Hi, everyone. Welcome to another week's developer's diary.
I just got back from the hospital after taking surgery this morning. My mind is still a bit fuzzy under the effect of anesthetic and my body still feels quite uncomfortable. Thus, let's go straight to what happened this week before I collapse.
As the title mentioned, a major part of this week's content update is about our card mini-game as known as the Tombstone. Many different aspects of this mini-game have been improved. Here is a short breakdown:
1, AI (Artificial Idiot)
Previously, our AI opponent will do a lot of stupid things. Such as, summon a Fire Imp when their HP is below 4, causing them to die instantly. Now, we got an additional code block on each card to tell AI when is the best moment to use a card, when they shall consider other options first, and when they shall totally don't even try to use this card. As a result, the AI now takes action more reasonably. Here are some examples:
The AI will no longer summon Fire Imps when their HP is below 4.
The AI will no longer use HP Potion if their HP is full.
The AI will no longer summon a minion with Battlecry effects if such effects cannot trigger unless there are no better cards to play.
The AI will now use spells such as "Year of Rabbit" more efficiently.
The AI will now use items such as "Holy Hand Grenade" more efficiently.
The AI will now take priority to heal themselves if their HP is low.
Overall, I believe a better AI and an opponent with a higher difficulty level shall be smarter instead of like in some games, just giving AI a numeric bonus to increase the difficulty. The change will likely bring a bit more challenge now than before. But, it's still fun to play. (I forgot how many hours I spent on testing this. I didn't get bored. Thus, I think it's good.)
2, Divine Shield
It's just another concept I stole from Hearthstone. Certain minions with divine shield effects can now reduce incoming damage to 0, the shield will break afterward. That allows us to have more interesting minion cards such as one of the cards that I will mention later.
3, New Cards
As the main story in our main game progresses, we can now witness some first-hand information about how Templars fight their enemies on the battlefield for the first time. As a result, two Templar-related cards have been added to the Tombstone mini-game.
They are the Templar Knight minion card with taunt and divine shield
and the Holy Hand Grenade item card with an effect to deal great damage to all enemy undead and demon minions.
The Templar Knight can be quite useful when facing an enemy who intends to use a lot of low-cost minions to rush you. The Holy Hand Grenade may be quite situational. However, when playing it right, it may help you turn the table as it's a strong AoE that can annihilate most of the undead and demon minions currently in the game.
4, Species, item, and spell
Each minion card now has a species tied to them, such as "human," "undead," "animal," “plant,” and "demon." It allows new cards to develop some species-related effects just as the Holy Hand Grenade does in this week's updates.
Other cards will also have category information to tell if the card is an item or a spell. In addition to that, numeric effects on those cards may now be modified by other sources. Open up the possibility to have new cards that can buff their effects.
All those information is now displayed on the card. They may not have immediate effects right now. However, when we get to the point when we can customize decks instead of using totally random decks, it may be fun to build decks around certain themes and build counter strategies accordingly.
5, Deck Size and Fatigue
Previously, the deck size of each player is almost infinite. Now, each player's deck can only have 30 cards. After their deck is depleted, the fatigue effects will kick in and start to damage their HP. (Right, once again it's pretty much Hearthstone.) The remaining card number of a deck and the fatigue count is now displayed on the screen to allow players to make their strategy accordingly.
That's for the Tombstone. Of course, we have some other updates as well. For example, M4A1 used by the US military has been added to the game, more decorations have been added outside the Black Pyramid, and some bugs related to the FPS mode have been fixed.
That's for this week. But, one more thing. Happy holiday season! Many nations all over the world seem to celebrate the first day of May or the first Monday of May as a public holiday. (They are on the same day this year.) Meanwhile, some East Asia nations may even take many days off as a sequence of holidays. The most famous one is Japan's Golden Week. So, in order to celebrate such a global event, our game will go on a discount a few hours after this diary is published. It will last for a wild 9 days so that we can likely cover all the holidays during this period of time all over the world.
I hope everyone can enjoy their weekend and holidays. I may work on a bit of surprise to bring a bit more fun. But, no guarantee it will work as planned. :)
Today's changelog:
############Content################
[Tombstone]Added a window to show how many cards remain in a player's deck.
[Tombstone]The window will also show each player's current fatigue value.
############Debug#################
[Tombstone]Fixed a bug that causes AI to not use all their minions when taking action.
[Tombstone]Fixed a crash caused by a typo in Holy Hand Grenade's code.