Cactus Game Design Message Boards
Redemption® Collectible Trading Card Game HQ => Redemption® Resources and Thinktank => Topic started by: lp670sv on May 07, 2011, 09:28:06 PM
-
So in downloading RTS I noticed that it seems to written in visual basic. A language I am quite familiar with. We all think that RTS could use some improvements, so I'm going to make it my summer project to remake RTS.
Things that I hope to include:
Designated areas for Cards (No more just throwing cards where ever you want)
Program at least MOST of the rules in so you don't have to do everything yourself
Ability to install with one fill instead of, I believe 7.
Just cleaning up the GUI a little
Hopefully a more advanced deck builder.
I'm posting this thread because I want your input. What do you guys want changed from the current RTS to make it more user friendly and fun. Please note that I can't do everything you want, VB is a limited language. I'm looking to improve on what is there not make a whole new system that blows the current out of the water. I do have to start from scratch because RTS isn't open source but I'm first going to rebuild what they have then make my changes. Also note that this may not be 100% free to acquire. Don't worry too much about it, the most I will ever charge is 5 bucks for the whole system. The reason I have to do this is simple. I have bills to pay. I could be spending my time on projects that would generate a lot more income but this is something I want to do. I have to cover my costs but I'm not looking to become bill gates off this either.
Also when I get a little further along I may be looking for Alpha and eventually Beta Testers. The Alpha testers need to have at least some knowledge of visual basic and Object Oriented Programming. The Beta testers do not. This is just because, well I can't find all the bugs on my own and I'd rather find them before it goes live.
My semester ends next week. I will probably begin basic work on this project around then as well. Input is welcome and if the folks who made the original RTS are on the forum you're input would be extremely helpful to get this started faster. This is not going to be a be all end all solution to RTS, it's still not going to be cross platform as far as I know (sorry mac and linux users I feel you're pain I promise) but it will be better (I hope at least) and it's something to get me some experience in making games before I jump full on into that next semester.
So. Questions. Comments. Suggestions. Advice. All are welcome.
-
welcome to the boards Alec. Glad to see you guys made it home okay.
-
Someone, Mike Wolfe I believe, is already making Redemption Live, which will be the next generation of online redemption playing. Hopefully it's coming out soon, but I'm not sure on the progress, so your program might not be needed by the time you finish. There might also be some sort of copyright claim if you profit off making it...
-
Someone, Mike Wolfe I believe, is already making Redemption Live, which will be the next generation of online redemption playing. Hopefully it's coming out soon, but I'm not sure on the progress, so your program might not be needed by the time you finish. There might also be some sort of copyright claim if you profit off making it...
well i'm not actually using anything off of the current one, the code is not open source so I can't edit anything they did I'm just using it as an example. I also don't plan on making profit, I'm a freelance web developer most of the time so that's what pays my bills. The time I spend on this will definitely be cutting in to that so if I charge anything (and that is a very big if still) it would only be to cover the loss of time not spent making the money I need to pay my bills. I'm not looking to make any real profit of it just to make a useful program and gain some experience with these kinds of projects, the possible charge is just so I don't go into (more) debt in the process. And I've been hearing about redemption live forever, all I ever hear is that people don't even think it's getting finished any time soon. this isn't meant to replace that just hold people over until that comes out and like I said just for fun really. I just want some input from the users
welcome to the boards Alec. Glad to see you guys made it home okay.
Thanks! I've actually had an account for months I just never posted, I kind of glanced over every once in awhile but that was it. After seeing that I might be able to improve RTS as a summer project I thought I'd get some input from the people who use it most on what they would like changed about it. Maybe this will also be a subtle nudge to get redemption live out....
-
I supposed the post title could be confusing I'm not actually updating the current RTS I'm making my own that builds off the useful things i've seen in the current one,I just didn't want people confusing this thread with something about Redemption live. My bad everyone
-
I don't see any downsides to the redemption community to this except for the fee. If your program is a lot better than the current RTS though, then people might be willing to put down $5 for it. Lost time is all I see that it can cost you if it doesn't catch on, or is quickly replaced by redemption live.
-
I don't see any downsides to the redemption community to this except for the fee. If your program is a lot better than the current RTS though, then people might be willing to put down $5 for it. Lost time is all I see that it can cost you if it doesn't catch on, or is quickly replaced by redemption live.
