The Legend of Dev Diary: The Diary Begins

There are two things:

1. Multiple Monsters, but they are designed to work together, not apart. For example, Sandy, Mindy, and Cindy from Final Fantasy IV. In that encounter, 2 of the sisters would cast spells on the 3rd, who had "Reflect" so the spells would bounce off that character onto the player.
2. A Single Monster made of multiple parts, with each "sub-monster" representing a different part of the creature, having its own set of HP/abilities, such as the Dragon Tank from Chrono Trigger.

In both cases, having multiple monsters doesn't just mean more, but rather that they are used to produce a unique encounter.

 

Many, many bonus points for back-to-back thematically-relevant SNES RPG references. Which I understood immediately.

(SNES RPG references are common parlance, right?)

 

Ahh, dev diaries. Like the nectar of the gods, if gods were bees that collected nectar from internet sites devoted to game development:

http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/09/dev-diary-9-reactions/

Cool to see the strategic thinking.

I was reminded I had previously suggested having gameplay take a long time. (There was a concern about weird lopsided sessions from players doing high-risk/high-reward decks, and I figured that long play relative to deck size would take out a lot of imbalance.) However, the argument here for design in the opposite direction is simple: play to your strengths. The unique strength of this type of game is the deck-building component. Shorten the sessions, and players get to do the one thing they can't do elsewhere.

Okay, cool. Just a question: is the deck-building interface going to be comprehensible once you have hundreds and hundreds of items? 'Cause I liked spreading my real-world cards out over an entire bed when working on them, and my monitor is only so big.

 

Interesting to see that the focus of the diary was to remove some of the complexity and " ... reduced the number of times in a turn the players have to go back and forth waiting for each other to respond (99% of the time in the negative)".

The latter problem is my great bugbear with the latest "Magic: Duel Of The Planeswalkers 2012". Perhaps Mr Elias and Dr Garfield might like to have a go at fixing that next?

 

I'm gonna jump in here with the obligatory "not until he re-acquires and re-releases Netrunner" comment.

 

Oh yes, I'd pay much hard cash for an online Netrunner!

 

Online? Well . . .

Make it "intangible mass-hallucinatory electronic cash" and you'll be closer. And I'd pay some too.

 

Hard cash from somebody else's account, of course...

 

Got any "volunteers"?

 

Yes, they just know it yet...

 

Want. This. Now.

 

There will be no shortage of good content if players can get their hands on this. This looks like as sharp and user-friendly of a toolkit as I've ever seen. As a person who played Neverwinter Nights long, long, long after most folks thanks to the wonderful modding tools, I wholeheartedly support sharing a version of this with interested players. Even if player-created scenarios can offer zero new rewards, I'd play through people's boards just for the challenge and deck testing benefits. Also, I'd make tons of boards, because that's exactly the kind of thing I like to do. Heck, the toolkit could seriously be its own game in itself for me.

Also, flowers are pretty.

Edit: Also, I don't know how pegged down y'all are on the finances of this game yet, but I would totally pay for the board editor. Players who just want to play stay free, and maniacs like me will open my wallet very willingly!

 

I just want everyone here to know that I happen to have the exact same sword that Fabio is holding in the Iron Sword box art.

 

Just seeing the board editor makes me happy.
Being able to use it would make me happier.
Even if I paid to do so.
Because mushrooms are pretty.

By coincidence, I was thinking of this very thing right before I logged on to check the latest diary. Really!
And what I was thinking was this: the Game Info page indicates a downloadable client might be available. I have no knowledge about how easy/hard it is to set up the board editor for browser access, but it's already part of the dev build for the game client. This is a great feature to include for any eventual client users.

 

Watching that brought up a bunch of the same feelings that I had when I first played with the Warcraft II editor. As in, "Watch reality unfold beneath the stroke of my hand!" This has a very nice plus, in that the doodads do not have to strictly conform to the square boundaries in order to function. The visual is vastly improved.

E.g., flowers are pretty.

So are mushrooms and skeletons. Perhaps dice.

Now, am I correct in extrapolating that the board must conform to a rectangle? As in, no funky Z-shapes, T-shapes, or squiggles? The manner in which that board expanded under the mouse looked like it.

 

I understand "blocking terrain." But what does it mean to be "difficult to traverse?" Are you saying that some tiles require more than one movement point?

P.S. I notice that "Victory" is also a terrain movement type. I guess that confirms that not all battles will be to the bitter end - just to the door!