applying to both creatures and players). A creature only deals enough damage to kill the creature is attacking the rest of the damage is saved.
-So for this card, you can still use it to rampage past a defense just as easily (and indeed I think Gaea needs the ability to do this) however if you do so, the blow will be softened by the toughness of the defender as the creature had to use that much of its attack to go through and doesn’t have it left to use on the player during the same turn.
-This would also work towards making drain life feel a little more intuitive. You’d no longer be able to attack a 2 toughness monster and drain 9 life from it (which is even more jarring to me than that you can drain life and end up with much more than your total).
-It also makes the haste special a little less powerful (which again works in a direction I think would be good) as although you can use haste to attack an enemy twice, the enemy can still have damage left to take out the second charger. Against enemies without first strike you’re still doing 4 damage for 2 mana which isn’t at all bad and you can overwhelm even enemies that have it still.
>The only thing about this that seems tricky mechanically to me is cards like the tower which can attack multiple enemies. Perhaps for ranged attacks like this it just counts the first point of damage to each target as only a single damage dealt for it’s own purposes?

————————————————————————————

Individual Cards. For a number of cards my comment is simply that I feel they should require a bit more specialization to use (I.E. there isn’t enough penalty to sticking them in a deck of a different suit IMO). These are generally changes that I don’t feel particularly strongly about and will just say ‘specialize’ but if there’s some reason I feel strongly about it I’ll say more.

Armory: Specialize.
--Bazaar: This is a card that I feel will inevitably either always be too slow, or if the game isn’t fast enough will nearly guarantee a victory in a longer match. Perhaps the mana gain can be capped. Alternatively, perhaps it could be redesigned to be much cheaper but to instead of giving you man make it cheaper to place lands by two mana (thus letting a player use it to put out mines to get more mana more easily).
—Skeleton: The skeleton special ability is incredibly strong and mana efficient. This is probably intended but I feel it’ll likely become a problem. I think a fix which helps keep the flavor and much of the strength would be if you could not reanimate the skeleton a second time. In this fashion each skeleton would not become a permeant +1 hand size. Alternatively, they card could become more specialized.
—Festering Wound: This card generally feels inefficient for its cost, particularly when compared to -Hypothermia. It takes 4 turns to deal the same amount of damage. The only lane where that works out for you on most maps is the center, and you still don’t want a card wandering down that for 4 turns. Granted, this is something you can apply preemptively while Hypothermia must be instant but still I feel the minimum cost should be dropped to 1.
—Nature’s Blessing: This is the other Gaea card I feel contributes to the problem. This allows one to sustain a swarm of early aggression while still dropping heavy hitters like Trolls and Minotaurs. I feel that it’s not a good idea to give any suit a strong mana burst card in a game where burning through you hand isn’t a problem as your hand is effectively a renewable resource and mana is your major limiter. I would propose a much weaker version of the same card. It would cost no mana to play but it restores mana equal to your Gaea lvl (by restore I mean that it cannot give you mana beyond your maximum amount). I believe this would both be more balanced and more interesting as the larger your board is the more powerful it becomes so there’s a tension on whether you hold it or use it right away (atm, it’s mostly about can you spend most of your mana while still having enough to play it and then can you spend all the mana you get back [in a sense giving you two turns in one].
—Troll: Specialize
—Flesh Golem: Specialize
-Inquisitor: Feels a little underwhelming compared to other 5 mana heavies. It’s ability is useful for slowing their card flow slightly but he doesn’t have the stats. Also, thematically feels like he should be specialized (though gameplay wise he’s fine). Perhaps he could be made to cost 6 normally but 4 minimum?
-Rihn Incarnate: I actually have a suggestion for this now. I think it should keep Cover (being able to resist removal both fits and helps allow it to be viable) but instead of having Indestructable, give it first strike. A 12 damage first strike is nearly the same thing but it is theoretically beatable. If this is done, then boosting her stats a little or decreasing her price might not be a bad idea (maybe give her some armor).

————
Other general suggestions.

