[52/60] Plague180 - XNA Card Game

[Kingdom Ablaze]

Ive been working on a card game in XNA. its what happens when you combine my two favorite card games Elements and Magic the Gathering. plus a few original ideas of my own. i have feb 17-march 3 off of work so most of my time will be there.

To-Do List

Engine:

-Finish Attract mode [0/1]
-Start/Finish Title Screen [0/1]
-Start Campaign Screen [0/1]
-Start Deck manager Screen [0/1]
-Add support for non-water elements (i only programmed water for testing) [2/13]
-Finish board effects [1.75/2]
-Work on AI [0/1]
-Optimize draw code [0.5/1]
-Remove hard coded draw stuff (already like half done) [5/lots]
-Merge card and animated card class [Done]
-Clean up LoadContent() (silly temp objects im no longer using slowing it down) [0.75/1]
-think of more things because i know there are

Demo:

-Make AI Smarter [0/1]
-Finish programming water spells [5/5]
-Add fire cards [3/19] (currently only in my database, not the game one)
-Make fire deck for AI [0/1]
-program fire spells [1/5]


Screens [new screen 20 feb]

Spoiler

new 8 feb

new Feb 9

new feb 12

new feb 20

The Work:
Feb 4 [2 hours]: cleaned up a bit of code and got things to run smoother. (mostly code optimizations)
Feb 4 Part 2 [5 hours]: Merged Card with Animated Card, Optimized tons of code, fixed bugs.
Feb 5 [1 Hour]: Worked on my documentation and worked on some fire cards.
Feb 5 Part 2 [1 Hour]: Finished adding all the dynamic card texture stuff
Feb 7 [2 Hours] Finished 3 water Spells
Feb 8 [3 hours] Added full support dynamic of spells, weapons, and shields (i was lazy the first time, only supported hard coded ones, fixed a few mistakes in my database file, fixed spelling error in mermaid tears that prevented it from being played right(card played but not effect).
Feb 9 [3 Hours] Laid the ground work for board effects, fixed bugs, finished targeting system, changed the way purify works(now can target player too), fixed more evil for getting to check for null bugs, other small balancing stuff
Feb 11 [4 Hours] Finished all the board effect code, Finished getting Flood to work, added a card limit (16 in play at once), some optimizations, started working on the last water spell, fixed a few bugs
Feb 12 [2 Hours] Fixed bugs and added the ability to highlight AI cards
Feb 16 [4 Hours] Got Wix XNA Installer to work 100% on all 3 of my test machines, now i can let people test with less work on my part.
Feb 16 Part 2 [2 Hours] Changed default resolution, fixed alignment issues, optimized some draw code, fixed bug with ai playing flood
Feb 20 [4 Hours] Added support for summoned creatures, optimized some draw code, rotated AI cards in hand to look better, added support for smartly rendering status effects (i hard coded it in previous screen shots), added a few fire cards to the database for testing, and finished the last water spell(magic hat)
Feb 21 [2 Hours] Started working on the fire board effect (wild fire), added foil card support, updated the back of the card, improved my Bake code for summoned creatures.
Feb 22 [2 Hours] Lots and lots of bug fixes, mostly with font alignment and removing hard coded dumbness in favor of dynamic solutions
Feb 23 [4 Hours] Worked on Client/Server for multiplayer, works with localhost, still working on remote.
Feb 25 [4 Hours] Made it so the targets rotate when you are using a spell, made my code alot more dynamic, wrote a saveaspng method that saves all the cards to an output folder, made a method to save all cards to a single image (will make it one image per element latter, wanted to get it working first) added all fire cards to the database, fixed a few errors in the old database, updated my to-do list, and other small things i forgot
Feb 26 [3 hours] Finished programing the Freeze ability, added lots more fancy drawing stuff, added 3 new cards, fixed a few database typos, worked on making foils look better, started working on Enlist ability, made huge progess on ability database, and lastly, lots more optimization.
Feb 27 [2 Hours] Finished Programing Enlist ability and fixed tons of little bugs that popped up in the ability database, added token support and stacking token support.
Feb 27 Part 2 [2 hours] Worked on website and worked on adding activated abilities to card images. Added 3 new cards: Enraged Dragon, Foot Soldier, and Inferno.

 

[Perihelion]

Awesome! Sounds like a cool game, and I look forward to seeing what you make. Your screenshot link appears to be broken, though.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

i jsut copied link from my dropbox, bad idea lol, i moved it to tinypic

 

[coyotecraft]

I played Magic the Gathering on the computer, I can't follow the card rule logic sometimes. Building a card game and an AI for it sounds pretty hard. Knowing which card to play and when. I mean, some times it's the luck of the draw and you might not have any hard decisions to make.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

Magic can be complicated, but i didn't add anything super crazy. My game is more like elements then anything, each game is only 2-5 min. as for the AI im really not worried, i enjoy writing AI more then anything. ive also learned alot from elements mistakes, ive played alot so i know the kinds of mistakes the AI makes, also ive read pretty much every complaint on the forums.

 

[Xhukari]

Good luck with this! It does look a loooot like Elements though...

