Forge Adventure mode like Shandalar

[rikimbo]

I do agree with your suggestions, its just a lot of work.

Absolutely, I totally get that. The tribal decks were a good choice to start because you could fill out a full suite of enemies. I'm enjoying your work so far, and I'll keep playing every update you make.

I was thinking about "more away from the center" => more difficult. This would also not cover dungeons but it is the only reasonable idea I had to far.

That makes sense to me. Stay close to the starting area if you need to "level up" fighting easier monsters, go further away when you are strong enough. It could cover dungeons if dungeons had a difficulty setting (just an integer), and were placed further from centre based on difficulty, I suppose.

Time , number of matches, win ratio would also be an option, but I am not really a fan of those.

I agree. The original Shandalar had some time pressure, and I like your design choice to cut that.

By the way, I'm still playing and (more minor spoilers below)...

| Open

I just encountered some of the dungeons that have a mysterious energy. They say a card should start in the opponent's field, but that didn't work for me. I found two dungeons like that, and the cards didn't spawn on the field. When facing a Djinn mini-boss, I did get King Suleiman though (nice callback to the original Shandalar). Those dungeons were really cool. I liked the "mini-boss" enemies, and the Doppelganger was a really satisfying challenge and reward.

[rikimbo]

I know I post a lot in this thread (sorry!). I just "finished the game" in a sense, and I had a great time. I'm going to keep playing, and start messing around with the config files.

I put up a few fixes for issues I ran into while playing, for your consideration:
- Fix Dungeon Effect that adds Creatures to the field
- Fix "Card Reward Bonus" to properly max at 3

[corals]

Well your GPU has to support OpenGL ES 2.0, did you check if there are driver updates for your Chip but the RAM could be an issue. You could try to reduce the used RAM from Java with -Xmx1024m

Thanks for the help. How would I go about setting the max ram? I looked it up and from what I understood it should be something like this
"java -Xmx1024m -jar forge-adventure-1.6.53-jar-with-dependencies.jar"
Is that correct? I tried it with CMD but it didnt work. it just crashed as ususal

In theory it should support openGL 2.0 but in reality it doesnt seem to like it much and its already on its last driver so its probably that :c

Guess I'll have to try the old shandalar game. Thanks again ^.^

[vinnie]

...I'm going to keep playing, and start messing around with the config files.
...
- Fix "Card Reward Bonus" to properly max at 3

sorry, is the configuration file editable even when playing from Android? I am also interested in limiting the max number of cards won.

[Grimm]

I know I post a lot in this thread (sorry!). I just "finished the game" in a sense, and I had a great time. I'm going to keep playing, and start messing around with the config files.

I put up a few fixes for issues I ran into while playing, for your consideration:
- Fix Dungeon Effect that adds Creatures to the field
- Fix "Card Reward Bonus" to properly max at 3

Apparently already merged, the duel scene got a bit messy after I added multiplayer support...

...I'm going to keep playing, and start messing around with the config files.
...
- Fix "Card Reward Bonus" to properly max at 3

sorry, is the configuration file editable even when playing from Android? I am also interested in limiting the max number of cards won.

Yes i can not see any reason why it should work the same on Android, but you would need am text editor for this. The config editor is not working on Android.
There is not limit to the maximum cards won, you would have to edit every reward for every enemy.

Well your GPU has to support OpenGL ES 2.0, did you check if there are driver updates for your Chip but the RAM could be an issue. You could try to reduce the used RAM from Java with -Xmx1024m

Thanks for the help. How would I go about setting the max ram? I looked it up and from what I understood it should be something like this
"java -Xmx1024m -jar forge-adventure-1.6.53-jar-with-dependencies.jar"
Is that correct? I tried it with CMD but it didnt work. it just crashed as ususal

In theory it should support openGL 2.0 but in reality it doesnt seem to like it much and its already on its last driver so its probably that :c

Guess I'll have to try the old shandalar game. Thanks again ^.^

Yes this is what I would tried, but I am not sure how much memory it will actual needs then.

