It’s been about a month and a half since 1.5.0, and we’ve been busy. We’ve been working on Deck Editor, and with it we needed to update CGC. When it’s finished (which will be soon), Deck Editor will require v1.5.1 to work so we are rolling this update out first. This was a pretty big structural change, so we want to give a bit of a warning:

UPDATING TO V1.5.1 MAY BREAK OLD SAVE FILES AND CAUSE ERRORS IN SOME ADVANCED EVAL COMMANDS. PLEASE BACKUP YOUR GAME PROJECTS BEFORE UPDATING.

If after the update you run into issues, you will need to rewrite some of those Notetag Eval functions to account for the fact that there is a new data structure in place for Cards. Let us know if you run into any issues and we can help you troubleshoot. Apologies for making this large scale change but it has to happen now to set up the foundation for future updates and extension plugins.

Fixes in this update:

• Changed backend handling of cards to make future extensions easier. May cause errors when loading save files from previous builds.
• Text indicating the amount of copies of a card an actor has no longer scales up when the card is highlighted.
• Fixed bug with Discard/Remove if Unplayed passives that would remove the wrong card if there were multiples in the hand

New Features

• New Parameter: Card Rotation Multiplier
  

This parameter adds a multiplier to card rotation which gives you more control over the angles of the card in hand. We’ve had a few people request a way to stop the cards from rotating at all while in the hand, and now they can just set this parameter to 0 to multiply all rotation by 0, keeping everything up-right (image above, left). Or you could set it to 2 and really get a round hand fan (image above, right).

• Conditional Card Actions

This was originally a Patreon-exclusive plugin, but we felt that since this update was going to break some Evals, and users often used Evals to hack in their own conditional actions, we should make the transition from 1.5.0 to 1.5.1 easier by giving everyone access to this plugin.

Conditional Card Actions allows you to bake an if-statement directly into your Card Actions list, like so:

<Card Actions>
Draw 1
if (user.hp <= user.mhp / 2)
Draw 1
</Card Actions>

Above is a card which draws 1 always, and draws an additional card if the player is below half their max HP.

You can also use Labels for more complex behavior:

<Card Actions>
Label start
if (user.handSize >= 10)
Jump to end
Draw 1
Wait 30
Jump to start
Label end
</Card Actions>

This sequence of Actions begins by checking if the User's Hand is at 10. If not, it will then Draw 1 Card, Wait 30 Frames and then Jump to Start until the If condition is met. Once the User's Hand is at 10, it will execute the next Action directly after the if statement which will Jump to End breaking out of the loop. Note that unlike using Draw 10, you can control the timing of when the Cards are drawn which can be useful for animations and even weave in other Actions in between.

Documentation Wiki

So, we've been working on the Plugin for quite some time and it's gotten quite complicated. Not only do we have a lot of features, but we also have many different dependant plugins which each have their own features and requirements to keep track of. We noticed that a lot of users were not deviating too far from the features of the Core Plugin and that there was difficulty in onboarding people to learning how to use it.

That brings us to the Documentation Wiki which is meant to serve as an one-stop shop for every Plugin, Parameter, Action, Passive, Notetag, Script Call or any other information that was included in the Help File of each plugin. All of the information is organized in a manner that is easy to look up and searchable so you can have this open while you are working on your game project.

Don't worry, the Documentation Wiki will not be immediately replacing the Help Manual. We will keep the Help Manual up to date for the next few minor updates and it can serve as an offline backup. However, anytime a new plugin comes out or we post a new patch for bug fixes, the Documentation Wiki will be the first place that we update. We envision a gradual transition towards a single repository where users can easily access information about all of our plugins (not only Card Game Combat) in the long-term. Let us know how you feel about the way it is implemented now and we would be happy to take on any feedback you may have.

So, many of you are asking…

When is Deck Editor???

Soon.

Okay, but how soon?

Soon! I can’t give you an official release date because we’re a small team and we need all the buffer time we can get, but let’s put it this way: You’re reading the devlog of the very update to the core plugin required to make Deck Editor work. If you’re on our Discord server you’ve already been watching the progress come along, but for the rest here's a breakdown.

Deck Editor adds a new Scene to the Main Menu where you can select Decks to equip to Actors in your party and then step into the Deck and edit it by adding and removing cards from either the Actor's pool or a shared Party pool of cards. You can define restrictions for Decks in your games in the plugin parameters and give Notetags to Actors, Classes and Skills to further refine what can go into a Deck and how many each Card the Deck is allowed to hold. You can pull up this scene using a Plugin Command so it can be done via Map Event.

Here’s our Deck Selection scene, where the player can equip, edit, rename, copy, and delete decks. Based on the rules that you specified in the plugin parameters and notetags, we& do a validity check to see if the Deck can be used for gameplay. If the player tries to leave the menu with an invalid Deck or an Actor leaving with no Deck equipped then we prompt them to make the necessary changes. All indicators such as the message text for validity checks and the sprite used to signify which Deck is equipped can be changed.

Once you have selected a Deck, you step through to the actual Deck Editor scene, where you can move cards from your Library into your Deck. On the left is the Cards available in the pool, these can be filtered using one of the Category filters in the top window. Cards selected in the left window are moved over to the right to add them to the Deck. Cards selected in the right moved are moved over to the left to remove them from the Deck. The number of columns, size of the cards and also what information is shown in the lower windows is entirely customizable through plugin parameters.

Also, the arrow is what happens when you make me generate the assets. You can swap it out ... or don't. Maybe you like the arrow?

Final Thoughts

We've seen a huge increase in activity in our Discord server, which has been excellent. Because of this, we've had an uptick in bug reports and compatibility reports we otherwise wouldn't have seen. We're keeping detailed track of them all in a spreadsheet, and that's what we're going to be focusing on for a while after Deck Editor comes out. Card Game Combat Version 1.5.2 will mostly be focused on bug fixes and extending compatibility to other commonly used plugin suites. We want to establish a baseline before we decide to add any new features in a future minor update. Hopefully this will enable more users to accomplish what they want with their projects with less hassle.

Special Thanks to the following Patrons for their continued support:

Austin Moenhnke

Ecilla

Siabo

Cymaiden

Kakeru

Gian Cornale

Winston Lewis III

James Gallagher

Vibrant Fervor

That's it for now. We look forward to updating you in the next couple days once Deck Editor's Store Page launches.

Cheers,

Isiah

Card Game Combat is developed by MythAtelier, LLC. We can be contacted for commissions and other business inquiries at our Email.

If you would like to support our work and have a say in what plugins come next, please be sure to check out our Patreon.

If you are looking to ask questions about Card Game Combat or talk with other developers, feel free to join our Discord.