— I don’t like the Assassinate special in anything other than the thematic sense. I’m not sure that I could say unbalanced but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could find a way to make it so (I have a few ideas myself). It’s an instant win condition by design, all that is needed for it to be broken is for someway to make it reliable and given the amount of cards that could potentially allow one to get across the map, get past guardians, and resist removal, I would be surprised if this was the case. The alternative I would propose, is that any disk with assassin deals damage equal to the value of the lanes seal every time he gets through (including the time the seal is broken so
— As suggested before I think it may be good idea to make how many of each card can be in a deck specific to each card. So for a temple guard maybe you can have 3, for plauge rats or whatever you can have 6, and for Zobin the Ubercard you can only have 1. This would also generate a bit of interest in deciding whether to keep him or to cycle him. At the moment I’d just run multiple copies of him and if I draw him early I’d cycle it as I’d be fairly sure I could reach another copy by the time I could afford him whereas if I could only run one copy there’d be a serious question on whether or not I’d cycle him for better odds of drawing something to slow my enemies rush or whether I keep my late game board breaker. Of course, there’s nothing to stop a player from having multiple ubercards just of different types.
— As mentioned above I was able to play a round of co-op, however after winning there was some kind of issue and I’m not sure what happened but I wasn’t able to do much for a bit, then suddenly everything decided that it was willing to work but my partner was gone. Also, it didn’t register me as having won the scenario in my account. I can also attest to the account he gave. As an additional note, for the first half of one of our matches I wasn’t able to resurrect one of my skeletons. I was later able to do so. I have no idea what changed it.

————————————————————
Questions:
So if I’m interested in contributing card or at the least art/ideas for cards what would be the best way to do it? In wesnoth normally I’d get it working on my machine but for an online card game I’m not sure how that’d work. Do I just send the material to you untested or is there something I should do first? If I am sending it to you do you want to vet the ideas first? I’m not sure how much time I’ll have after tomorrow but this is exactly the kind of creative project I like to pursue in my free time.

Also just to throw in one last bug report which I alluded to earlier but didn't make clear: When I was playing the last scenario in the witch path, when one and then later another of my creatures was near the end of the map, the AI cast blink on them and moved them into a lane which didn't exist. They kind of stayed there for the rest of the game in the nonexistent rightmost column. The lower of the two made the little 'I can't move' wiggle but the one that would have claimed the seal just stood put.

[Andrettin]

I'm not sure I agree that Nature's Blessing is too strong. It is pretty much useless at the beginning of the game (since you will likely not have enough creatures and total mana pool for it to be advantageous to use this card), so including that card in your deck already has a very significant disadvantage; it only becomes useful in the late(r) game, when the player has about 10 mana or so - and even in those cases, often Nature's Blessing can't be used advantageously, if the cost of the cards in your hand don't tie up nicely for its use.

Furious Rampage is good in certain situations, but in many it is quite useless - it can't be used advantageously in defensive combat if both units would kill each other anyway, since your extra health will be lost by the end of the turn, killing your unit. Each creature dealing up to its damage per turn could be a nice change though (in solving the potential abuses of Furious Rampage), as long as it doesn't make combat too complex.

[Velensk]

I'd say that as long as you have 2 gaea creatures on the field early, Natures blessing is useful at 5 mana. It's even stronger late game but it's plenty strong early game as well if your deck is dedicated to aggression.

EDIT: Also, it's important to note that the cost of including any card in your deck in this game is limited. You can always discard it and draw something else next turn if it isn't what you need.

[Dave]

After having played around a bit I actually have a few suggestions now (granted, I’m still no expert but then who is at this point?). I’m going to first suggest something related to a mechanic, then give suggestions on individual cards, then talk about about other general suggestions. Then I’ll ask a couple questions. Some of the suggestions I give would naturally require other things to be rebalanced, I don’t go into detailed thoughts on those but I’m aware they exist. I won’t be offended if you don’t agree with my suggestions but I do generally like to know what you think of them.

Thanks for all your feedback! I really appreciate it! Here are some of my thoughts below.

