Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

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What would you like to see next in Cartovore 2?

More single-player content (enemies, missions, etc.)
50
27%
Multiplayer (Which may include a simple matchmaking server)
18
10%
Starter decks for Angels and Fae
25
14%
Some semblance of play balance
9
5%
Nothing--start working on VRPG 2, dammit.
76
41%
Nothing--finish Shells, dammit.
4
2%
Other (specify below)
3
2%
 
Total votes : 185

Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Number-2 » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:20 pm

Deathworks wrote:Hi!

Lonelyjedi99: My experience is that digestion works properly most of the time. However, there are a few cards whose code cause issues. One example would be the hap-hap. In her current version, she can make the game impossible to win by effetively removing the enemy player card from play (not defeating/killing her but making her inaccessible).

So, my suggestion is to currently remove those cards that cause problems from your decks for the time being. Since most cards seem to work just fine, playing and enjoying the game should still be possible.

Deathworks


I fixed that issue with the haphap by removing the following stuff from the startingset.txt. I think that just makes the haphap's belly escapable now, but i haven't seen anyone escape yet...
#EFFECT, TRIGGERINGCARD, TARGETED, "REQNOTME:REQTRAITTARGET:INBELLY:CANCEL"
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Junogray » Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:50 am

Even with my knowledge of how programing a game goes, and relizing how much you will probably crash in the prossess of making it, and possibly have even times where you don't make anything new to it, all added onto the end of that two years time, I stick with my vote for you making VRPG2 as I (even now) play and play VRPG all the time. Which by the way (for some mysterious reason) stopped all the crashes all together (at least for me) for the last 8 months of me playing it. (and i finally did the impossible and beat the hardest dif without a bow, hard in my eyes) but aside from all that, If its going to take that long to make it, I would like to here of its progress even as it goes, even that would keep me entertained until its glorious return... I just can't stop twitching in anticipation in fact i think its time to stop typing now, I Just really want to see Vore RPG 2, "The Sequel" (name pending) :lol:
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Thu Sep 13, 2007 3:28 pm

Heh heh...I've found I can't keep playing my own games because it makes them crash.

Not because I find bugs, but rather, every time I play it I want to change something.

The latest version came about because I played the previous version for a week. If I had played it for a week longer a bunch of other stuff would have changed.

In fact, a bunch of other stuff DID change. But I didn't release it because it was totally new stuff and would have screwed the living hell out of the game in many ways (crashes, game balance, and the fact that there were no help files for it).

The original VRPG 2 engine had a lot of really cool stuff...in fact, that's part of what made me dump it. The content (the skill and spell system, the crafting, the conversations, the map generation etc.) was so cool that I thought the presentation (read: graphics and animation) wasn't living up to it.

Since then I've had some fairly stern reality checks...the one thing I did do very well with VRPG 1 was I designed it within my means. (In fact, I originally designed it well below my means, and well below what it currently is.)

It's a tragic fact that making something good and making something easily are very hard to do at the same time.

This is compounded by the fact that I have non-vore projects that I work on concurrently with my vore projects. I've tried to piggyback them on one another, but so far this has never worked--vore and non-vore are simply too hard to adapt to one another.

And, of course, I have to make a living too. And while I could charge for my games, I wouldn't be comfortable doing so unless they were high-quality in both content and graphics, and effectively bug-free.

That and it makes me feel like a whore when I charge for anything that isn't a physical object or service.

Hell, most forms of commercialism make me feel like a whore even when I am selling something physical.

As far as progress...it's still in game engine limbo, I've just managed to get a little further in determining how screwed I am and what possibilities are left. 3D has more or less been ruled out simply because the vore is stupid looking. I've thought of some 2D tricks that might work, but there is at least one ugly technical problem with each engine I could use.

