It's been a while since a major update, or even a minor one, but we've been very busy. Trust me when I say the wait will have been worth it.

Before we get to it, I need to give this warning: 

Please make a backup of your game project before updating to v1.6.0. This update will break save files and parameter settings.

I personally recommend having two instances of RPG Maker open at once - one open on your backed up project, and one on your current project. This will let you transfer parameter settings between then. We would also recommend checking out the Demo Project for this update as it has a lot of examples of how to use these features in your project and incorporates our expansion plugins too.

Fixes/Changes in this update:

• All Zone parameters are now structs
• All Button parameters are now structs
• In fact lots of parameters have been changed to structs to condense them
• Deck and Discard sprites now take spritesheets instead of individual images.
• Same with buttons.
• Cards getting put into the discard from the hand and then reshuffled into the deck will now travel directly to the deck  from the hand instead of appearing as duplicates.
• IsiahCGCCardSelection, IsiahCGCConditionalCardActions and IsiahCGCExtraButtons have been consolidated into the main plugin. Parameters have been moved and added as necessary.
• Fix to ActionPack1 that remove the selection text while browsing cards
• Fix to ShowCards that crashes if the user changes scenes while cards are still shown.
• Skip Actor Command Menu parameter now plays nice with PartyUI_TypeA
• Fix that would break text color changing on cards in MZ
• Fixed touch input bug in MZ with Buttons
• Backend Refactoring done and removed some Legacy Functions
• Renamed from IsiahCardGameCombat to MYTH_CGC_CoreEngine (more on this later)

New Features

• Custom Zones 

This is the big one. For so long we've had the Deck, the Discard, the Hand, and nothing else. But now...

Ok, let's dial it back. But the point is, you can now define your own Zones that cards can move to and from. You can create your own "Exile" zone that cards go to instead of getting removed, and use this zone to track the cards that have been otherwise removed from play. You could have a "Bonus" zone that all of your extra powerful cards go to at the start of battle, and you need to accomplish things to put them into play.

We've restructured zones to make way for this new feature, and a lot of what you're about to read was made specifically to work with our new Zones.

• Resolving used cards has been changed. Cards now go to a new Temp Zone before they resolve.

There's been a problem a few people have run into where an effect that draws cards from the Discard pile, attached to a card, can end up making the card draw itself, leading to infinite uses in specific circumstances. A card going to the discard pile while its effects are still in play has always felt weird, so now it waits until all of its effects have resolved - that includes damage calculation stuff and Card Actions.

In the meantime the card stays in a "Temp Zone" - which is a fancy way of saying you decide where on the screen it stays while it's resolving. The Temp Zone has access to all of the parameters of other zones like its rotation, scale, skew... Well, more on skew later.

This means that the card is neither in the Discard nor the Hand while it's in use, which should be more in line with how things should work when making calculations based on Hand/Discard size.

If you don't want these mechanical changes for your game, you'll love the next feature.

• New Card Action "Move this to [zoneName]" 

This Card Action has two uses. The first is that you can use it to determine what zone the card moves to when it's used. For instance:

Move this to Deck

Will cause the card to go to the deck instead of the discard after being used. You can even tell a card to go right back to the hand! And of course, this works with any extra zones you add to the project.

The other use is that the card will go to the zone it's told to as soon as it gets to this Card Action. That means you can move it early, before all of its effects are resolved. So if you did something like this:

<Card Actions>
Move this to discard
Move 3 from discard to deck
</Card Actions>

The card that you just used could be in the group of cards moved from the discard to the deck - just like how it would be in v1.5.

• New Card Action: "Move x Type [typeName] from [zoneName] to [zoneName]" 

This one works just like "Move x from [zoneName] to [zoneName]" but it works with card types. It's the generic version of the Card Actions that currently exist for Card Types that work with any zone. This can be really useful if you're using card types in conjunction with extra zones.

• "Will End Turn" is now a Card Passive
  

The notetag <willEndTurn> has been moved into the Card Passives in the form of "Will End Turn". The old notetag will still work so that people don't have to fix every single one of their skills, but this change is to make the rules of CGC more consistent.

• "Remove this" is now a Card Action

A lot of people felt this command made more sense as an Action than a Passive, and we agreed so we made the switch. Again, the passive should still work so you don't need to go through all your skills and fix it, but this is a more intuitive way for the command to work.

• "Start in Hand" Card Passive has become "Start in [zoneName]"

Pretty simple change. It still works with the Hand, of course, but now it works with all Zones. That means cards can start battle in the discard or any extra zones you're using.

