jojo

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jojo
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jojo

Post by jojo » Thu Nov 24, 2011 03:36

Edit: Jojo wrote a nice presentation that I managaed to magically wipe out and replace with my reply... what a welcome... oh well. :oops:

My apologies Jojo, wasn't intentional and I can't for the love of god figure out how I screwed up so fiercely...

Should you happen to re-post it I'll fix it all.

/snowdrop

--------------

Greetings and welcome to our tiny community!

Superb intro of yourself, and thrilled you're here. We've been around for a while but are in need of people since CCG development interest seems to be close to zero out there, even in CCG communities :roll: In a way I can understand it, since the people hanging around in them are usually the ones that have spent smaller fortunes and since they already have done so "giving it up" and working on a libre game is maybe considered a bitter setback ;)
I heard about this project from the tagline of post of snowdrop's at intfiction.org/forum.
Think that's the first time ever I have gotten anyone's attention in a meaningful way with a signature in a forum. :D Glad you found us.... btw intfiction-forum is a marvelous place. Although I'm there seldom, from what I've seen there are a bunch of amazing people there and much knowledge in that forum... and not only when it comes to scripting IF.
I'm an author of interactive fiction (using Inform 7)...
I came across Inform 7 some year ago by accident and was amazed by three things: How cool it was, how easy it was, and how unheard of it was... at least outside the IF communities. I have wanted to learn it ever since but seldom have the time and am still a total beginner with zero IF skills.

Since I'm still the benevolent dictator (or "caretaker", as I'd prefer to call myself) of WT overseeing the entirety of the project and doing misc. work on it, it takes up my spare time, leaving little free to learn Inform. My other obstacle is the language barrier - I'm Swedish, and my English is crap in comparison. Usually people perceive me as a very skilled writer in Swedish, but that doesn't show at all in other languages and it also makes me feel crippled both when it come to the aesthetics of a language but also the vocabulary. I'm very well aware that whatever I would have created in English wouldn't really be good according to myself, I'd never be happy with it since I'd know that all native English speakers would find it mediocre or average.

Some months ago me & Q_x were discussing in which ways we could communicate parts of a background setting for the world where WT takes place. One of the ideas that popped up was to write a short IF piece and put it online, allowing the readers of the official story of the game to play/read it through a self-contained story that circled around a handful of central characters and only take place on a single location, in just a couple of rooms.

Ever since nothing has been done on it since we lack both the story and the scripting skills in inform. I've played around a little just to learn, but that would just be the equivalent of like an hours of work for somebody with your skills.

Please check out the info page about it: http://WTactics.org/go/misty

If you are interested in writing a "whodunit" and want to be the lead dev of it you'd be more than welcome as you're the only one around that's both naive English speaker and already mastering IF.

We don't have any official lore beyond what can be found at http://wtactics.org/wiki/index.php?title=Story ...so you would have almost complete artistic freedom. The only things that we/I imagined were:
  • Takes place in a castle.
  • Plenty of people there, but only 5-10 are central.
  • There is some kind of huge party taking place there and hotshots/representatives from many factions and regions are there.
  • Player will, via what happens and what he picks up during the night, get a clearer picture of various tensions, political, personal, among social classes, science and religion, etc. It should however mostly be subtle.
  • Our main character, the player, has some kind of mission. Upon almost succeeding the story takes a quick and unexpected turn: The objective fails miserably since a key persona (maybe the objective itself?) is killed and something is missing.
  • Rest of the game is spent on finding out who the killer is.
Now, this may all sound lame to you, I don't know, but don't feel limited by it: You could omit all of it and use some better layout and another setting instead if you'd prefer that. :P Give it some thought, would be nice if you wanted to become the teams "Informer" :D
I enjoy the strategy and deck concepts and synergy aspects of ccgs.
Everyone is always welcome to be involved anyone of development processes of WT. In the end you will decide for yourself how you'll spend your time, if you want to do some IF and develop rules and/or cards, or just want to focus on a single thing.