[Thesaguy]

I wish I could help with this project, but unfortunately it’s above my knowledge.
I grew up with Shandalar and always hoped someone would do what you guys are doing.
It’s been some time since I’ve been here on Slightly Magic and am very happy to see the progress.

I have a few things I hope could be incorporated at some point, and I apologize for being that person who askes for additional features while the project is still in development, so please just keep this in-mind as you work if it might be something you could implement at some point

I was recently playing Shandalar again and like the ability to edit the opponent’s decks.
I have a few “Deck Variation Folders” at this point and switch them out to keep me on my toes.
That got time thinking, it would be great to have different tiers of opponent decks.
If you defeat a cleric 5 times, you start using a different deck option. (Or maybe more dynamic, if you have 5 more wins than losses, use the next tier, if that drops below 5, go back to the previous tier.)

This way, the world starts out at one level and as you defeat opponents it starts to get harder and harder.

Alternatively, just have a random deck select if there are more than one deck for the creature.

Thanks for your great work!

[rikimbo]

I was recently playing Shandalar again and like the ability to edit the opponent’s decks.

That's pretty easy to do with this, too. You said you wish you could help, but don't have the knowledge. You'd be surprised how much you can do! Check out pages like this to learn how to make your own enemy decks, or edit the existing ones: https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/Create-Enemies

Apparently already merged, the duel scene got a bit messy after I added multiplayer support...

Hold on a sec, are you saying it's now possible to play this Adventure mode with another human player? Or do you mean it now supports multiple AI opponents (eg. groups of enemies)?

[Grimm]

multiple AI opponents,
Playing with other humans would not make much sense to me.

[Thesaguy]

Hi,
I was playing on the release version 1.6.53 no problem.
(When I launch Adventure mode, it says 1.6.49.001 though)

I saw you had a Snapshot: forge-gui-desktop-1.6.54-SNAPSHOT
But no matter what I do, I can't get it to run. Forge seems to work, but slow, but Adventure mode get's stuck when loading the new game home screen. I run "forge-adventure.cmd" ten when I select adventure mode it stalls.

https://imgur.com/9AQt9sQ

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong...

Thanks for all your work!!

Thesaguy

[Thesaguy]

Okay,
Been playing for a few days now and just wanted to say It’s great. Thanks again!!!
When I posted my first post above, I did not realize how much was already done. Amazing!!

I’ve read through the forum and there are great suggestions.

Here are a few of my thoughts.

I personally like a hard game, so most of my ideas are to make it more challenging.

SHOPS:
Geeze, there are a lot of shops
I’d like to see a system where they don’t sell as many or as rate cards until you help the town out.
So a quest to kill some local enemy, then you return it’s head and now the shops sell 6 cards vs. the starting 3. Kill another and they now sell all 10 cards. Different quests for different rewards. Maybe they start with only selling common cards, kill a few monsters, then they sell un-common and so forth. Buy price modifiers, sell price modifiers…
This could be town specific or shop specific….

Items:
Needs to be a lot more diverse and hard to find. Maybe even find recipes and take it to a smith to make the item. You can then wear it or sell it. You’ll have to also find the materials to make the items. Iron, Gems, etc. I the icons are already there

Health:
Health and it going down on losing a battle. So I saw a lot of comments on this one and I must agree that I’m on the side that this is just annoying, since you heal for free and it’s just a time suck to go get healed.
Maybe have something like supplies you have to buy. You can spend supplies to heal yourself and will only lose health if you run out of supplies. Maybe an item can be a backpack to hold more supplies or something. So now you buy supplies at the inns to go on your adventures.

Enemy Scaling:
Probably the biggest area I’d love to see some improvements.
As so many posts said and I agree, I’d like to see a progression system where the enemies get harder as you play. Not just impossible in the beginning and then easy later on….