After some experimenting I do agree that Gaea rush decks are probably a bit strong to be beaten consistently by most deck styles (to the point of requiring very specific counters and not necessarily doing too poorly against them if they draw well), however I think the scope of the actual problem is limited to a select two cards. I think a large amount of the issue particularly for one of these cards can be eliminated by altering one way the game works. The second I’ll talk about later but for the moment I want to point out Furious Rampage.

I do agree that Furious Rampage is probably a little overpowered right now. I do think it is a card that feels nice to use though. I love using a nice Furious Rampage to bust through the enemy's defenses.

I think your idea of making it so a creature only does a certain amount of damage might work out to nerf it a little -- but, all things considered, would only be a fairly mild nerf to it -- however it does have a few problems. (One of which is NOT difficulty of implementation. I've already made lots of changes while developing this game and will continue to make changes until we get the best mechanics possible). It makes it so +move is actually a disadvantage in lots of cases. Since you'd rather not have a +move and just wait an extra turn to do full damage. It also could confuse players, and requires more math.

I think the 'problem' with Furious Rampage is it really does so much for you -- it gives you three things you really need in a neat little package, +attack, +life, +move. If it lost any of these three effects it'd be dramatically less useful.

So, some thoughts:

- I think there is potential for a Gaea buff card that gives just +attack and +move. This could be priced significantly cheaper than Furious Rampage since the loss of +life makes it much less useful (does nothing against First Strike among other things). Also, one that gives +attack and +life but no +move. Players could of course then try to combo these cards, but that would be much harder to pull off.
- I think Furious Rampage basically needs to be more expensive. It gives a powerful effect and needs to cost appropriately. Or we could nerf the amount of attack/life it gives to +3/+3 or +2/+2.

For now I have nerfed Furious Rampage by giving +1 cost, and making it only give +3/+3 attack/life.

You do have some very good points about other problems though:

-This would also work towards making drain life feel a little more intuitive. You’d no longer be able to attack a 2 toughness monster and drain 9 life from it (which is even more jarring to me than that you can drain life and end up with much more than your total).

I agree Life Drain is a little out of hand/insane so I've updated it to make it work like you say -- if a creature only has 2 life you can only get 2 life by killing it.

If it's still too powerful we might consider Life Drain only giving 50% of damage dealt, though I'm not keen on doing this.

-It also makes the haste special a little less powerful (which again works in a direction I think would be good) as although you can use haste to attack an enemy twice, the enemy can still have damage left to take out the second charger. Against enemies without first strike you’re still doing 4 damage for 2 mana which isn’t at all bad and you can overwhelm even enemies that have it still.

I agree the way haste works is also a little silly so I've changed it: creatures will always fight back when attacked even if they've already done so this turn. No abusing haste to get an attack with no retaliation.

--Bazaar: This is a card that I feel will inevitably either always be too slow, or if the game isn’t fast enough will nearly guarantee a victory in a longer match. Perhaps the mana gain can be capped. Alternatively, perhaps it could be redesigned to be much cheaper but to instead of giving you man make it cheaper to place lands by two mana (thus letting a player use it to put out mines to get more mana more easily).

I really like the idea of making it a land which makes playing lands cheaper. Let's do that.

—Skeleton: The skeleton special ability is incredibly strong and mana efficient. This is probably intended but I feel it’ll likely become a problem. I think a fix which helps keep the flavor and much of the strength would be if you could not reanimate the skeleton a second time. In this fashion each skeleton would not become a permeant +1 hand size. Alternatively, they card could become more specialized.

It is quite. But are you aware that your enemy can capture the Skeleton Corpse off of you? Then they can use the ability.

—Festering Wound: This card generally feels inefficient for its cost, particularly when compared to -Hypothermia. It takes 4 turns to deal the same amount of damage. The only lane where that works out for you on most maps is the center, and you still don’t want a card wandering down that for 4 turns. Granted, this is something you can apply preemptively while Hypothermia must be instant but still I feel the minimum cost should be dropped to 1.

Yeah I agree with this. No sane person would play this when they could play Hypothermia. Reduced the cost to 0/3.

