You can find out of date info and screens at margalis.f13.netIt has been a while since I gave an update...because it has been a while since I made any progress.
A lot of random crap has come up recently (including lazyness) but I'm back in the saddle.
I really want to leave my current job but it pays well and if I get a game dev job I will likely be working longer hours, meaning less time for hobby stuff. So my goal is to work on my game nights until it is in good shape, which will hopefully speed things along since I don't want to be at my current job too much longer. The fact that I want to leave my job is getting me in gear again because I want to be far along when that happens.
I'm moving from the prototype stage to the...prototype 2 stage.
I'm taking a step back and trying to get the general rules flow working from top to bottom. I'm ignoring matchmaking and deck-building for now, decks are just text files and there is no lobby, when you connect you pair with whoever else is waiting.
What I am concentrating on is the game logic from when the game starts to ends. I have a lot of the middle pieces working - you can move around, attack, kill stuff, etc, but right now things just start in mid-stream with all your units already on the field. How did they get on the field? Who knows?
So I'm fleshing in the beginning - two clients log on, they send over the decks they chose, server tells one of them to start, they draw some cards, play some units, end turn, player 2 starts, etc etc. I'm also generalizing the logic to support any number of players.
I'm also taking some ideas that were rather rough before, like what exactly can go in a deck and the relationship between individual units and their templates and soldifying that.
My goal is that relatively soon you can play a game with all the parts in place. Some of those parts may be represented very poorly graphically and be annoying to operate, but they will be there and the game logic will support them. Then it's just a matter of interface/graphics. I'm actually not that far away now, it is more a matter of some restructuring and hooking stuff together than anything else.
One nice thing is that some time away has given me a different perspective, it is easier for me to see now where certain things were not well-designed.