It's done.

This one took us a while, both in terms of changes to the code and the demo project to showcase all of the new features. We went through the list of bugs that folks have been reporting in both the Forums and our Discord. We went through a number of the future features we listed on our Trello to see what would make the cut for this update. Ultimately, we wanted to make sure that we left Card Game Combat in a pretty good place before moving forward. Let's find out how well we did...

Fixes in this update:

• Hand fan no longer bunches together when the hand size is larger than 10.
• Fixed crash with the Extra Button extension when selecting one during discard selection.
• Fixed Mill card action.
• Fixed MZ touch input when cards overlap. It should be consistent now.
• Extra Button extension and Card Selection extension now have working touch input.
• Fixed Card Library scene to now show cards when Card Types (thanks to user Percarus for reporting this in!)
• Search For [skillname] now works.
• Simple View of the Card Library now actually shows the last card (thanks once again to Percarus for this one)
• Lots of backend refactoring which should not change anything user-side but will make future bug fixes and extensions easier (hint hint)

New Features

This is the part to get excited about!

New Card Action: Move [X] from zoneName to zoneName

This is a generic Card Action that you can use to move cards from any zone, to any zone.  So instead of:

Draw 3
Discard 3
Mill 3

You can now do:

Move 3 from deck to hand
Move 3 from hand to discard
Move 3 from deck to discard

These Actions will move three 3 Cards from an origin Zone to a destination Zone. We can even use this syntax to perform card movements that are we don't have keywords for, such as:

Move 3 from hand to deck
Move 3 from discard to hand
Move 3 from discard to deck

While it takes longer to type, this is a nice alternative to having 6 keywords to cover all starting locations/ending locations and then memorizing each word to describe each movement. We plan to add more onto this syntax so that more complex card movements can just be written out just like instructions in a rulebook. This also opens up having Custom Zones in the future, where you can define any number of Zones that contain Cards in your game which can lead to more exciting possibilities for your particular game.

New Card Action: Enter/Exit Zone Triggers

Just like how some cards will execute specific skills if they're in the hand at the Start/End of the Turn, now they can do the same thing when they Enter/Exit a zone, using the following Card Passives: 

Enter zoneName: Skill X
Exit zoneName: Skill X

Now you can make things trigger as soon as a card enters your hand, whether it drawn from your Deck or recovered from your Discard. The main thing this keyword is looking for is when a Card changes Zones.

In our Demo project, we used the Bard's Chord cards to demonstrate this function.  The Bard has several cards which can create one of 4 Chords that are shuffled into the Deck. The Chords themselves can't be played, however, when these Chords are drawn to the Hand they have an ability that triggers which can work to the Bard's benefit. Multiple Chords can be drawn to Hand once and the same Chord can even be cycled between Zones to keep triggering its effect.

Enter/Exit Zones is a really versatile Action that can add a lot of dynamic elements to your games. We even toyed around with the idea of a card game which entirely plays itself this way by using the Enter/Exit Zone effects. That concept might be a fun one to jam out!

Equip Cards

Our new plugin IsiahCGCEquipCards, or Equip Cards, will allow you to add cards to an actor's deck via Equipment and States.

Using the notetag <Add X>, where X is a skill ID, you can make it so equipping a Weapon/Armor with that notetag will add the specified card to an Actor's deck, and unequipping it will remove the card. For example, below Kasey has the Grimoire equipped. This adds the cards Volley+ and Flare to their Deck. If Kasey were to unequip the Grimoire, these cards would be removed from their Deck.

The same can be done for States! Using the same notetags, you can have States which add helpful cards to your Hand (perhaps as part of some ongoing effect) or have a Status Effect which clogs up your Hand with Status Cards. But be careful, if the card is in the actor's hand when the state wears off, it'll automatically be removed!

The Equip Cards extension opens up a whole new avenue to make Card RPGs with. You can have players find loot that gives you better Cards or equipment that you upgrade over the course of the game to improve the quality of your Deck. For the Demo Project, we took a look at the approach two deckbuilders took: Gordian Quest and Banners of Ruin (both pictured above) to see how cards would need to be made to fit this type of gameplay. Having players mix and match their gear offering different types of Cards to find the right build will be a great way to get them into your game. We are looking forward to seeing what ideas you all come up with.

So... What's next?

This is the Final Major Update for Card Game Combat. So does that mean we are done working on it? The short answer is no. I'm still going to fix any bugs we find (or which are pointed out to us), add compatibility with plugins where I can, and make a few other various improvements. I already have a few improvements in mind.

We're also working on Patreon-exclusive extensions to CGC, which is where the bulk of our attention will shift to going forward. These are extra features that not every project needs, quality of life improvements, and other features that can give your game that extra bit of polish. We've already got several plugins available for Patrons, so if you join now you'll immediately have access to the following:

• Turn Start Plus - give actors different start-of-turn actions depending on their class or their Equipment

• Library Plus - further customize the Card Library scene, format it into Horizontal, Vertical and Grid layouts

• Card Particle FX - make the card animations look even cooler with programmable particles effects!

Another plugin, Conditional Card Actions (name pending) will be available later this month which will let you fire Actions based on an evaluated expression and even lets you set up more complex logic for cards such as loops!

Once again, these plugins to extend Card Game Combat will only be available on our Patreon. Sign up now!

Beyond that, we've got something else in the works:

Deck Editor

The time has come ...

As you might be able to assume, the Deck Editor extension will allow you to... edit your deck. You'll be able to let a player add and remove cards an actor has access to into their deck and define specific restrictions and requirements (such as min/max length) a deck must meet before it's valid. Above we have a Mockups of one of the UI layouts we are going to offer (there were others that were voted on by Patrons as well) and an early progress shot of what the UI looks like in action. It may not look pretty but is it already quite close to functional in terms of its base features! We are hoping to get a MVP going by the end of this month and then building the rest of the plugin on top of that over March. We will be keeping folks updated on the progress of this plugin over on our Discord. Don't worry you don't need to be a Patron to join.

Deck Editor will be available to Patrons as a part of our Plugin Suite, but it will not be a Patreon-exclusive. Instead, it will be for available for sale on our Itch store page. We believe it is a significant enough feature to sell on its own rather than add it to the plugins that come with CGC, but we also don't want to restrict access to it through Patreon.

Final Thoughts

When I started working on it in December of 2021 as a curiosity to see if I could, I never expected Card Game Combat could end up where it is now. We are extremely thankful to the kind folks who supported our plugin through both purchases but also great constructive feedback and bug reports along the way. In particular, I wanted to give a round of Special Thanks to the following Patrons for their continued support:

Kakeru

Marcus Hjerpe Östlind

Gian Cornale

David Beaudet

Winston Lewis III

James Gallagher

It can't be stated enough how much our Patrons have enabled our team to build Card Game Combat to the state that it is in today. CGC has led us on a new path being the first long-term tools development project we have undertaken and it has been quite interesting to puzzle through some of the challenges we ran into along the way. We plan to continue to grow CGC in terms of its support and accessibility in the coming months and we look forward to creating other tools alongside it which help you create some truly amazing games.

-Isiah (@IsiahGames)

MythAtelier Team