What matters isn't that a person does just one thing or is involved in everything: What matters is that you enjoy yourself with what you.

Currently we are still trying to nail some details in the rule system. Next step is creating cards. If you are interested in rule design you're welcome to join the dev of the current system. If you rather create one yourself from scratch or want to adapt an already existing it is also perfectly fine to work on your own rule system branch.
I don't like the forking-out-all-your-money aspect. As such, the WTactics project looked especially appealing. I've tried online ccgs, and most of them are pretty poor.
I haven't tried out many online CCG:s since I didn't like the thought of giving money for just pixels that I couldn't materialize into paper even if I'd want to. The CCG genre is easy to transfer into real cards without any modifications, in contrast to many modern computer games (FPS, RTS etc). I want to have that option, and I remember my shock when MtG introduced Magic Online and it proved to cost exactly as much as the real cards, suddenly enabling WotC to sell cards out of thing air and make a fortune of them compared to the paper ones.

The money drain in the CCG genre is happily slowly coming to an end with many competitors choosing to use distribution models where the product content is known and pre-defined (so called Living Card Games, named by Decipher(?) and then adopted by Fantasy Flight Games). Overall it is much more viable to be a CCG player today than 10 years ago. That said, 90% - 95% of all new real paper CCG:s are likely to shut down within just 1-3 years time, leaving their players adrift with their invested money and soon to be useless cards, no matter which distro model the company used.

Poxnora was fun but too expensive to get into (and more a mini-fig game really. Elements is good, but it takes too long to get all the cards to realise any given deck concept.
Poxnora was a solid concept a while ago and is a very decent idea. I would be surprised if it still is in practice since they are probably forced to invent and release new stuff all the time that people would want to buy. Can't say how much of a powershift/inflation there is in it since I haven't played it enough. Problem isn't poxnora though: Problem is when companies design new stuff to a game not because it's needed or necessarily adds something to it, but because it's the main source of income. That will, in the longer term, crap down any good game system and make it obese of bloat "features".
I've actually written cards games quite a few times. I used to have a webcomic and I made a little card game based around that. With friends I helped make a sea-kingdom defence card game: the players would set a grid of cards out (the sea), and then each player would have a fortress on each of the cardinal directions. They would then send minions from their deck out across the grid (according to movement rules on the cards), attacking other minions, manoeuvring traps on the grid and so on
(Totally unrelated to creating a CCG here at WT, but still: I'm interested in cloning/improving/releasing an open source http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/58281/summoner-wars using artwork from WT... Check out that game, usually gets top reviews and your armada-game made me think of it. )
Skill-wise, I can develop ideas, write setting, help with the interactive fiction stuff, and I've got a regular group of people that I can play-test ideas with.
You're welcome everywhere anytime. :) Just choose your poison(s). WT is a container where we have a couple of sub-projects that are going on, with the sole goal of creating a libre CCG that plays well and has an adequate aesthetical appeal. Currently the following is in development:

1) a card-development site/software being written by ravenchild (aka foodoo on irc) that's called Sandscape. PHP / MySQL

2) two-three different webbased clients/servers that will allow people to play any ccg using their browser. slopes is the one that has done the most progress here with http://wtactics.org/about/sandscape/

3) one desktop client/server solution by aspidites & co called ViCE. C++

4) one unmanned IF project that hasn't started yet. :D

5) Rules

6) Card templates, Inkscape / Scribus

My hope is that we can nail a ruleset soonso that we can start concept testing it online shortly after new year.

