Guest posts by davidy22

157

Design Theory / Re: Deck Searching - Is it possible?

« on: February 24, 2011, 12:35:54 pm »

If you're talking about possibility, then yes. Flash is a Turing complete language, and can theoretically describe any idea or thought with mathematics and basic logic.
My code that you quoted above relies on the assumption that the deck is a series of objects stored in an array-in plain english, all the cards in your deck are listed with their attributes in a random order. I derived this assumption from the fact that cards like eternity and reverse time can alter the cards at the top of it. I am not 100% certain that Zanzarino implemented decks in that way, as the reverse time effect can easily be replicated with a small alteration to the card-drawing script to first check if there are any reverse-timed creatures in a separate list. While it is an ugly and inefficient solution with potential to introduce bugs, it does still work. If my assumption does happen to ring true, not only deck searching, but sending card to the bottom of the deck, shuffling the deck and targeting cards within the deck will be possible.

Will it be beneficial to the game? Maybe. Depends on how it is used.

158

Crucible Archive / Re: Sacrificial Lamb | Sacrificial Goat

« on: February 24, 2011, 05:29:12 am »

The thought I had was that it could be used to ensure that a key card could be played early on in the game. If you only needed one copy of a card, you could also substitute having 6 copies of that card with having 6 copies of this card and one copy of your key card. in essence, you could have 12 copies of the card you needed in your hand. That's why I made the HP so low, and the quanta cost high-ish.

159

Crucible Archive / Sacrificial Lamb | Sacrificial Goat

« on: February 23, 2011, 11:21:31 am »

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-asDM5F386R8/TWTsx4X_WUI/AAAAAAAAAE0/5F-SjfJ5Ers/s1600/elements_card1.jpeg)	(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XVc_VRcRO6M/TWTsyIyNyBI/AAAAAAAAAE8/DY45kNWd7xk/s1600/elements_card2.jpeg)
NAME: Sacrificial Lamb ELEMENT: Light COST: 6  TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 0|2 TEXT: You may destroy this creature and play a card in your deck of your choice that is worth less or equal to 4 quanta	NAME: Sacrificial Goat ELEMENT: Light COST: 6  TYPE: Creature ATK|HP: 0|4 TEXT: You may destroy this creature and play a card in your deck of your choice that is worth less or equal to 4 quanta

ART: Davidy22 IDEA: Davidy22 NOTES: Is the quanta cost too high for a creature that can spawn other creatures? Or too high for giving you the ability to play any creature that costs less than 5 quanta? It should be a pretty frail creature, to give the opponent a chance to nuke it before it spawns something nasty. Bringing up an option window to choose your card WILL require extra coding, but it's work that will probably have to be done eventually. Finding the cards in your deck should be a relatively quick process, as the following code- NumberCardsInSelectionMenu=0 for (i=0,i++,i=CardsLeft){ if (deck.type=creature and deck.cost<=4){ SelectionRange[NumberCardsInSelectionMenu]=deck; NumberCardsInSelectionMenu++; }; Would take almost half a second to execute, and that's assuming you have 60 cards in your deck. Building the selection menu shouldn't be long if that's stored in memory, and it can be re-used for all the other card ideas that could benefit from a menu as well. The ability is a no-cost activation ability. That means that the enemy has a turn to find a way to kill the lamb before you activate it's ability. SERIES:

EDIT: Made the changes that the curator reccomended. Is this ready for the crucible now? Can't be bothered to change the card image, look at the text below.

160

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Card Usage Statistics for separate accounts

« on: February 22, 2011, 01:54:59 pm »

Would be reasonable if a certain server was upgraded. Wouldn't make the game much slower, but it would probably be deflected for the same reason we can't save decks. No space. We could still store the statistics on our own computers, or we could buy zanzarino a new hard drive. How big are the drive bays on the servers? 3.5in?

161

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Backend suggestion

« on: February 22, 2011, 05:58:52 am »

Actually, there is one more limitation to my idea. Because there would be no space separation between cards, the maximum number of cards there can be is 36*36*36, or 46656, unless a painful revamp is done. Given that there are only about two-hundred or so cards right now, and the card creation proccess is slow as mud,  it's going to take a while to hit 46656.

162

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Done Button.

« on: February 21, 2011, 05:16:19 am »

Remapping the mouse buttons is for convenience and one-handed play -- most people just use the space bar to end their turns anyway.

If the solution can be built into the game, you wouldn't need to get users to go out of their way to change the functionality of their hardware.

Trying to idiot-proof something only generates more aggravating idiocy.

We'd then end up getting people saying "OMG I accidentally pressed the Done button and now I can't undo my turn!!!11111" in the same way that there are people complaining about how the game doesn't refund quanta spent on activated abilities if you click Cancel.

When people click the cancel button of a creature's ability, they expect it to cancel everything. When The cancel button does not cancel the quanta expenditure, that is a bug. When the done button is pressed, people can only blame themselves. How many times have you accidentally clicked a creature when trying to reach your hand? A centimeter between the hand and the done button should be enough to avoid accidental clicks. It's at least better than a tiny done button in the corner of the screen. THATS useless and might as well be replaced with a little note telling the user to press the spacebar, because no one will bother clicking it.

163

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Done Button.

« on: February 20, 2011, 07:39:42 am »

What kind of a solution is remapping your mouse buttons? That's a terrible solution! No sane UI designer would ever tell a user to do that! The done button IS in an inconvient and hard to find place. The solution is to tell the user to install software and remap mouse buttons? If I could do that in my programming work, my life would be WAY easier. If you're worried about misclicks, put a thick line between your cards and the done button. Don't tell the user they're doing it wrong.

164

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Building Decks

« on: February 20, 2011, 07:28:10 am »

I'm in support too. Could there be a shift-click option too? For selecting lots of pillars?

165

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Entering the Bazaar

« on: February 20, 2011, 07:21:59 am »

If you made the bazaar and the deck both and only check for deck size when you return to the menu screen people still won't be able to have decks with less than 30 cards. And if there was a block on the bazaar that stopped you from selling when you have 30 cards, players can't screw up. It could be a little error message explaining deckbuilding rules or something.

166

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: About upgraded cards...

« on: February 20, 2011, 06:20:53 am »

Ah.

But 1500 for one upgrade? In a game where the minimum deck size is 30, and you start seeing opponent upgrades at level 4? At most 1000, and hopefully less. New players are going to look at the upgrade cost and leave. It definitely looks like a grindfest to players who can't beat top 50.

167

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Backend suggestion

« on: February 20, 2011, 12:29:12 am »

You could hash the codes, but people like them the way they are, nice and easy. And you can make small edits to decks without opening Elements with the current deck code system.

Hashes are lossy processes, and are usually used for integrity checks. If we relied on hashed codes for card storage, people would start losing cards. Maybe if we had a hash alongside the main card list to make sure that there was no data corruption, though I think flash does that for you.

We could have the deck codes translated by the client from the user-friendly version to the integer version for sending off to the server. The server can store that integer value instead of the long strings that we see. Deck codes would stay the same.

168

Game Suggestions and Feedback / Re: About upgraded cards...

« on: February 19, 2011, 02:32:48 pm »

The upgrade cost is a deterrent to new players. No new players= no fresh ideas. The big players will eventually trickle down and leave. I'm all for making elements less of a grindfest. Either lower the cost to upgrade or pump big money into the game.