Strap in, folks. This is going to be a long devlog - in part because the added features list is so long, and in part because of what I have to say at the end. Let's not waste time!

New in this Update

Bug fixes

• Fixed icon placement in card description (new parameter added)
• Fixed bug where the Amount text in the Card Library wouldn't be in the right place the first time loading that card's base image.
• Fixed cards disappearing when targeting actors, or when untargetable battlers are present when using YEP_TargetCore/YEP_X_SelectionControl. I believe this adds full compatibility with these plugins.
• Fixed an MZ bug when using Party UI where the status window would move during non-input.
• This was pushed sooner, so some users may have already seen this bug fixed, but fixed bug in Party UI that would prevent the Item Menu from opening. This also fixes a potential softlock when discarding/removing cards.

New Features

This is the part to get excited about.

• Added several parameters to give user way more control over card appearance. 

Note that users upgrading to this version may need to reconfigure some of their parameters as some things have changed.

• New Mill Card Action lets you send cards from the deck directly to discard
• New Search For Card Action lets you draw a specific card from the deck
• New Wait Card Action lets you affect the timing of the card actions in the sequence

Mill is pretty self-explanatory. It works just like Draw or Discard, but we skip the hand entirely.

Let's talk about Search For. This Action works like Draw, but instead of supplying a number of cards to draw, you supply the Skill ID or Name of the card you wish to draw. If that card is in your deck, you will draw it.

Now Wait. Okay, that's enough waiting, let's talk about the last new Card Action. With this one, you supply an amount of frames, and it will wait to execute the next Card Action (or move on, if it's last in the list) until that amount of frames have passed. As of right now, this will only work for Skill/Item notetags, and not for the Battle Start/Action Start actions. This wasn't a planned new feature, but I realized it was important to give users control over timing in order to make sure things look nice when they implement our next big feature...

• A New way to execute Card Actions - Card Target Actions

As opposed to the <Card Actions> tag which executes actions for the user of the skill/item, <Card Target Actions> executes actions for the target of the skill/item.

So you can have a support skill that targets 1 ally and allows them to draw two cards, at the cost of discarding one of your own, using:

<Card Target Actions>
Draw 2
</Card Target Actions>
<Card Actions>
Discard 1
</Card Actions>

And if the above skill targeted multiple allies, each ally would draw 2.

This structural change means that any skill used by an enemy which previously had <Card Actions> intended to affect the player should change to be <Card Target Actions>. As of right now, enemies don't have cards, so they can't be the recipient of CAs.

Card Types

That's right, IsiahCGCCardTypes introduces the ability to give cards Types which you can define through plugin parameters. You can specify each type's Icon and its Card Base (if it should have either), and how that information is displayed through plugin parameters. You can give a card multiple Types through notetags.

This new plugin is intended to be a core part of Card Game Combat, but it's a bit parameter-heavy and not every project requires it, so I've decided to separate it from the main plugin for purely organizational purposes.

Oh but this plugin isn't purely cosmetic. It comes with a few new Card Actions:

• Draw x Type type_name
• Mill x Type type_name
• Discard x Type type_name
• Remove x Type type_name

These work just like their base versions, but this time you specify a Type, and it will only draw/mill/etc cards of that type, if any are present.

And one more cool Card Action:

• Mill Until Type type_name

This one works a bit differently. It will Mill cards from the top of your deck, until the card at the top is of the specified type.

And for advanced users, I've created a function which allows you to find out how many cards are in the actor's hand, deck, or discard of a specified type. You can use it the same way you use damage formula variables, but it's a function so it needs parameters.

user.cardsInZoneOfType(zone, type)

'zone' can be "hand", "deck" or "discard". Include the quotation marks.

'type'  can be any card type in your project, with quotation marks around it.

So you could do, for example:

<Card Passives>
Require user.cardsInZoneOfType("hand", "Fossil")
</Card Passives>
<Card Actions>
Remove 1 Type Fossil
Draw 1 Type Dinosaur
</Card Actions>

This example would have you remove a card in your hand of the type Fossil, and draw a Dinosaur-type card. You can only play this card if you've got a Fossil card in your hand.