I hope it's good enough to warrant the fee. I would love to give it out for free it's really going to depend on if I am able to work on this and still cover all of my expenses at the same time. I don't want to put a fee on this, it's not going to be polished enough I don't believe, I'm just giving fair warning that if I need the money that will be how I recoup my losses.
-
As long as you make the UI more user-friendly, I think there will be a good amount of improvement. As to people accepting it...
-
First 2 ideas.
Have a start up screen with a deck builder, practice mode (offline, just playing against yourself probably like it is now. i dont know how to do AI) and then play now mode (thats the online) as well as a "tournament" mode (maybe)
Your hand is not taking up its full space the whole time. most of the game it will be just a 25-50 pixel strip on the bottom of the screen that only displays the top of the cards (name, brigade, numbers that kind of thing) then when you click on the top of that strip it expands to show you the whole cards. this will keep the territory less cluttered and will help out people with smaller monitors. that cards will always be the same size, so even on the smallest screens you can read it, but they wont be covering up the territory by remaining that size.
-
It would be nice if there was an ability to put a card on the bottom of the deck and to get a card from the bottom of the deck.
And it would be nice if the "pass your turn" button was not right next to the "draw cards" button.
-
It would be nice if there was an ability to put a card on the bottom of the deck and to get a card from the bottom of the deck.
And it would be nice if the "pass your turn" button was not right next to the "draw cards" button.
the majority of the GUI is going to change. The title of this post is misleading I know. I'm not really updating the current system I'm just gonna make my own from scratch.
-
Or, if those buttons are near each other, make them larger button sizes then what is currently available. I do have experience with VBasic, and Java OOP so let me know if you want some help, or just need an outlet to bounce ideas off of.
-
Or, if those buttons are near each other, make them larger button sizes then what is currently available. I do have experience with VBasic, and Java OOP so let me know if you want some help, or just need an outlet to bounce ideas off of.
definitely will do. im trying to write down the ideas as they come so this will probably be where they get posted until I get a giant whiteboard (hehehe) theres a lot of things that I want to do I just have to make sure VB is capable of doing it. only way I'll know is by guess and check really.
-
These things are missing from RTS so we've had to find a work around:
Reveal cards from bottom of deck
Look at cards from bottom of deck
Look at cards from top of deck
export excludes multi-color evil cards
Unable to add new brigades (Teal and Orange is all right now)
Unable to add new card types (Curses and Territory Class)
If you could even just fix those things with the same basic interface RTS would be much more workable. "Gamer X" created RTS. If you can track him down and ask really nice he might be willing to give you the code so you don't have to start from scratch and make a massive time investment for a product that's simply going to get us by until Redemption Live comes out.
If you do end up building your own "RTS" from the ground up, I hope you make it as easy (or easier) to add new expansions.
Blessings,
Gabe
-
Isn't Redemption Live going to cost some money as well? Anyone know how much?
-
Isn't Redemption Live going to cost some money as well? Anyone know how much?
30 pieces of silver
-
These things are missing from RTS so we've had to find a work around:
Reveal cards from bottom of deck
Look at cards from bottom of deck
Look at cards from top of deck
Discard cards from bottom of deck
export excludes multi-color evil cards
Unable to add new brigades (Teal and Orange is all right now)
Unable to add new card types (Curses and Territory Class)
Show the number of Good and Evil cards while making a deck
Perhaps add a "shuffle hand" button?
Make it so when you shuffle a single card into your deck, your entire deck is actually shuffled. (currently the one card is randomly thrown in)
Make it so you can see cards that have been removed from game. This is a nightmare if you accidentally remove something.
Added some things.
-
And an "ANB button." The icon can be a nuke.
-
And an "ANB button." The icon can be a nuke.
I could just make the card the ANB button.....
-
I'd be willing to donate some money (not much, I have college to fund...) if you make it available for the mac. I've been deprived of RTS for quite some time now due to my new found love for mac.
-
I'd be willing to donate some money (not much, I have college to fund...) if you make it available for the mac. I've been deprived of RTS for quite some time now due to my new found love for mac.