It's possible to make in MMF, and it handles the action aspects the best. It also handles the crafting, skill, and conversation aspects the worst. Theoretically I can write those in VB and import them as a .dll, so that's not really the problem. The problem is that I can only recolor any given object type one way, regardless of how many instances of that object there are. That means every monster of a given type on a map has to be the same color, and I can't use the same display objects for player characters and other characters. Not a dealbreaker, but a serious limitation. It also puts the heaviest restrictions on AI, meaning allied monsters are likewise going to have to be limited.

In VB, I have two graphics engines I could use. Both have a serious problem.

The means I've come up with relies heavily on rotation (it's somewhat similar to Odin Sphere, Adventurequest or Dragonquest, if you've played those. Odin Sphere would be the most comparable).

My first engine can recolor anything it wants and I can manipulate the graphics any way I want. However, it can't rotate graphics in realtime, meaning I'd have to pre-generate every required angle for every graphic or perform the rotations while the game is loading. That means a huge game file or huge loading time.

My second engine is blazing fast and can rotate in realtime with no appreciable slowdown. However, I have no direct access to the pixels either in memory or onscreen; I can only load files into textures and that's it. That poses all kinds of problems, not the least of which is that to recolor anything would take even longer than it does in VRPG 1 (it would have rather atrocious loading times).

And, perhaps most importantly, all three engines have one big problem: No error reporting.

MMF will just fly past errors, which is both good and bad...good in that it will never crash, bad in that if I fuck up I won't know where. VB will crash if either of my graphics engines has an error, but, thanks to Micro$oft intentionally being dillholes, I have no way to determine what the error was.

I've been meaning to test the MMF version and see if it will work out, if it's something I can finish before I die, and if I can make it look like anything other than buttered gorilla ass. It seems to have the best odds right now. If not, gutting and fixing up the original VRPG 2 engine is probably going to be my best bet.

My only other real option is to go with another dev platform like Gamemaker or Flash, but you take a serious risk when undertaking a major project on a platform you've only fiddled with as opposed to actually used on serious projects. I have fiddled with Gamemaker and Flash, but have very little real experience with them.

If I pull off the MMF version, it will end up being a hybrid RPG/side scroller.

One thing that intrigues me is my brain has been fiddling with the concept of building some things like IK and paperdoll physics into the main character. That would make for some cool animation, not to mention making the vore more interesting and more flexible according to what critter was eating you. Of course, having never done IK before, I'd have to research that as well. But if I pulled it off I wouldn't have to actually make vore animations--they'd basically be dynamically generated in-game, which would rock for all kinds of reasons.

But, as with all of these things, I must first test it, because I've never done it before.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Feath » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:18 pm

Hi!

I wanted to write something having been fiddling around with the ruleset of the Cartovore2 series. I have to admit I'm impressed but I have heard you are having problems in making it online? I was wondering if I might be able to help.

Mostly I would say either make (or use) a server program which your game would communicate with. Stand-alone is fine but splitting the interpretation of the rules to a seperate server means that gameplay is tweaked server-side and you only need to update stuff if anything changes how the client displays stuff. You'd have major trouble if you tried implementing a battle and the rulesets were different!

Anyway, if you do decide to go for online battling and go for splitting client and server, let me know. I'd enjoy helping!

Ohhh, and if you wanted to know what changes I made to the ruleset you provided: Players can be eaten, have 10% chance of escaping, 50% chance of monsters actually fainting instead of being killed. Winning through your player card digesting the opposing players card gets full points. Killing the opposing player gets 1/2 points, and a non-player card digesting the opponent player gets 1/4 points. Domination for the win ;)

It's very tough trying to stop attacks affecting those who are in someone's belly ... Any thoughts on that though? I put a rule in to cancel attacks but it doesn't always work...
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:45 pm

You'd have major trouble if you tried implementing a battle and the rulesets were different!


Actually, the host player's computer performs all of the game logic, so it doesn't matter what the other player's rules file says. (Basically, all the second player does is send the host player their deck at the beginning and send them their commands each turn. The host does everything else--it even tells the other player which cards they drew.)

