http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/11/dev-diary-19-into-the-black-forest/ So. Much. Want. Also, so much confusion. I'm really curious as to how the turns work exactly. The order of play between you and your opponent and the discarding and drawing and fakshdglkahsghaslgalsdn from this one got me REALLY interested in the actual progression of combat. Are you planning on doing a diary about these mechanics soon or are you still tweaking them? Also, why can't we have beta yet? I need this game.
Seriously, I am in dire need of this game. It haunts my dreams. I want to collect sweet loot and smash some goblins.
Seeing this complete encounter makes me wonder how near BM is to making a working beta--and crazy excited to play when it comes out. As mentioned in this diary post, some of the art is still missing, but I wonder what other heretofore unknown features of the game are still being cooked up...
Probably still havnt made the game feature that lets you strike at a tree with your kung fu Edit: thought he spelled maneuver wrong but its a different word. manoeuvre 1. a contrived, complicated, and possibly deceptive plan or action political manoeuvres 2. a movement or action requiring dexterity and skill
So many things to see! 1) So the Default Move Card is always revealed? 2) What's this about each Sapling only attacking once per round? But they all move at the same time? Jon deferred an explanation of group monsters once before; I hope there are future opportunities to examine these groups in detail. 3) What's that number in parentheses? His level? 3a) If so, last week's module cover recommended Levels 10-14. That might explain: 4) On the subject of rigging things for walkthroughs -- not that I'm accusing anyone of nefarious deeds, just a little copy editing -- close examination of those two screenshots seems to show the saplings moved 4 tiles, rather than (2-1)+2. 5) Victory points? I think I can see how these could work in tandem with the loot generator, achievements, and such. Any details to share? 6) I am filled with a great, anxious expectation. The one quirk with these diaries is that they show the systems that are in working order: it so much looks like CH just needs a little polish, and it's not as if we need every final artwork for beta testing. The walkthroughs make me feel like a little kid when the Christmas cookies are baking. Would you lock them away and tell the doe-eyed waif, they sure look yummy but I don't know when we can eat them, maybe first or second quarter next year? I truly, truly hope Jon is leading up to: "Well, that's how an adventure works in Card Hunter. Maybe you'd care to give it a go in our beta?"
This diary explained the basic turn sequence: http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/08/dev-diary-2-the-game/. To summarise (and simplify a little), the game consists of a series of Rounds. Each round goes as follows: All characters (or groups) draw 2 cards plus one default move card. We each take Turns playing a card until both of us pass in sequence. All characters discard any cards in excess of 2. Start a new Round. So, a Round is a sequence of card drawing, followed by a number of Turns and then discarding. Each Turn is (usually) a single card play after which your opponent has a Turn, then you again and so on.
1. Yes, we do reveal the default move card because logically you could always figure out what it is. So why not just show you? 2. Yep, I'll do a diary on groups sometime soon. But, basically, they share a deck and each minion in a group can only perform one non-movement action per turn. 3. That's a bit misleading. It's his multiplayer point total, which isn't relevant in single player, so we should hide it. 4. Nice catch! What actually happened is that I had some screenshots from my playthrough but we still only had placeholder tree figures. Then we got the trees in this week so I went back and took some more shots. Of course, the trees didn't move exactly where they did last time. I figured no one would notice, but I guess I was wrong... 5. The victory point system is a way for us to make battles where your goal isn't always just to kill all the monsters. It's particularly relevant to multi-player. 6. Yeah, so we just completed the adventure system to a very basic first pass. We'll do some more internal testing on it over the next few weeks. Our next milestone is about polishing up these systems and the game introduction so that we can bring in some real testers after that.
So, theoretically....you could play out your entire first hand on one character if the cards just happen to be the right type of actions? That's intriguing... EDIT: Can someone explain to me the Quoting system? I can never get it to work right all the time...
This sentence was the one that caught my eye. The VP portion has already been explained, but I think this is the first time I've heard of being forced to discard a card. My initial thought was a concern that it's a "win more" mechanic. If a player is losing a character, he also loses cards? But then I realized it actually doesn't really make sense at all. It doesn't seem to make sense when thinking about it from a player character perspective, since how can it matter if a dead character discards a card? It also doesn't thematically make sense for a character to have to discard a card when a different character dies. So now I actually think this is a mechanic of grouped monsters - to illustrate that you are weakening them as you kill part of the group. It seems likely how many cards grouped monsters draw is dependent on their remaining size as well? Sorry if I missed this information/explanation elsewhere!
