I like to present you the newest Version of Cards of Void!
To sum it up:
– GUI is improved. You can now scroll through the cards (1-5 works as well)
– The speed of the game is decreased to focus more on the card gameplay
– Order and Growth Dungeons are now in the game
– A few cards have the new design
– We tried to implement a lock on function which will be improved in further versions
Have fun with it! And of course write us your feedback or any kind of stuff you want to say about the game.
One of the most important things concerning UI in Cards of Void is the card design. The cards must be small enough so you can see the action on the screen but also big enough so you can read the description. Tooltips weren’t an option so wie decided to use two different sizes for the cards.
With two different sizes we can create a kind of zoom for mouseover. We still experiment with symbols though. But now we are able to create a user friendly but neat UI for the game. We will upload a new Alpha version soon so you can try out for yourself.
Finally, after a lot of work for levelub, i was able to work on Cards of Void again…
And in short: that is the result. (I know that you like moving thingies)
We had one major problem with the older version: the ground objects had to be solid to create walls because every ground simply checked if there is another solid next to it. If not so, it would generate a wall at that very place. But because solid ground would lead to many problems (pathfinding, collision checking) it had to be changed. Programmers and other people who are more intelligent than me (that includes people who can google correctly) will laugh at me now. I simply had to use „place_empty„, which checks for all objects not only solids, instead of „place_free“ whicht only checks for solids.
With that problem solved, i was able to fix that one door bug, some of you reported: Sometimes the door spawned right next to the player, which would be dumb for a dungeon you want to explore. That could happen because the floormaker turned around everytime after 30 steps. So it was possible that it made an u-turn exactly after half the way leading to an end near the player. The simple solution was to minor the steps it turns around every time it turned.
Another problem was that the door sometimes spawned nearer than another floormaker made a „secret“ passage. That is bad because we want the player to explore the dungeon and when the door can be seen too soon in the game the player would enter the boss room immediately without collecting all the secrets. So i declared the first floormaker as „floorMain“. „floorMain“ creates the main passage with the door at the end and has a chance to spawn „floorSmall“s. „floorSmalls“ generate not more than 20 floors and everytime a secret at the end. In front of the secret it creates an enemy, too, so you get challanged before getting a reward. That way we have a main passage leading to the door and different branches leading to secrets (but which one is the „floorMain“? MUHAHAHAH)
And another cool feature found it’s way into the game: We are now able to create different textures at every side of a wall. So we can make a shadow everytime a wall has free space beneath it or edges at every side of it. The result is a more 3D looking world and a better feel for space.
Feel free to ask everything about the code. Thx for reading. The next alpha is coming soon!
Hey guys,
My name is Paul I’m 18 years old and the guy responsible for the music in Cards of Void. Currently I’m studying Media Studies in my first term at the University of Bayreuth.
I’ve been composing for about 3 Years now and recently started making chiptunes, so Timo asked me if I wanted to join his team. I’m a passionate TCG player and I’ve been wanting to make a game like this for a long time now, so I couldn’t really resist his offer.
As for the music. I make 8-Bit Chiptunes using the tracking software „Milky Tracker“ and since our game is going to have a rather dark aesthetic so I try to compose accordingly.
However, I’m still very new to making music for games so this also is an educational process for me. (So lets hope my tracks will get better over time ^^).
When composing a song/track (whatever you wanna call it) I generally start with a basic idea of how I want the song to feel and one element (the beat/bassline/harmonies or melody) and go from there. Other than that it’s basically alot of trial and error, since I don’t know how to handle the 8-Bit sound properly yet. (I’ve been tracking for about 2 months now).
If anyone of you guys wants to keep up with my work I’ll probably upload some here, or you can follow me on soundcloud @ https://soundcloud.com/cantina-project.
Also, here is a timelapse of me making a short track 🙂 It’s got a german voiceover though^^
(original length: 01:15:29)
Yesterday was the latest presentation of the game. We think that we are making progress and to prove that to you we are giving you a very early version of the game. You can download and try it and we would be very happy for any kind of feedback.
Mostly the game explains itself.
WASD movement (but you can also press the right mouse button)
1,2,3,4,5 on the keyboard to prepare a card, left mouse button to unleash it (the player character glows when ready)
If your deck ist empty press space to shuffle and refill it, but that costs half your mana and health!