Shout if you have questions or ideas.
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snowdrop
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Re: jojo

Post by snowdrop » Thu Nov 24, 2011 06:10

Yeah, in between frakking up and rambling I forgot to link you to http://wtactics.org/wiki/index.php?titl ... n_Document ...essential reading.
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Re: jojo

Post by Q_x » Thu Nov 24, 2011 08:15

Hi jojo!
Me, the grey goose of the community welcomes you! (and what a start you had!)
IDK what was there, I can only imagine... Dunno what questions were answered... Bad snowdrop, bad you!
I'm the filthy bastard you wish you never met.
jojo
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Re: jojo

Post by jojo » Thu Nov 24, 2011 13:57

(Uh oh! So here's something like what I said:)

Hello!

I heard about this project from the tagline of post of snowdrop's at intfiction.org/forum. I'm an author of interactive fiction (using Inform 7), I live in Britain and I've got two philosophy degrees. I play a lot of tabletop roleplaying games, and I play ccgs.

I enjoy the strategy and deck concepts and synergy aspects of ccgs. I don't like the forking-out-all-your-money aspect. As such, the WTactics project looked especially appealing. I've tried online ccgs, and most of them are pretty poor. Poxnora was fun but too expensive to get into (and more a mini-fig game really. Elements is good, but it takes too long to get all the cards to realise any given deck concept.

I've actually written cards games quite a few times. I used to have a webcomic and I made a little card game based around that. With friends I helped make a sea-kingdom defence card game: the players would set a grid of cards out (the sea), and then each player would have a fortress on each of the cardinal directions. They would then send minions from their deck out across the grid (according to movement rules on the cards), attacking other minions, manoeuvring traps on the grid and so on.

I'm a big fan of A Thousand Blank White Cards, a game in which you must write the cards and their rules as you're playing. This sort of free-flow structure can be good for coming up with new ideas for fixed-rules games.

Skill-wise, I can develop ideas, write setting, help with the interactive fiction stuff, and I've got a regular group of people that I can play-test ideas with.
jojo
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Re: jojo

Post by jojo » Thu Nov 24, 2011 14:31

snowdrop wrote: I came across Inform 7 some year ago by accident and was amazed by three things: How cool it was, how easy it was, and how unheard of it was... at least outside the IF communities. I have wanted to learn it ever since but seldom have the time and am still a total beginner with zero IF skills.
So recently there's been a big drive to make IF more generally accessible. So being able to play it online is a big step. The next thing is being able to play IF without having to resort to the command line.
snowdrop wrote:One of the ideas that popped up was to write a short IF piece and put it online, allowing the readers of the official story of the game to play/read it through a self-contained story that circled around a handful of central characters and only take place on a single location, in just a couple of rooms.

If you are interested in writing a "whodunit" and want to be the lead dev of it you'd be more than welcome as you're the only one around that's both native English speaker and already mastering IF... Give it some thought, would be nice if you wanted to become the teams "Informer" :D
I'm very much interested in this idea. I really like social intrigue-style fantasy (like the Song of Ice & Fire series), and I've read more Poirot novels than is probably healthy. OK. Well, I'll read up on the lore and have a good think. Then if/when I come up with a plot/puzzle structure for the game, I'll post it on the forums and if people think it sounds cool and in keeping with the feel of WT, then I'll go ahead and write it up. The sort of time frame I'd be looking at is having a fully-tested working game by some point in the spring. It depends how much other projects/general life stuff gets in the way.
snowdrop wrote:Currently we are still trying to nail some details in the rule system. Next step is creating cards. If you are interested in rule design you're welcome to join the dev of the current system. If you rather create one yourself from scratch or want to adapt an already existing it is also perfectly fine to work on your own rule system branch.
I've had a look at a bunch of the documents on the wiki. Do you have a test-batch of cards? How far along is the ruleset?
snowdrop wrote:Poxnora was a solid concept a while ago and is a very decent idea. I would be surprised if it still is in practice since they are probably forced to invent and release new stuff all the time that people would want to buy. Can't say how much of a powershift/inflation there is in it since I haven't played it enough. Problem isn't poxnora though: Problem is when companies design new stuff to a game not because it's needed or necessarily adds something to it, but because it's the main source of income. That will, in the longer term, crap down any good game system and make it obese of bloat "features".
This is a really good illustration of why money-making models often work against good game play. I remember playing Mt:G with friends: I had a bunch of old cards and they had the very latest cards and my goblins would never prevail.
--
So in general, I'm interested in getting the interactive fiction game off the ground (maybe enter it into the Spring Thing or the IfComp?) and I'm keen to have a play around with rules (even if it's just in a play-testing capacity).
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Re: jojo

