Hello all, it has been a very long time since I have posted anything. That is partly due to a heavy class schedule and the fact that I haven’t worked on any games that I feel are challenging enough for me to blog about. But I have started a new project that I plan on finishing for my portfolio. I plan on working on this game until it is 100% finished, it should be the “grand finale” of my portfolio.
So a little about the project, it is a Magic the Gathering Draft simulator. And just incase any WOC lawyers stumble across this, the game is NOT going to be released as long as it violates the MTG terms of conditions. It is a personal project for practice and experience only.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, I’ll talk a little bit about the game design. I want the game to feel as close to playing the actual card game as possible. So rules won’t be implemented, it’s more of an honor system, also your opponent will be able to see what you’re doing so if you do cheat, it will be known. This is an approach that cockatrice took with their magic game and I really like that format. It is going to be a bit more realistic however. It’s in 3d using directX and C++, and you move cards around on the table with mouse input.
The first goal is to be able to play a simple game against an opponent across a network. So you may see some posts on here about me having troubles with winsock, it’s my first time doing any networking outside of Java and a bad C++ library I used once. As of right now I am able to move cards around on the table and “tap” them which is basically just turning them sideways. The cards also float up to the camera when you hover over one for easier reading. I had quite a bit of trouble with a technique known as “picking” which I’ll make another post about later explaining how I correctly implemented it. What I’ll be working on next are the mechanics of gameplay. I still need to design a “hand” and deck system, as well as a realistic looking scoreboard, counters, and the “opponent side of things.” Such as the opponents deck and hand.
There are a few things I’m a little worried about, in magic there are cards that let you do certain things with the opponents cards such as taking control of one of their cards, searching through their deck or hand, and so on. Some of these are pretty easy but they happen so rarely I’m reluctant to design a special use-case for some of this stuff. But I’m hoping I’ll think of a solution for the more rare stuff by the time I get to them.
Well I feel like I’ve rambled on enough for this post. I will hopefully make the picking post later this week but I’m going to include some diagrams and such to explain the problem and solution, so there’s really no telling on when that will be up. I will also post a short demo video on the current progress of the game either with that post or with one next week.
John's Development Portfolio 