We worked pretty hard on this list of features, and we were as rigorous as possible with discovering bugs before launch, but the changes were massive and the plugin wasn't exactly small to start with - so please let us know if this update has broken anything, whether it be introducing new bugs or breaking compatibility with other plugins.

What to look forward to:

The groundwork has been laid, I don't foresee needing to make big structural changes for the features I have planned for the next update. Oh, except for one...

Custom Skill Buttons

You know how we've got the Item button and the End Turn button, and strictly speaking the End Turn button just executes a skill? Well, some people have asked, and I'd really like to add more buttons to the game - user-defined buttons, specifically. Basically just skills the player can access at any time, which look the way the user specifies, and can only be pressed when the user wants them to be, etc.

Maybe, for example, you want the player to be able to discard 2 cards and draw 2 new cards, for free, once a turn. You'll be able to make a special button for that.

Looking at Deck/Discard contents

One thing I've wanted for a while is the ability to actually check what's in each zone, like how Slay the Spire does it. There are a few extra Card Actions that naturally become workable once this is implemented, like the ability to peek at your top 3 deck cards, or select a card from the discard and return it to the hand, and so on.

More Card Action Triggers

This was outlined in my last devlog, but it'll absolutely be implemented in the next update.

Special Announcements

Patreon

We've been discussing this internally for a long time and we think it's finally time to unveil our Patreon!

There will be 2 more major updates to the core plugin - v1.4.5, where I add what I've outlined above, and then v1.5.0 where I consider the plugin feature-complete. After that, all new updates are going to be Patreon-exclusive. If the Patreon does poorly, I'll be content with calling Card Game Combat a success at v1.5 - but if it does well, I don't see myself running out of features to add any time soon.

The Patreon features will be in their own plugin separate from the core plugin. By the end of November, you'll have access to a few special features, some of which we've already used for Card Attack KAIJU. We'll have an update ready for patrons every month!

But CGC isn't the only thing we offer on Patreon - we've developed a number of plugins, and that list will only grow higher. Higher tiers of patrons will have access to our plugin suite. We've already got a couple more lined up in the near future.

The highest tier patrons will have access to everything 2 weeks earlier than everyone else, and they'll also get to participate in polls about what features get added and what plugins get worked on.

The reception to Card Game Combat has been incredible, and we want to continue to improve it and work on it, but right now it's straddling the line between "product" and "service." The plugin is in continuous development, but people pay for it once and then continue to benefit from further developments. This actually worked for us for a while, because each update brought it to more people's attention and we were getting consistent sales month-to-month.

But now in order to financially justify the time we spend working on the plugin, we need to change our model. By joining Patreon, you're not just getting benefits, you're also funding the development of all future benefits.

Click here to sign up for our Patreon!

We've got another CGC-sized plugin lined up too... I can't say anything specific, but let's just say, it's a Mystery.

Card Attack KAIJU

Hey did you know we released a video game a couple days ago?

Card Attack KAIJU is, well, a game using CGC. We designed it specifically to show off what the plugin can do, but it's also shown us what more the plugin needs. There are several features the plugin has as a result of our development on Card Attack KAIJU. We love making card games - it's how we ended up making CGC in the first place - and the way I see it, the more we make (and especially the weirder we make them), the more we know we need to add to CGC's plugin suite. Our designer Neel will be designing cards and he'll go "Hey can we do this thing?" and I'll realize that CGC actually can't, but it would be a simple matter to add it to the plugin, so I do, and then everyone benefits.

Discord

We have created a Discord server. We try to check our itch page and respond to posts regularly but sometimes it gets away from us. On Discord, we'll be able to respond much more quickly. So we're going to try to transition our community stuff away from itch and toward discord. We've got a special channel for patrons, of course.

Final Thoughts

My prediction about the core plugin eclipsing YEP_BattleEngineCore in line count by 1.4.0 ended up being true, but I did some quick maths and between the 3 plugins we're past 7000 lines of code. I'm aiming for 10,000 by 2023.

Speaking of 10,000 lines, I think it's about time to wrap up this devlog.

-Isiah
MythAtelier