Post by snowdrop » Thu Nov 24, 2011 21:31

being able to play it online is a big step. The next thing is being able to play IF without having to resort to the command line.
Being able to play it online is terrific and more or less a necessity if we'd expect people that are new to the genre to even give it a try: Downloading separate, often terminal-looking clients, then the story file and loading it up to play is "too much to handle" for most people, at least in the context.

I tried the Sanddancer hyperlinked demo. I think it is doable with hyperlinks, but that it's almost unplayable since it forces me to leave the text area all the time and look at other windows. It also forces me to have to search for where the new text showed up since it does so all over the place, every time. Personally I think that it interferes to much with the immersion, getting in the way of becoming one with the story, you're constantly reminded that you're in front of a computer and making sure you didn't skip a section of text by mistake.. kind of like trying to read a good book in the backseat of a Jeep on an off-road.

The way I would have done it myself is to a) Make sure first line of all new text appears in same place, always. b) Crete two kinds of hyperlinks - 1: The casual one where there is only one action associated with clicking. When you click that action is performed. Hoovering mouse above it for 1 sec would show the command it would perform. 2: The multi-command hyperlink. Has a different shade of the colour than the casual one-action hyperlink. Left or right click the multi-command hyperlink and you get a contextual menu, right there, on the spot, allowing you to select among meaningful commands

For me, those two things would solve any and all problems I had with the implementation, and I think many would agree given I wasn't the only one reacting on how "jumpy" it felt. All in all though, I'd say it's on the right track. Would be cool though if somebody would write an extension that did the above :P Think it would open up the IF-doors for many players that will shy away from it today due to the need for knowing/learning commands, and/or even writing them at all using your keyboard. We're like talking about new generations of people here, young, that hardly have written a real letter in their life, yet alone read books on their spare time because they wanted to.

Meanwhile, I had a quick test of Blue Lacuna-extension that used keywords, thought it was great. Would prefer it to the current sand-hyperlinks.
I'm very much interested in this idea. I really like social intrigue-style fantasy (like the Song of Ice & Fire series),
I've not read the Song of Ice & Fire-books, but loved the tv-series. Probably the best fantasy series that have been produced to date (Then again, not many have been, if you don't take Xena and other garbage into account for some reason..) One of the tings that made it good was that it didn't center on just displaying crude action sequences. It was a good story, plenty of interesting characters, and intrigue driven. I guess that's what I'd want to see in an IF instead of people writing a combat system where the player needs to keep track of stats and slash away.
and I've read more Poirot novels than is probably healthy.
What I lack in Poirot (again, haven't read much, just a couple, but seen all) is character development and also a deeper personality. It's quite easy to interpret him as some kind of narcissistic self-righteous fascist snob. While small personal details and quirks are revealed (for example he likes being punctual, surprise surprise..) I haven't ever understood what kind of personality he has. He feels "empty" in some peculiar way.

Settings in Poirot are terrific though... but one thing has been bothering me for quite a while: I don't agree with people that claim that the murder mysteries are solvable by the reader: They are not(?). In the end when all is revealed, doesn't Poirot tell us new info that we as readers/viewers didn't know about? I've often gotten that impression, don't know if I'm mistaken though.
Then if/when I come up with a plot/puzzle structure for the game, I'll post it on the forums and if people think it sounds cool and in keeping with the feel of WT, then I'll go ahead and write it up
Yay. Sounds great! Keep in mind you don't have to post a "finished" idea - post away whenever you have something, others might come with helpful suggestions or ideas. Could be good to cross-post to a real IF-forum as well.