I can see two possibilities sokolov. Jon did mention that the saplings are minions and that one of the mechanisms for minions is that they share a deck. I suspect the forced discard is particular to minions. However, if it IS due to Jon being awarded the victory point, it could be a general game mechanism to encourage players to play aggressively for the victory points rather than playing very defensively until you get a great hand. Card games like Vampire/Jihad had incentives for players to play aggressively above and beyond defeating opponents in games with more than 2 players. The incentives were there to stop players just building defense and waiting for other players to knock out opponents.
Yeah, when you kill an individual monster, it discards all its cards because it's dead. We've been toying around with a rule where, when you kill a minion from a group (which share a single deck), the group has to discard some of its cards. In any event, the amount of cards they draw is dependent on how many of them remain alive, so killing them definitely whittles down their power level as a group.
Whew, I was away for awhile, and now . . . I'm too busy to post! Just as the awesome stuff is showing up! Well, I've never let the impossible stop me before, so why start now? No, those are two spellings of the same word. Them's maneuvers, and them's manoeuvres. Next you're going to "baulk" at words like "foetid," "gaol," and "haemorrhage." (I LOVE LANGUAGE.) Hmm. I'm used to "Turns" being made up of "Rounds," not the other way. I'll get over it. YAY. It's . . . something else. So you can either start typing your post as you want, or you can hit the "reply" button to start your post with a quote already in it. Then, while typing, you can still click reply buttons, and new quotes will be added. However, if you want to quote a quote-within-a-post, the quote-within-a-post will never appear no matter how much you click, and you'll have to use forum code to create it yourself. This has annoyed me on more than one occasion. I like it. Variety in game mechanics. Okay, new topic. Because this has been preying on my mind. A bit. Um. Who played this playthrough? Because. Um. The mule. Is named Ben. The mule; the beast of burden; the entity which bears the mass of the work, is cursed for its stubbornness, and probably smells bad. Is named Ben. Um.
I think I did it. Yes? EDIT: Yes! Thanks, Sir Knight! EDIT EDIT: I still have a question to add: What's wrong with the name 'Ben'?
If you go back to the pre-quoted post, then that post's Reply button will copy, including inside another quote. But I've seen other forums where quote nesting gets old really fast. I appreciate the auto-pruning, even if our bunch doesn't seem to have any troublemakers. Also, the quote formatting indents the margins, so too deep and you would run out of room.
How many diaries will it take to walk through the whole module? Maybe stretch them out a little with digressions about minions and victory points and terrain -- the timing can still work. Meanwhile, I've suffered a surge of speculation about the mysterious properties of black cards. That little card attached to the sapling is hard to see in detail, but I presume that it is Combustible as described in the diary. And it appears to be black. It makes sense relative to the other colors if the black background is a guide to how you use the card. (Instead of when you play them, as was speculated after seeing Dropped Guard. That was an early preview and I personally suspect has since changed colors.) I am now leaning toward the hypothesis that black cards create (semi-)permanent status effects on a character. The really neat part is that the card, as you can see, is now out on the playing field and not in the character's hand. Go back and look at Brain Drain, Devastating Bash, Dazing Bolt. Their text specifies revealed cards in the target's hand. As further evidence: I'm not sure whether Jon means "replaces itself in your hand" is an actual game mechanic when you play it or just that it's not taking up space in your two-card allotment, but either way we can judge that the background color is distinct from its undesirable reaction property. Combine "creates static character effects" with perhaps a "cannot discard normally" rule, and you can see why we would want to play it quickly: we may continue to suffer, but at least we can keep other, better cards for our hands. So much so that Vulnerable (nor Combustible) is not officially considered a "drawback" in spite of the apparent penalty. And if we find black cards that are not injurious -- the trees may be susceptible to fire, but resist piercing -- and we can see that black cards are a potentially robust system for defining characters long-term in a battle without the nonsensical problem of a Brain Drain forcing a Flaming Demon to discard his Fire Resistance. Makes me think about other cards we've only heard about, like Cowardly for kobolds. At first, you'd think cowardice is a bad thing, but what if it means a lasting property that allows them to move away when you advance? It could be awfully frustrating for your melee fighter.
Sneaky, sneaky! If true. Just "sneaky" if not true. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with the name "Ben." Just ask Ben.
These are questions you must answer for yourself. Once you're done "balking" at words like "fetid," "jail," and "hemorrhage." I think the jail/gaol one is the weirdest of the bunch, especially since all these pairs are supposed to be pronounced the same. But then, I've only ever seen "gaol" used in fiction, and not in much modern speech. Ah, language!
When I was a kid and read "gaol" I used to pronounce it as "goal". I understood that it was a synonym for a prison, but it was only later in life that I understood that it was the British spelling of "jail". I'll clear up the whole black card confusion in the very near future - I PROMISE (at least as far as I can - there's still a little internal confusion in our card database that also needs clearing up).