I'll have to see. Right now the only programming language I know how to code in is Visual Basic which was a language made by microsoft. I'm not sure there's any way to make it cross platform. for that matter the version i'm using may already be and I just don't know it. I should probably google that.......*off to google*
Edit: After some googling there MIGHT be a way to do this. There is supposedly a program out there that can port my VB code in to RealBasic (Macs version of Visual Basic) which would be able to run on a Mac. However until I actually try this I have no way of knowing if it works or not so I have to leave my answer at a tentative maybe leaning towards yes. When I have the Windows version 100% done with all the bugs worked out I will try to port it and will have to test it to see if anything broke in the process. Which means i'll need a mac. darn.
-
I'd be willing to donate some money (not much, I have college to fund...) if you make it available for the mac. I've been deprived of RTS for quite some time now due to my new found love for mac.
I'll have to see. Right now the only programming language I know how to code in is Visual Basic which was a language made by microsoft. I'm not sure there's any way to make it cross platform. for that matter the version i'm using may already be and I just don't know it. I should probably google that.......*off to google*
This, folks, is why one uses Java.
-
I'd be willing to donate some money (not much, I have college to fund...) if you make it available for the mac. I've been deprived of RTS for quite some time now due to my new found love for mac.
I'll have to see. Right now the only programming language I know how to code in is Visual Basic which was a language made by microsoft. I'm not sure there's any way to make it cross platform. for that matter the version i'm using may already be and I just don't know it. I should probably google that.......*off to google*
This, folks, is why one uses Java.
Refer to the edit i made to that post
-
I'd be interested.
Definitely agree with Gabe for an easier way to add sets... having uninstall your old pics and download the new ones in your folder, and same for texts, is a little much for people who are absolutely stupid when it comes to computers (what, me? No, I have this friend....)
I know we all appreciate someone taking the initiative. That's really cool. I can definitely say I could probably get more people to play Redemption if it was an easy program online to download and use.
Something that would make me LOVE the game would be a search engine. So when you build your deck, you can sort your searching, either by a word of the title or by type. So, you could say, "hero, silver," and boom you have all silver heroes. (Name can't be mentioned) does this and I can't even emphasize how much easier it makes to try out new decks and look at your options.
-
Being able to search by name would also be nice.
-
Being able to search by name would also be nice.
you can actually do that in the current RTS. just open the deck editor and type the name in. Yes I know there is no place to type it in just try it. Thats how I made my RTS deck. I had some issues with cards that had more then one word in the name but if you type the first word in you just narrowed it down to a few cards
Edit: But yes adding a regular search box was definitely happening
-
I knew that (stumbled on it by accident.) However, it's completely unfriendly. A search bar would work much better, and be intuitive.
-
It's not so much looking for a specific card... but deciding what to fill in for that extra hero slot, or whatever. So you search all heroes of one brigade to decide what you want.
-
It's not so much looking for a specific card... but deciding what to fill in for that extra hero slot, or whatever. So you search all heroes of one brigade to decide what you want.
Yeah I'm definitely adding more search and sort options. When I said it was already in RTS I was just referring to the search by name
-
I'm not sure if I mentioned yet that I'm going to be programming the rules into the cards themselves (example: When you play son of god a screen comes up with all the lost souls in play, you choose one, it goes to your land of redemption and your soul count goes up by one) However this will probably not happen right away. Version 1.0 is going to be just an improved GUI you will still have to do most things yourself. Drawing cards at the beginning of your turn will be automatic and checking initiative will be automatic. special abilities wont. so thats the plan for Version 1.0, a later version will add all of the special abilities in. There's just no way I can program all the abilities in to version 1.
-
(example: When you play son of god a screen comes up with all the lost souls in play, you choose one, it goes to your land of redemption and your soul count goes up by one)
If you do that, then you must have a way to reveal cards without putting them in play, else you will have a ton of problems later on.
Also, something minor that would help would be a way to randomly select a card from your opponent's hand instead of having your opponent discarding it.
-
At least in the case of son of god I don't see that as being a problem. Son of God goes in to play, the lost souls that are in play are chosen from and one leaves play.
-
In the case of slap-jack, it'd be annoying to have to undo the auto SoG if you lose the initiative to play it first.