A thing I've been thinking a lot about is how dialogues/talking should work. Personally I'm quite fond of select-one-of-these-2-to-5-sentences from a list/menu system, like in classical graphical adventure games or in visual novels, but you'd be the one to know. Could maybe also work out well with keyworded (blue lacuna) dialogues.
The sort of time frame I'd be looking at is having a fully-tested working game by some point in the spring. It depends how much other projects/general life stuff gets in the way.
Work in whatever tempo that suits you as long as we know you're not missing in action and can check out on progress every now and then. We're not going anywhere :) When it comes to testing and fooling around I would love to help out!
I've had a look at a bunch of the documents on the wiki. Do you have a test-batch of cards? How far along is the ruleset?
We've nailed most of the card types for the ORC and probably only have to make some decisions about how Magic cardtype works and what distinguishes it from Event cardtye (in MtG terminology this is Sorcery vs Instants, but I think the difference is minimal beyond the obvious that you only get to play Sourcery on your own turn.) So we have: Creatures, equipment, Events, Magic + in latest newspost I also suggest Heroes and Quests.

What we've been discussing is if "conquerable objects" should be a part of the game, opening the door for another win condition and a more "cold-war approach" to conflict between the players that seek it. They probably will be included, in the form of Quests mentioned above and explained in detail latest news + in this thread here.

There aren't any valid cards that can be used for playtesting yet, but plenty of mockups that will be easy to adjust. I will also soon write up "conversion"-instructions of how to test our game using the cards already found in Magic, which would speed thing up and open up possibilities while we put together the real cards. We have penty of card ideas around that are currently stuck in our database due to a recent site migration we had, but I'll unstuck them soon and make them publicly available.

I'll have the rules "ready" for concept testing within a 1-2 weeks, and then the work with card creation will commence, followed by plenty concept testing after new years.

Notice: It doesn't say anywhere except for in this thread, but the resource system that will likely be used is one where a player is a standard one: Player is allowed to put down one card from hand, face down, transforming it into a resource producing card. Resources are exhaustible, and each resource card produces one resource when it is marked ("tapped" in MtG terminology). There is only one single currency in the game - gold.
So in general, I'm interested in getting the interactive fiction game off the ground (maybe enter it into the Spring Thing or the IfComp?) and I'm keen to have a play around with rules (even if it's just in a play-testing capacity).
Great idea entering into competition(s), see no reason for why that shouldn't be done. Speaking of which: I hope it's been clear that we'd need to have the game + source code licensed using an open source license for it to be a part of the WT-project. The reasons are plenty, one of the most important ones is that we want the community to have the ability to learn from your work, study it, and if needed be in the future, improve or build upon it. (Should that happen it will clearly state so, so you won't ever be associated with anything you actually didn't put in there yourself.)

I'd probably pick the AGPLv3 for the work if it was up to me. Since you're the one doing the work, it's not up to me and you could consider other (open) licenses if you'd rather prefer them for some reason. I'm all ears.

With that said, in addition to whatever open license you pick, you would still have all your own normal copyrights in place on it simultaneously, granting you the power to do whatever with it and re-license your work however you want since that wouldn't in any way affect the version you released using the open source license for this project.

Would be good to know your perspective on all of these issues before you put down too much work ;)

+ I'll let you know when we have a way of concept testing anything... will be within a month. You had experience of MtG?
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Re: jojo