This is what I’m thinking. Each enemy has different tiers. Let’s say 1-5. At the start, they will all only have access to the tier 1 decks. As you defeat them, the probability to start with a tier 2 deck goes up.
So if you and he enemy are 0-0 or 10-10 or they are winning you, they will only have access to tier 1.
If you have a lead, then the probability for tier 2 comes into play. 1 more victory, maybe 5% tier 2.
10 more victories, it would be something like 20% tier 1, 30% tier 2, 40% tier 3 and 10% tier 4. And so on. This will make them harder as you go, but not predictable. Lastly, each tier could have multiple decks. This way the community could create decks we could add and keep things interesting.
That was a lot, but I hope the gist comes through.

TOWNS:
Another thought on towns. Make it that you build them up. You find wood and stone and can then upgrade the town/shops. This gives you even more reasons to go exploring and finding stuff…

RACE:
Would like to have your starting race have some impact. Different areas more dangerous or race advantages like starting heath, sell discount, but discount, map speed, sight range, friendly NPC's, Friendly/hostile towns, etc.

Anyways,
Looking forward to future improvements.
Thanks again!

[Thesaguy]

I was recently playing Shandalar again and like the ability to edit the opponent’s decks.

That's pretty easy to do with this, too. You said you wish you could help, but don't have the knowledge. You'd be surprised how much you can do! Check out pages like this to learn how to make your own enemy decks, or edit the existing ones: https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/Create-Enemies

So I'm venturing in to try and create some of my own enemies and wanted to discuss the coding. So if I want to add my own enemy:

- I create a deck,
- Create or re-use a sprite
- Add the enemy to "Enemies.json"
- Add the enemy to the world-color: "green.json", "blue.json", "black.json", "white.json", "red.json" or "waste.json"

The only issue with this is it's not easy to share this with other people because of the editing of "Enemies.json" and the colors.

I was wondering if in the Enemies.json file, you could add "Spawn_Area" and you could add the spawn region there. also, have the main Enemies.json and an additional Enemies_custom.json file and load both. This way you don't mess with the main file, but can add additional enemies to the custom file.

Just a thought to make sharing new enemies a little easier.

P.S. Anyone have any custom made enemies they could share with me?

Thanks.

[Spooky]

I recently discovered this Adventure Mode creation for forge and am absolutely over the moon about it. I made an account here just to post in this thread. I've been craving something like this for years, and am extremely appreciative that you've made the push to actually create it. Thank you so much! I can already tell I'm going to be sinking a lot of hours into this!

I have some suggestions:
-The long and winding cave dungeon (and similarly designed ones) is just not fun. I strongly recommend removing or reworking it. It's just branching paths that have no landmarks, which make them uninteresting and easy to get lost in. I *much* prefer the smaller dungeons with more interesting layouts. It's okay for a dungeon to be longer or more difficult, but they also need to be more interesting. I imagine something similar to the dungeons from the early Legend of Zelda or Dragon Quest games.

-Extremely rare and powerful cards are too easy to find. I shouldn't be able to walk into a shop and purchase a dual land. I think shops should have only common/uncommon cards available. Rares would be potentially found in chests or earned in duels. Mythics would be prizes for completing dungeons/quests/defeating bosses.

-An idea for additional player items could be for some to allow a free mulligan.

- As others have mentioned, a better scaling of difficult/progression needs to be implemented. I think the solution is actually fairly simple. Just have tiers of enemies based on their difficulty and every time a player defeats one of the 5 primary bosses/mages, the next tier of enemies are unlocked. The Pokemon rom hack Crystal Clear does something similar with its gym leaders/enemy trainers (difficulty based on number of badges earned) and I think it works beautifully. The tiers of enemies might looks something like this:
1: Starting Life = 4, Mono Color Deck, Only Common Cards.
2: Starting Life = 8, Possibly 1-2-color deck, Common and Uncommon Cards.
3: Starting Life = 12, Possibly 1-3-color deck, Common/Uncommon/Rare Cards.
4: Starting Life = 16, Possibly 1-4-color deck, Common/Uncommon/Rare Cards.
5: Starting Life = 20, Possibly 1-5-color deck, Common/Uncommon/Rare/Mythic Cards.
I understand that # of colors does not directly scale with difficulty, but these general rules could work if applied with some discretion. Bosses in dungeons or spawned from quests could also fit into these general difficulty tiers.