-
In the case of slap-jack, it'd be annoying to have to undo the auto SoG if you lose the initiative to play it first.
well as soon as SOG is played everything accept the person picking the lost soul is stopped until SOG is resolved so that solves the slap jack problem. whoever plays the SOG second has to wait until after their opponent finishes resolving theirs to play theirs in the first place.
-
At least in the case of son of god I don't see that as being a problem. Son of God goes in to play, the lost souls that are in play are chosen from and one leaves play.
There's quite a few cards that reveals cards from the top/bottom of deck. Right now, you have to put them into play to reveal them. If, with the rules you want to implement, one of those cards revealed was SOG, wouldn't the program think that you opponent was playing SOG instead of just revealing it? Maybe you could have a separate area for reveal cards (like you might want to do for set aside cards).
-
If you do that, you'll have to account for situations in which LS's are protected (Altar of Ahaz, the numerous "protect LS's" Enhancements and Uzzah, etc.), and where you won't actually be drawing during draw phase (Displeased Philistines, Besieging the City). In fact, if you autonomize anything you'll have to do a LOT of work to account for protect/Prevent/Negate.
As for the revealing issue, I'm sure he'd program in a reveal function that is much better than the one RTS has.
-
At least in the case of son of god I don't see that as being a problem. Son of God goes in to play, the lost souls that are in play are chosen from and one leaves play.
There's quite a few cards that reveals cards from the top/bottom of deck. Right now, you have to put them into play to reveal them. If, with the rules you want to implement, one of those cards revealed was SOG, wouldn't the program think that you opponent was playing SOG instead of just revealing it? Maybe you could have a separate area for reveal cards (like you might want to do for set aside cards).
it would definitely be built in that they don't go in to play to reveal them. they would probably open up in a separate pop up window.
-
If you do that, you'll have to account for situations in which LS's are protected (Altar of Ahaz, the numerous "protect LS's" Enhancements and Uzzah, etc.), and where you won't actually be drawing during draw phase (Displeased Philistines, Besieging the City). In fact, if you autonomize anything you'll have to do a LOT of work to account for protect/Prevent/Negate.
As for the revealing issue, I'm sure he'd program in a reveal function that is much better than the one RTS has.
for now not much is going to be automated. drawing at the start your turn will be, but drawing due to cards will not. there will be a draw card button and it will be on the honor system that you only click it when needed. Version 1 isn't going to have a lot built in. If say 3 months or so after my program is done redemption live isn't out, or if it doesn't automate the abilities, then I will begin work on building the rules directly in to the system. For now I just want an improved interface and deck builder. Cards will have set areas that you can move them to so they stay organized, buttons will be bigger and labelled better, there will be an "undo" button for if you click the wrong thing. It's not going to be perfect right out of the gate, no program is. Im going to do as much testing as possible but there are always things that I won't catch myself. That's the purpose of beta testing, even if I only open it up to 20 people that's 20 people trying to find bugs as opposed to 1.
-
Yeah, until every rule is hard coded into the game, it would just make it a little harder to play in my opinion. I would personally like more of just a "rules guide" built in, rather than the game doing every action for you.
-
Yeah, until every rule is hard coded into the game, it would just make it a little harder to play in my opinion. I would personally like more of just a "rules guide" built in, rather than the game doing every action for you.
BUMP! so who wants to scan all the cards in for me? I know rts has them but they're all really tiny thumbnails and if you just zoom in on them its really blurry (curse you pixels!). Redemption community, organize and get me all the cards! (this doesnt have to be done immediately but I can only test so much without them)
-
BUMP! so who wants to scan all the cards in for me?
If you go here (http://redemptionreg.com/REG/LinkedDocuments/) you should find enough to get you started testing :)
-
Would it bo to much to make it so you could do multi-player?
-
Would it bo to much to make it so you could do multi-player?
Too much to ask? No. If I can figure out how to do it then I will do it. I hadn't even thought of that yet good call. I'll start with the standard 2 player games then see if i can work out teams and multi. one step at a time haha
-
BUMP! so who wants to scan all the cards in for me?
If you go here (http://redemptionreg.com/REG/LinkedDocuments/) you should find enough to get you started testing :)
oh yeah that's more then enough haha thanks :) my job just got a little easier. i have no idea when but I hope to have at least a screen shot of the new GUI in the next couple weeks. It may be delayed a little, I may be both moving and starting a new job soon so that will be my priority