• New zone feature: Card Actions on Empty

Previously there were two places where Card Actions would be executed - at the start of the turn, or as a part of a skill execution. This adds a third place. Each Zone has a parameter where you can set Card Actions to be executed the moment that Zone becomes empty. These CAs are actually executed before the current set of CAs move on, if necessary.

You know how the discard zone reshuffles into the deck when the deck is empty? Well, now those are Card Actions inside the Deck's Card Actions on Empty parameter. The Deck's CAs have been given a default value that perfectly replicates its old behavior.

There's another parameter called Card Actions on Empty Trigger which lets you customize when these CAs are executed. Some users will want them to execute at the end of every action until the Zone stops being empty, while others will only want them to execute when you try to draw a card from the already-empty Zone.

• Added "skew" parameters to zones

Skew is a parameter like rotation or scale which affects the appearance of cards in that Zone, and has cards change to reflect those values as they physically move to that Zone. Skew is a weird one though. It's essentially a way to simulate isometric 3D rotation. It can take some experimentation to get the values you want, if you even want to touch it at all. We added it just because more options are always nice.

• New Card Action: "Play SE [soundName]"

<Card Actions>
Play SE Ice4
</Card Actions>

This plays a sound effect. Any sound in the SE folder is fair game. This Card Action is in line with the other Sound Effects options we've added that we'll get to momentarily.

• Zones have Sound Effects parameters for when a card enters/exits.

Sounds have finally come to CGC. Each Zone can have its own sound for when a card enters/exits, though if you use both for every zone they will overlap.

• Other SE parameters

We have 3 more SE parameters for the following occasions:

1. A card is added to play
2. A card is removed from play
3. The deck is shuffled

• Block Generation

Block Generate is a utility plugin that Neel created which hass been included in the main plugin suite that covers a major feature for roguelike deckbuilders: adding and removing Block as a resource. You designate one State to be the Block State and each Battle whenever you would gain Block, you gain the State and it is set to a value. When you take Damage, the Block value is deducted from first before Health.

This plugin gives you Notetags and Script Calls to configure the settings of your Block state to a variety of scenarios such as having Block values modified by Equipment, Cards that ignore Block or Cards that utilize Block as part of a Damage Formula.

• Patreon Plugins added to Main Suite: Text Format Plus and Card Action Pack 1
  

Two Patron plugins will be joining the main plugin suite to enhance your ability to make cool things with Card Game Combat.

Text Format Plus is a much needed upgrade to how text objects are rendered on Cards. Now you have options for word wrapping, using different fonts, changing the font size and line spacing in the Card  Name, Cost, Description and Types text. We also have support for pixel fonts so they don't have anti-aliasing when rotated and instead look as crisp as possible.

Card Action Pack 1 adds some Card Actions that allow you to make Selections of Cards from a Zone and perform Actions using that selection such as Moving them, Drawing/Discarding/Removing them, copying them etc. This can be used easily to make cards that reward the player's deckbuilding and adds additional depth of interactions to your game.

• Blank Templates

This is a minor one but many of you have requested having a quick start setup for Card Game Combat where you have a project with all the plugin parameters already filled out with everything working when you hit the button. The Blank Templates are a good way to achieve just that. Rather than modifying the Demo Project to make your games which often causes issues because of how interdependent the Demo Project's systems are, we recommend downloading a copy of a Blank Template and starting from there. This is the first time we have done this kind of thing so please let us know in feedback how to improve this experience.

So, many of you are asking…

When is Card Summons???

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: The push for v1.6.0 was done to make sure that Card Summons would work - the two were developed side-by-side.

[now we describe Card Summons and post a few gifs]

You did this with Deck Editor

What?

You used header text to simulate a conversation between yourself and the audience to discuss release dates.

It's a useful narrative tool! It subverts the use of header text as section breakdowns which carries an element of levity which, paired with the dialogue-- you know what, I'm not explaining myself. 

Final Thoughts

You're probably wondering: What's with the name change? Well, we at MythAtelier talked about changing the names of the plugins to all exist under one unified banner for a while, and to put it simply this was the best time to do it. When a plugin's name changes, all parameters are reset, because RPG Maker thinks it's a different plugin altogether. And since this update is making a significant amount of changes to plugin params, users would already have to go in and reset things, so this is creating a slightly larger headache for you now and saving you the massive headache of having to do it all over again later.

We talked at length about how best to name the plugins now that we've been working on the suite for 2(?!?) years and came up with something we're pretty happy with. This new naming convention should help organize the plugin suite.

Cheers,

Isiah and Neel

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.