—Nature’s Blessing: This is the other Gaea card I feel contributes to the problem. This allows one to sustain a swarm of early aggression while still dropping heavy hitters like Trolls and Minotaurs. I feel that it’s not a good idea to give any suit a strong mana burst card in a game where burning through you hand isn’t a problem as your hand is effectively a renewable resource and mana is your major limiter. I would propose a much weaker version of the same card. It would cost no mana to play but it restores mana equal to your Gaea lvl (by restore I mean that it cannot give you mana beyond your maximum amount). I believe this would both be more balanced and more interesting as the larger your board is the more powerful it becomes so there’s a tension on whether you hold it or use it right away (atm, it’s mostly about can you spend most of your mana while still having enough to play it and then can you spend all the mana you get back

I agree Nature's Blessing is powerful, but I do really like this card and the way it works. It could have a minimum cost though.

I do like the idea of making some card effects depend on your level though! For instance I could see a card that gives a creature +x/+x where x is your gaea level (or entropia's version would give a creature -x life!)

—Troll: Specialize
—Flesh Golem: Specialize

I think you're right about these, and more generally I think the theme here is that any creature that costs more than 5 or 6 or so needs some kind of specialization applied to it. With 'foot soldiers' it hurts you to put them in your deck if they are off-school because they no longer give you discounts on invocations. But with an expensive creature there aren't usually enough in the deck for you to care that much, and often you've built levels by that point anyhow.

-Inquisitor: Feels a little underwhelming compared to other 5 mana heavies. It’s ability is useful for slowing their card flow slightly but he doesn’t have the stats. Also, thematically feels like he should be specialized (though gameplay wise he’s fine). Perhaps he could be made to cost 6 normally but 4 minimum?

He really does doesn't he? Buffing to make him a 7/7.

-Rihn Incarnate: I actually have a suggestion for this now. I think it should keep Cover (being able to resist removal both fits and helps allow it to be viable) but instead of having Indestructable, give it first strike. A 12 damage first strike is nearly the same thing but it is theoretically beatable. If this is done, then boosting her stats a little or decreasing her price might not be a bad idea (maybe give her some armor).

So I still like the idea of removing Cover from her, and I've pushed a change which does this. I like the idea of her being indestructible. Note that indestructible means she can't be destroyed. So a card like Knife in the Dark she just doesn't care about.

However she can still be interacted with without Cover. Cards like Outsmart the Guards will work on her now, and a card that say put her back in her controller's hand would too. I think this makes it interesting since you can still do things against her with the right spells, just not damage or destroy her.

— I don’t like the Assassinate special in anything other than the thematic sense. I’m not sure that I could say unbalanced but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could find a way to make it so (I have a few ideas myself). It’s an instant win condition by design, all that is needed for it to be broken is for someway to make it reliable and given the amount of cards that could potentially allow one to get across the map, get past guardians, and resist removal, I would be surprised if this was the case. The alternative I would propose, is that any disk with assassin deals damage equal to the value of the lanes seal every time he gets through (including the time the seal is broken so

I'm not sure I love Assassinate, but the idea of a mechanic like it really is to stimulate the kind of player who likes to tinker, build innovative decks that do crafty things. It is the kind of thing that I would like to try to make sure never becomes heavily used among the best players -- because it just doesn't quite have that power level -- but is exciting, interesting, and powerful enough to keep people tinkering, trying different decks, seeing if they can make it work well.

— As suggested before I think it may be good idea to make how many of each card can be in a deck specific to each card. So for a temple guard maybe you can have 3, for plauge rats or whatever you can have 6, and for Zobin the Ubercard you can only have 1. This would also generate a bit of interest in deciding whether to keep him or to cycle him. At the moment I’d just run multiple copies of him and if I draw him early I’d cycle it as I’d be fairly sure I

So I'm kinda interested in this. I think there might be some simple rules like this:

- There would be "unlimited" cards with no limit. Common "footsoldier" cards like Rihn's Anointed or Soothsayer I'm not sure need limits.
- Other cards would have a limit of 3.
- MAYBE, 'hero' cards would have a limit of just 1. Not sure about that though.

So that's that on my thoughts on your comments. Again thank you for the feedback, I really am looking for feedback like this and appreciate it and welcome any more thoughts!

I will answer your other questions about contributing in my next post.

David