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

im aware of this, most games around here look like what they are based on, tons of pokemon or final fantasy games. only my game board looks like elements, everything else is very different.

edit: after rereading that it sounded kind of negative, thanks for your feedback. i tried many different setups for the board and honestly this one is the only one that looked right. i agree it is alot like elements, but thats not really a bad thing imo.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

im aware of this, most games around here look like what they are based on, tons of pokemon or final fantasy games. only my game board looks like elements, everything else is very different.

edit: after rereading that it sounded kind of negative, thanks for your feedback. i tried many different setups for the board and honestly this one is the only one that looked right. i agree it is alot like elements, but thats not really a bad thing imo.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

well got another hour in, i need a nap, then ill try to get another 2-3 hours

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

just finished programing 3 water spells: Hurricane(deal 1 damage to all non water creatures), Purify (cure poison), Mermaid Tears (fully heal one creature)

edit: damn programming spells is boring and tedious (trying to make the base code as reusable as possible)

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

nice and productive day: i Laid the ground work for board effects like Flood and Wildfire, fixed aton of simple bugs, mostly typos, finished the targeting system for spells and activated abilities(note activated abilities arnt fully working yet, ive done like 25% of the work, focusing on spells first), changed the way purify works(now it can target players, not just creatures), fixed more evil forgetting to check for null bugs(because i didn't need until i added all the board effects code), other small balancing stuff

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

Finished all the board effect code (now adding new effects is as easy as one line of code), Finished getting Flood to work (new screen shot), added a card limit (16 in play at once, games are so short it shouldnt matter most the time), some optimizations, started working on the last water spell (magic hat, play on frozen creature to turn it into a evil snowman), fixed a few bugs (mostly in card placement)

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

fixed some more simple bugs (mostly stuff where i only added the player portion, not the ai) and i made it so you can highlight AI cards for more details

 

[Xhukari]

Sounds like you're making good progress. I've always wanted to make a digital TCG,but always gave up when it came to art assets, are your's original, placeholder or otherwise?
The flood effect screenshot looks awesome. I can understand exactly how that could works without even seeing the card's details! :p
Would you mind divulging some more details about the mechanics of the game?
There seems to be a lot of elements available here, and some equipment (presuming the circular square is like an accessory slot?)
I'm guessing the different elements play to different playstyles and strengths? How will you accomplish this with so many elements?
I mean, you look at Magic's elementary specialisms and you get;

• Green: Simple, brute power, increasing that power, or to overwhelm with swarms.
• Blue: Preperation, denying the opponent of what they want, controlling the battlefield.
• Red: Concentrating on speed of damage, either through fast creatures and damaging spells.
• White: Focuses on defense measures and reliability, usually involves some form of healing.
• Black: Involves the most special abilities, some of which leech life, debilitate the opponent, etc. Or overall, sacrifices parts of itself to achieve powerful abilities.

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

ive been paying an artist to make the graphics (these are quick rough drafts trying to get all the assets made first) i have no problem talking about the mechanics and how i made it, just let me know what you want to know. there are 13 elements. each element has its own theme, and they play well mono, but the game is more designed to make the player find the best combo of 2-4 elements. that extra slot is for real game turners called artifacts, they do all kinds of different things (10% to flood, extra damage, extra blocking, random effects, etc)

your talking strategy per element, so here is the general take on each one:

water: freeze opponent in tracks, summon minions
fire: pure attack/ damage
air: mostly self preservation
earth: lots and lots of hp, made for blocking
light: healing
darkness: steal from opponent and use against them
force: dont allow damage, cause lots
time: slow down opponent or speed yourself up
immaterial: dont allow damage, deck out
decay: dont allow opponent to play any strategy (lots of cards that run things into other things)
life: swarm beyond belief
death: swarm and summon the dead
void: every single card from the void is designed to counter the above (plays bad as mono, really good in multi color)

 

[Xhukari]

Haha nice, I like the sound of Void. Just don't make it so powerful its an auto-include for like, 90% of elements
How will you swarm if you have a 16 cards-in-play limit? I presume it will be able to get out many more creatures earlier due to tricks and such. But what if it starts enter a more 'late-game' section, or are you banking on this to kind of balance swarm? In the sense of 'survive to end game, and gain the upper hand' ?

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

im glad that you ask :D since there are so many elements they dont have alot of creatures each (9 per element), also tokens stack. here is an example:

Dread Captain can summon a 1/1 Desperate Pirate with his Enlist ability, if you summon a second one the Desperate Pirate on the field becomes a 2/2 Scurvy crew card, if you summon another 3/3 so on and so forth.

dont worry, ive spent so much time balancing the void cards, i dont want people using them too much, also i made them cost a little more to play, they are under powered if anything


lastly a game shouldn't take more then 4-5 min no matter how much you slow each other down, so there really is no "late-game"

 

[Xhukari]

Hrm. It sounds like swarm is more of a 'grow' ability. Where they take nothing, grow a weak creature, and just repeatedly making it bigger and stronger. Or do the token cards behave differently, I mean... what happens if (for exmaple's sake) a 9/9 hits a 7/7 token cards (which were 7 enlists) Does the one 9/9 creature destroy every token card. Or does it just go down to 6/6, since (generally) one can only attack a single target? (But of course if this were the case.. then surely in that 9/9 was infact say, 9 enlists... then that would mean that 7/7 dies outright?)

 

[Kingdom Ablaze]

creatures dont attack each other like magic, they directly attack the other player, thats why equipment is so important. say you had the 9/9 and you delt 3 damage it would be 6/6 not 9/6

 

[Xhukari]

I see...
Have you heard of a digital TCG called Shadow Era?
It is quite the popular game to my knowledge.