There is only one boss in the game at the moment. You can get to him if you find the door. After finishing him you start again at the deck creation and you can try another build.
We are only at the beginning of the development. The Alpha is only a demonstration of the raw gameplay. In future builds there will be more cards that are more balanced with each other and the environment, different dungeons, enemies and also a story which will explain everything behind the Cards of Void!
(This is gonna be in english, because I’m awesome and timo doesn’t like our global audiance )
I’ve been thinking about synergy in our game alot and I came to the conclusion, that I want the combination of cards to be more than just “Which cards are going to deal the most dmg in this dungeon?”. The combination of different cards should be a natural process and players not attempting to use synergizing decks should be punished. However, players shouldn’t be forced to use a certain playstyle. So far we have only implemented debuffs for monster resistances (like chaos resistance) which is an obvious synergy (“direct synergy”), this means using a debuff for chaos resistance will make any chaos spell you use more effective. Now I want to create cards that work together without being obvious about it. The player should be like “hey that works great in combination and I love that kind of playstyle” and I think that is one of the hardest things to do when designing of our game.
Most cardgames offer groups of synergizing cards. In Hearthstone you have the Hunter with his beasts, in Yu- Gi Oh you have Zombies, in Duel of Champions you have Demons … I think thats a good way of doing synergy, but with our spell based game you don’t have to create specific groups of cards, but you can do cards that compliment as many cards as possible and suck with the rest. A card that gives you mana synergizes well with a card that cost alot of mana, but not so great with cards that cost little mana. So the player that mixes his deck with cards which give mana and low mana cost cards gets punished automatically, because his hand will be filled with useless (mana giving) cards. If he uses them, he will empty his deck faster. If he doesn’t, he has less damage potential in his hand.
Natürlich müssen die Welten zufallsgeneriert sein! Vom System von Vlambeer inspiriert, wird das folgendermaßen gelöst:
Ein „floormaker“ fährt durch die Welt und setzt immer an der Stelle, an der er sich gerade befindet, ein Bodenobjekt ab. Der Floormaker bewegt sich entweder geradeaus, nach links oder nach rechts. Jedes mal wenn er zweimal nach links oder rechts geht, sich also um 180° dreht, setzt er eine Kiste. Dadurch sind oft in Sackgassen Kisten, was den Spieler zum Entdecken einlädt (die Kisten sind in der Demo-Animation noch ausgeschalten)
Jedes Bodenobjekt hat wiederum die Chance einen weiteren floormaker zu generieren. Dadurch entstehen die Abzweigungen. Ebenfells hat jedes Bodenobjekt die Möglichkeit, ein 2×2 oder 3×3 großes Feld zu generieren, indem es einfach weitere Bodenobjekte neben sich setzt. Auf 3×3 Flächen spawnen die Monster.
Wurden eine gewisse Anzahl von Böden erstellt, terminiert ein Systemobjekt alle floormaker und gibt den Spieler wieder frei. An dem Punkt, wo der floormaker terminiert, der am weitesten vom Spieler entfernt ist, entsteht die Bosstür.
Das gute an dem System ist, dass man durch ein paar Einstellungen schnell das Endergebnis beeinflussen kann. So kann man leicht große und geräumige Dungeons erstellen, oder verwinkelte Höhlen.
Da wir auf Pixelart setzen, fiel die Wahl für Musik auf Chiptune. Hier mal eine Demo von Paul
Cards of Void steht am Anfang seiner Produktion. Der Nebel verschwindet und vier Gestalten erscheinen in der Dunkelheit, bewaffnet mit dem Drang, Kartenspiel und Roguelike zu kombinieren. Herausschwappend aus den kreativen Hemisphären, versammelt sich hier das Sekret der Entwicklung, um bestaunt, verachtet und geliebt zu werden.
Vier arme Kreaturen spielen Karten, um ihr Schicksal zu vergessen, als plötzlich eine gespielte Karte alle umbringt. Außer einen, den Helden des Abenteuers, dessen Ziel es ist, seine gefallene Kameraden zu rächen. Denn die Zauberkarten wurden aus einem ganz bestimmten Grund hier platziert…
Achja, es gibt Oger!
Cards of Void 