Post by jojo » Fri Nov 25, 2011 01:01

Q_x wrote:Hi jojo!
Me, the grey goose of the community welcomes you! (and what a start you had!)
IDK what was there, I can only imagine... Dunno what questions were answered... Bad snowdrop, bad you!
Oh, and hi! Is 'grey goose' a euphemism for Canadian?
snowdrop wrote:I tried the Sanddancer hyperlinked demo. I think it is doable with hyperlinks, but that it's almost unplayable since it forces me to leave the text area all the time and look at other windows.
You're right in that the Sanddancer demo isn't quite perfected for usability just yet. Also, I don't know whether you had the same issues, but in its current state it runs too slowly. I definitely think Blue Lacuna points towards some very positive new steps.
snowdrop wrote:What I lack in Poirot (again, haven't read much, just a couple, but seen all) is character development and also a deeper personality. It's quite easy to interpret him as some kind of narcissistic self-righteous fascist snob. While small personal details and quirks are revealed (for example he likes being punctual, surprise surprise..) I haven't ever understood what kind of personality he has. He feels "empty" in some peculiar way.

Settings in Poirot are terrific though... but one thing has been bothering me for quite a while: I don't agree with people that claim that the murder mysteries are solvable by the reader: They are not(?). In the end when all is revealed, doesn't Poirot tell us new info that we as readers/viewers didn't know about? I've often gotten that impression, don't know if I'm mistaken though.
When Poirot does show some human character, rather than being just a cipher, he comes across as very unlikeable. The David Suchet television portrayal of him helps play his arrogance and fussiness to comic effect without spoiling too much the tone of the mysteries. Many stories reveal a new piece of information at the end, and this isn't very good plotting at all. The best ones just bring together very disparate clues that the reader is likely to have overlooked.
snowdrop wrote:A thing I've been thinking a lot about is how dialogues/talking should work. Personally I'm quite fond of select-one-of-these-2-to-5-sentences from a list/menu system, like in classical graphical adventure games or in visual novels, but you'd be the one to know.
I'd almost certainly use numbered menus. They're definitely an aid to the player, and RPG cross-over players will find them nice and familiar.
snowdrop wrote:When it comes to testing and fooling around I would love to help out!
Awesome. I'll definitely keep you posted.
snowdrop wrote:Great idea entering into competition(s), see no reason for why that shouldn't be done. Speaking of which: I hope it's been clear that we'd need to have the game + source code licensed using an open source license for it to be a part of the WT-project. The reasons are plenty, one of the most important ones is that we want the community to have the ability to learn from your work, study it, and if needed be in the future, improve or build upon it [...] Would be good to know your perspective on all of these issues before you put down too much work ;)
I've released games before on a freely-accessible basis, and I've no problem making source code available. To be honest, I've not looked into the complexities of open-source licenses. It's nice to be credited for the work that I have done, and I'm not looking to make money out of the interactive fiction, so whatever license is good for that is the one I want...
snowdrop wrote:You had experience of MtG?
Yep, I've got my trusty (rubbish) mountain deck, complete with more kinds of goblin than I could reasonably shake a stick at (including, my favourite, the raging goblin). My little sister actually has more and better cards than I do.
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Re: jojo

Post by Q_x » Fri Nov 25, 2011 08:51

I'm a bit late for plenty of Q&A...
R U also a teacher, by accident?

I'm joking of myself cause I hope it will somehow make me more productive.
I'm responsible for keeping our artist(s) busy in a controlled manner. Not much more. Plus, as always, I'm active on forums. And no, I'm not Canadian, maybe some day... If they'd let me in, I'm not going back, but now it's like any immigrant is perceived as a cheap slave, maybe apart from Africa. Last but not least I feel a bit misunderstood for half of my online activity.

honk honk

I was thinking some time ago about writing IF, but it seems to be English-only toy, and I'm not patient enough. I have the interpreter running on any possible device, Glux will not run on my PDA though.
I'm not that enthusiastic about online playability. It's excellent to get hooked on, but later it quickly becomes insufficient in any possible way - doesn't run on some devices, needs being online...

Incorporating the elements of A Thousand Blank White Cards into sandscape is really cool idea though, I hope guys will read this here:
As a card developer, I want to write things on cards while testing things online, to invent, propose and test new cards really quickly!
(I hope it's a valid syntax for scrum user story too!)
I'm the filthy bastard you wish you never met.
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