-The shops are far too numerous. It's actually annoying to enter a town and walk from shop to shop to see what's available. I feel pretty strongly about this, and reading through this thread it seems I'm not alone. I preferred the original Shandalar method, where each town had one vendor (usually with some sort of theme, like you already have). Sure, you don't see as many cards overall, but that's not a bad thing imho. It actually brings me to my next point:

- I don't like that the game gives you access to literally every card. It's too much and there's no thematic cohesion like the original Shandalar had. I get the feeling that over time your intention might be to implement this, but I wanted to mention it anyways: Planes/Blocks would be better, I think. At least, the option for them. I imagine being able to start a game in Innistrad, where only cards from Innistrad-based sets are available and enemies are bound by these same rules. The game would have a much more cohesive feel, and would not be so overwhelming at times. It would also be much easier to balance and create a sense of progression. I think an eventual ability to travel from plane to plane, where each is not randomly generated, but instead a set map with it's own key locations, characters, etc, would be amazing. This opens the doors for story/town quests involving characters from each plane, boss fights and other enemies unique to each plane, etc. Of course, players could also have the option to play in a classic Shandalar-style map that is randomly generated, etc.

I may have more suggestions as I play, but this is it for now. I want to stress, despite the amount of suggestions that I had, I absolutely love this project and really appreciate all the time and hard work you're putting into it. If you need/want any help with deck/map/quest designs or anything let me know, I don't know anything about coding, but I'm 100% willing to help where I can.

[Grimm]

Yeah most dungeon probably needs better layout and a better reason to enter. There are also a lot potential build coded, like switches and battlefield effects, but it will take a lot of work to modify each map.

yeah, currently there is only adding starting hand cards.

I think the best solution to the difficulty scaling would be to handcraft each deck and then increase the more difficulty enemies spawn when it should get harder.

well it can be hard to get certain cards if you have a more narrow deck type.
Limiting the available cards to a certain set can be great, but I do not really want to limit the cards on the base Shandalar adventure.
But could be great for different planes. (should be supported right now)
I also do not really like the idea of plane walking, I think at a certain point you become to powerful and it would be better to start over on a different plane, also the balancing would be impossible. I thought of handcrafted planes, shouldn't be that hard to implement but a lot of work to make actual planes then.

You do not have to code anything to contribute, there are some wiki entries how to configure planes https://github.com/Card-Forge/forge/wiki/Adventure-Mode and there is also an editor for some basic edits.
Not everything is up to date there but feel free to ask if you want to add something and do not know how to. (best place for this would be discord https://discord.gg/6R4c7XjAvq)

[BlueTemplar]

Congrats for sticking with this big project, it's starting to get attention !

https://cgomesu.com/blog/forge-xmage-mt ... nture-mode

Slio9's (and friends') game :
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... JZz1HoA_8J

[sky81]

First congratulation for this amazing project. I think for one year of development (reffering to Shandalar on Forge) a lot of work has been done and the game looks awesome and has a lot of potential.

I also would have some suggestions:
1. Do you think it will be possible to have different card value prices for cards depending on their color? Example on plain map (noth of the map) the price for white cards to be cheaper then the other?
Currently I saw that function getCardPrice return price based on rarity. Currently I did not see any color property inside PaperCard class but I guess it is possible to add and then refer to it when to return the price.
2. Like stated above, I think a good solution will be that the openents to have more powerful decks when you will against them
3. Maybe to name the towns/caves etc and display the name somewhere
4. Healing shouldn't be for free