GM-able Card Hunter

[Question] Any chance that there is going to be a GM-able version of Card Hunter with which I could create my own adventures/campaign and invite my friends online to play? That would be the most awesome thing ever in the history of eternity! (and I would pay good money for such a thing)

[Suggestion] Create a GM-able version of Card Hunter that people could use to create their own adventures/campaign and invite their friends online to play.

 

Well you can already create your own adventures. And once you've done that you can invite other CH players (including your friends) to play against you in them in casual games (or even use the beta co-op mode for more than 2 players).

 

Cool, thanks!

 

Is there any way to "import" boards from the campaign or do I have to create all the boards myself?

 

I already had a question similar to this one a while ago HERE, it's good to see I'm not alone! There may be plans to let you be able to bring a player from singleplayer into custom games, but for now you'll have to be content either running level 18 adventures or playing as monsters. As for the importing, you'll have to either copy them from singleplayer or fool around with the cool mapmaking tools and make something much more interesting. Good luck with running it, I hope it'll be a fun adventure!

 

So... what I actually want to do run Card Hunter as an RPG, where the GM (me) runs adventures (and the monsters) and there are, say 3 (or more?) players each running a single character that gains treasure and advances levels in the campaign I am running. From what I'm reading it doesn't quite sound like that is possible (yet?). So my [Suggestion] would be a version of Card Hunter that a GM could run as an RPG campaign with 3 (or possibly more) players each running a single character that gains treasure and advances in levels in the campaign.

 

I think a problem with this might be a variance of difficulty levels. I don't see it as a huge problem because it would only affect SP, which isn't really competitive. It might actually prove to be a substantial draw for the game. It's also possible that this is exactly what Farbs is working toward.

 

I hope so. Maybe when I get more into the design part of the multiplayer I will be able to make it work. The funny thing is what I desire is almost exactly what the fantastic Card Hunter Campaign Mode is an homage to. I remember, as a kid, those all night D&D sessions in the basement with my friends, eating pizza and cheesy chips, mispronouncing many of the terms, wondering what a glaive-guisarme was, etc. The writers of the Card Hunter Campaign Mode clearly had similar experiences.

 

I'm sorry but I don't have a whole lot of experience with map making and custom co-op games.

Can you

1. Create a custom map in which 1 side controls one (or more) pre-constructed group(s) of monsters, while the other side controls a party of 1 to 3 (or more?) characters (be it with pre-constructed decks or with decks built by the players themselves).
2. Invite all required players in a custom game to be played on said map.
3. Using the custom game interface/screen, manually assign who plays who (this is important in the case of pre-designed parties with pre-designed decks or, more likely, to make sure the GM actually controls the monsters group(s))

???

I'm assuming not all of those features have been implemented yet. Once you have all of those, you can pretty much design a whole campaign (one map at a time) and GM those for your group of players in a series of sessions.

Of course, if the idea gets pushed further, you can achieve so much more.

Spoiler: Power Goal: Stand-alone GM Mode

Be a GM, create your own campaigns and host CH adventures for your players group to enjoy. Yes, you can be like Melvin today! Can you kill all of your players in a single session and unlock the Party-Killer achievement???

The GM can manage multiple Campaigns and invite/remove players to/from each. When creating a new Campaign, the GM can pick between two distinct types:

• Standard Campaign - Players can use any of their own characters and equipment. The following rules apply:
  1. Each player's character retains his original (SP) Lvl/Exp
  2. Each player can equip items from his usual (SP/MP) collection
  3. Beating Standard Campaign Adventures doesn't award experience or loot
• Instanced Campaign - The progress of each Player's Character and Inventory is instanced. The following rules apply:
  1. Players are required to create a new Campaign Character. These Characters are unique to a given Campaign (you cannot use them in SP, MP or other Campaigns)
  2. Campaign Characters start at Lvl 1 and the GM awards whatever Exp he wants at the end of each battle.
  3. Players can only equip a Campaign Character with loot acquired in the course of the respective Campaign.
  4. The GM can roll random loot (specifying number of drops/guaranteed-rarity) to be awarded to the players.
  5. Loot acquired in an Instanced Campaign can't be used outside of said Instanced Campaign.

GM Mode monetization strategy (aka "the evil plan"):

• GM Mode can be unlocked by paying 1.000.000.000 (one billion) pizza slices
• Once you unlock GM Mode, you can create unlimited campaigns
• Players don't need to pay in order to play in a campaign. The GM simply invites them to one of his Campaigns and they play for free.
• The GM can ofc accept paypal donations from his players in order to recoup from the 1.000.000.000 (one billion) upfront fee

 

Yeah, sounds good. I don't think it would be very difficult from a code-writing/programming perspective, especially since all the hard work has already been done. It's just a question of the Card Hunter people wanting to do it and if there would be a demand for it. And so I call on all DMs, GMs, and former D&D players who crave such an experience to come forth and flood the forums with demands of said role-playing version I've been writing about! Charge! To the death! For honor and glory! Valhalla, I am coming! Some great things that could be done with that version of Card Hunter would be player handouts, text boxes (as with OpenRPG), many more map, er, board tiles, and a "role-play" mode where the character's and GM's minis/tokens are on the board and they can move them as they talk/argue/negotiate without an actual battle taking place. To arms!

 

Who knows, I'm not willing to bet such a mode of play would be a huge favorite to a wide part of the community. I feel like the majority of players are pretty casual (i.e. they don't spend hours/day hunting for every single last item, or get incredibly involved in MP).

But if that happens to be the case, and there's an actual request for it. then it might make sense for BM to eventually tackle something like that. Given it is feasible by a very small team. Which brings us to...

Every time somebody who isn't the actual developer of the actual game says something along those lines, a kitten dies

No seriously, even though stuff might look simple when you read a few bullet points, chances are the amount of work required is going to be significant.

Keep in mind Blue Manchu is made up of a handfull of people only. Even leaving GM Mode aside, they still need to maintain the game and back-end infrastructure, keep the MP balance in check, work on the Steam Client, finalize Co-Op, design/test/implement a new class and develop a brand new expansion.

Yeah, a fully fledged GM mode is not coming anytime soon, I fear. But I still hope it sees the light of day, sooner or later.

 

1. Yes. A battle has two sides of up to 5 chars/groups each. One side is controlled by the GM or their co-op team, the other side is controlled by the AI or another player or a co-op team.

2. Yes, though first you invite players to join the co-op teams (if any).

3. Each side consists of an MP party or monster groups; if monster groups are controlled by a co-op team then the team leader gets Group 1, next player gets Group 2, etc. If a co-op team controls an MP party, each player uses the first char of their active MP party (this will change in the future). The AI can't use an MP party, but all the chars used by the AI in MP are available as monster groups.

1. Currently, custom games have to be played in MP, so all player created chars are automatically level 18 regardless of XP level.
2. Each player has a single shared collection shared between SP and MP. I don't expect this to ever change.
3. Currently this is the only option.

This is the part that will require a ton of coding, mainly to set up and maintain separate collections and chars for each player and each campaign. I don't think there will be enough interest to make it worthwhile.

 

The second part of that post (the one under spoiler) was more of a wild dream than anything serious

But otherwise thanks for all the usefull info. I didn't know about some of the stuff you mentioned

 

Poor kitty! Here's some help with the coding: 01100101

 

01001001 00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101101 01110101 01000011 01101000 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000 00101110

 

It could be worse, could be pure machine code.

 

Oh I didn't need a whole byte I was just looking for a nibble.

 

Wow, the nerdy jokes sure escalated quickly

 

01000011 00101101 00111110 01100011 00101110