What if it’s you me and a Zedru Great-Hug deck?
BEGONE magic talk. Here be the Dominion thread.
Same. Multiplayer dominion messes with my heuristics, which is why I play it, but generally it’s slower and I get bored = I don’t try hard enough.
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Dominion does have the problem that there is nothing to do when it’s not your turn besides think about your next turn, or maybe take some curses or display some moats. It’s fine early in the game when turns are quick, but very bad late in the game when turns are longer.
Remind me to show you Codex at MAGFest.
Tabletop Simulator is currently $10. I am going to buy it to play Dominion with friends.
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I have it. I could never figure out how to use it.
Yeah I managed to play a game of splendor last night as a test but I’m already designing a better card game engine in my head. Still messing with the various versions in the workshop to see which is the most straightforward.
If you want to make a software platform for card games that doesn’t suck, I am all in on that. The web based ones that people are using for Netrunner and Keyforge are also awful, so I never play those either.
Hmm. My initial thoughts would be that the data architecture and most of the game rule implementations would be relatively straightforward, but the big hurdle would be responsive UX (especially if you’re building a web app that supports multiple game systems). Card/deck/etc positions differ greatly between games, and figuring out the best mobile (and other smaller viewport) affordances seems non-trivial. There’s some prior art in things like Hearthstone’s mobile app, though.
I think it would be a fun project, especially if one limited the scope to:
- only cards, decks, hands, and tokens (i.e. no additional board-based mechanics)
- two-dimensional play space
Am I missing any basic assumptions? 3+ player games wouldn’t be too difficult if they’re solely hand-based (like Hanabi or Dominion) but might be tricky if they involve spacial rules (like a lot of CCGs).
Exactly right. The only hard part is making it as snappy as Hearthstone. Lots of people have successfully made digital card games. Only one has a good UI.
Frankly I would be satisfied if we reach the same level as the Race for the Galaxy mobile app.
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My thoughts exactly.
I’d also want to explore ways in which the design can break from the physical paradigms e.g. multiple desktop layouts for OS.
Divide the game play into distinct regions, hand, deck/discard, play area, tableau (+per opponent), common area, supply, scoring - and prioritize easy navigation between them. make sure important details can be summarized and displayed so they are easy to track, without excess visual clutter.
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This is one of the only applications where I think VR would be better than a good normal UI experience.
TTS is built VR style, but it’s pretty resource intensive, and that level of 3D maneuverability isn’t really necessary for a lot of card-based games. But because it’s there, it gets in the way because there’s too much to do, and the tools are so rudimentary.
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As long as it has Win 98 Hearts aesthetic I’m down 
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Magic Arena is definitely up there.
The documentation is also not great, and the tutorial is super basic.
Like, I literally just learned that you can draw multiple cards from a deck by hovering over the deck and pressing the corresponding number of cards. Need to draw 5? Hover over a deck and press “5.”
How that’s not in the tutorial is beyond me.
I played around with the grid snap functions, and that makes card manipulation less outright painful. But stuff like Dominion is still a pain because manipulating multiple cards at once is freakin’ annoying. I suppose you can do the hold-left-mouse-button-click-right-mouse-button thing to pick up and move multiple cards from your hand to plop 'em on the table.
I think you need to supplement with voice chat to make anything flow.
Yeah, a better engine for card games would be huge.
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So pete & I played two games on TTS, using the “the dog” expansion. While cumbersome (playing cards from hand, cards sometimes flying into other piles, pete’s touchpad shenanigans), it was acceptable gameplay. The last 4 expansions (Adventures+) add a lot of interesting mechanics to the game and really keep it fresh.
I’d be down for playing more with anyone.
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I would say that once you get the hang of it, it probably takes twice as long to play in TTS as it does in person. But there’s also no cleanup, so that’s pretty neat!
I consider flipping the table to be cleanup.
I wish you could reset the game from inside without starting a new server?
You can go to the menu and just select the game again from the list of what you’ve got!
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