KingClashers - Beta 5.0

A new beta verions of KingClashers has just released. And what a release this is!

Engine

First of all, the game's first server is online for immediate matchmaking or play vs friends and an ELO rating system for some extra spice.he leaderboard page, which can be opened from inside the game, can be found here. Many thanks to heroku for its free plan that allowed me to deploy a beta server. For the time being, the user base is basically me, a couple of friends and some development accounts to test things out, but hopefully more people can have fun in the future.

While revisitng the source code, I made several fixes that improve performance, reduce buggy situations, parsing ability texts (and hints) in ways that are easier to understand. Most notable change is that abilities no longer resolve simultaneously, as this tended to create ambiguity during online play; in the new system, an order is determined between cards (based on arbitrary criteria). The AI was also improved to parse at greater depths.

There are also some serious UI improvements, including an options menu and custom dialog frames instead of Java's default to confirm user actions. o switch between high-resolution images and speed (speed is preferred by default to do away with slow loading times in the first run). I also tested on more PCs and was able to identify issues in zoomed image parts going out of bounds due to different screen sizes or aspect ratios, which I fixed.

Replayability

Looking for ways to improve long-term replayability, I finally got to implementing missions (e.g. kill 5 cards with 2 or more attack while 0 cards in deck). These are randomly generated based on data mining of card ability texts and their rewards are calculated to match their difficulty. They appear in the main menu and can be redeemed once completed - or they can be changed for some gold.

Speaking of random generation, this brings us to a new type of play, called Chaos. This involves playing with randomly generated decks and can be both interesting in and of itself and help players get deckbuilding ideas.

Gameplay

Of course, and because I could just not sit still with all the cool designs I had in mind, there are a couple of new cards, including rebalanced versions of earlier designs that were simply not playable due to how card design philosophy has shifted. For example, the Veteran (1 attack, 2 health and can take up to 1 damage) has been rebalanced to have only 2 delay.

Even while touching on more in-depth designs, I also designed an experience that I hope is begginer-friendly: players start with zero money and can play the tutorial to quickly gain some - this is common practice, I know, but was a pain to implement in a way that allows future extensibility into what I hope will become a puzzle mode. Furthermore, in the real world, people don't move step by step if they have too many options, so I enforced a progression system in the tutorial.