Granted, that would make it quite easy to cheat as the game is now, but once I got the multiplayer working I was going to close off most of the player and rules files so they weren't accessible to the players. As it is, the multiplayer doesn't look like it's ever going to work--at least not as I had envisioned it. Sadly enough, it is only because I can't get the computers to actually make a TCP/IP connection with one another.

It's very tough trying to stop attacks affecting those who are in someone's belly ... Any thoughts on that though?


Theoretically anything that doesn't have the DIGESTACTION trait should be stopped automatically, provided the target card has the INBELLY trait. If it isn't, there's a bug in the game somewhere.

Anyway, if you do decide to go for online battling and go for splitting client and server, let me know. I'd enjoy helping!


I'd basically have to re-write the thing in PHP to run the game logic on a server (which I'm not terribly good at), and considering how slow it goes already, I shudder to think what would happen if it had multiple people playing it online...
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Feath » Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:56 am

What language did you write it in? Visual Basic? There's probably code/tutorials which might help in getting sockets to work under that.

I had noticed that the game generates a HTML file which is then displayed in the central frame, so I thought offloading most of the work onto a server would turn out pretty straightforward ... but as you pointed out, speed and workload might be a very big issue, even with a re-write.

*thinks* Would you have any objection if I used your idea and tried writing a server-side interpreter? I have ideas about using a Muck for that considering it has two in-built languages, one compiled and one interpreted, that might work reasonably effectively when used together for something like this. I admit I'm a little enamoured of not only multi-player (including three-way!) battles, but also persistent gameplay. Introduction of soul vore for example might involve the removal or destruction of a card from someone's deck permanently... (No idea if that's actually possible to do but it sounds like fun! :)
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Raijin » Thu Nov 01, 2007 3:49 am

Regarding you post on Sept. 14....

Have you ever considered using C# or Java? I'm not as familiar with Java as i am with C# but from what I understand they are pretty close to each other in terms of flexibility and I believe they are both able to do a few more things that VB has trouble with. Either way the Syntax is fairly close to VB as more things are being standardized so I imagine that you could pick up either one fairly quickly. Just a thought really. ^_^
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Thu Nov 01, 2007 8:05 pm

What language did you write it in? Visual Basic? There's probably code/tutorials which might help in getting sockets to work under that.


There are, but theoretically I was doing everything correctly. Apparently VB6 just can't handle modern TCP/IP over the internet, what with all the NAT forwarding and stuff. I can, however, use HTTP and FTP.

I was actually considering using that to make persistant online multiplayer in lieu of normal multiplayer. You wouldn't go head to head with other players in realtime, but you could end up fighting their decks. (In this scenario, when playing on offense you would control your deck as you do in the current game. On defense you wouldn't be around, so instead you get to stack your deck so that you play whatever cards you want in whatever order you want, with the obvious drawback being that you can't react to your enemy's moves. Thus, defense would be all about building a strong foundation and predicting what your enemy is going to be doing. After all, if you assume your gold production is going to be 8 because you've played 3 characters and the enemy kills one, you won't be able to play the card you wanted if it costs 8 gold...)

The basic idea would be a very simplified MUD consisting of regions (such as, say, the Forest of Doubts), areas inside those regions (such as the City of Angels or the Forest Glade), and specific locations within those areas (such as the weapon shop or the potion shop). The movement would be tiered for convenience's sake; when you left the weapon shop, you'd be in the City of Angels area, able to move directly to any of the locations therein, and if you left the City of Angels, you would be in the Forest of Doubts region, able to move directly to any of the areas therein or to any of the connected regions.

Quests would basically be interactive fiction segments with card battles thrown in, and there would be a large degree of persistence in the gameworld. For example, if you gank 5 karis in the Forest of Doubts, there will be 5 fewer karis when the next player shows up. (However, each player would be limited to how many they could kill before they had to go to another region/area to hunt.)

Players would likely be able to build structures and such and there would be an element of faction control (you could buy troops/creatures to put in different areas in order to hold them, and if you had enough, monsters wouldn't attack you or your allies when in that area--and they may well end up killing all of the monsters outright.)

To keep players from achieving Godhood through sheer grinding, each player would be limited to a certain number of turns per day. (That means I can actually *have* a persistant world without everything breaking because a few people are playing non-stop.)

However, that's a MAJOR upgrade to the current game, and I'm not sure where I stand on it just yet. I'm mostly tinkering with it right now.

Have you ever considered using C# or Java? I'm not as familiar with Java as i am with C# but from what I understand they are pretty close to each other in terms of flexibility and I believe they are both able to do a few more things that VB has trouble with. Either way the Syntax is fairly close to VB as more things are being standardized so I imagine that you could pick up either one fairly quickly. Just a thought really. ^_^


I always consider writing every project in another language but end up writing it in VB anyway just because I'm so good at it. I can write something in VB in one day that would take me two weeks in another language. Of course, it ends up causing me no end of problems later on, but that tends to be true of other languages as well...
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Feath » Fri Nov 02, 2007 5:32 am

http://www.15seconds.com/issue/990408.htm - some help if you wanted to make socket connections in VB.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby warbrand3 » Sun Mar 23, 2008 11:19 pm

i have one problem with the game the card editor wont work for me :(
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:24 pm

i have one problem with the game the card editor wont work for me


How so? What happens when you try to use it?
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby warbrand3 » Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:09 pm

error message something 76 not found. :cry:
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby SammiRei » Sat May 31, 2008 8:27 am

A couple of bug questions from me:

First of all, how do you spend a card? Examples of these types of card include Seduction, Cleverness and Love, but how you spend them to get the points eludes me.


Secondly, is the core mechanic that you *have* your production score in Gold, Hearts, Mana and Monsters per turn, or that you *gain* your production score in Gold, Hearts, Mana and Monsters per turn?

Because if it's the former, then the following example shows a bug.

I had a Monster score of 5, which I used to play my Premium Slimevine Brood card, which cost 5 Monster points. The folowwing turn, despite not losing any characters, I had 0 Monster points.

If it's the latter, then the above shows a bug, as does the below.

I was 2 Gold off of being able to play a high-cost card, and so took no action for a turn. Despite not losing any characters, my Gold points did not increase.


If you could help me understand which mechanic is correct (and thus which example is bugged), that'd be appreciated.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Sat May 31, 2008 5:32 pm

First of all, how do you spend a card? Examples of these types of card include Seduction, Cleverness and Love, but how you spend them to get the points eludes me.


You just play them like you would any other card (just click on them). They add to your resources at the beginning of your next turn, so they will help pay for whatever other cards you chose to play. (You want to play the resource card on the same turn that you play whichever card(s) it's helping to pay for.)

Secondly, is the core mechanic that you *have* your production score in Gold, Hearts, Mana and Monsters per turn, or that you *gain* your production score in Gold, Hearts, Mana and Monsters per turn?


It's supposed to be "have." If you're spontaneously going down to 0, then yes, there's a bug somewhere.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby SammiRei » Sat May 31, 2008 5:59 pm

Ah, I see. That helps, thanks.

The bug in question came, as I said, after playing a Slimevine Brood card (Premium, if that makes a difference). I went from Monster 5 to Monster 0, which confused me.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby SammiRei » Thu Jul 17, 2008 6:00 pm

I've got another question.
Is Fayzee actually a card the player can get? I've spent crazy amounts of points, but still haven't found her yet.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Duamutef » Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:59 pm

Premium may indeed make a difference; it may actually be what's causing the bug.

And yes, it's possible to get Fayzee. At least, it should to be. You can double check by opening "startingset.txt" in the card editor and checking her rarity; unless it's more than 100, you should be able to get her. Looking at the file I have, it looks like her rarity is 60, which is uncommon but not super rare.

Given the size of the starting set, I'm guessing you'd statistically have to buy about 700 cards before you'd have better than even odds of having any given rarity 60 card. (I don't know how to do the actual math; the way rarity works is it's basically a chance that you'll have to "re-roll" if the card gets picked. The game picks a random card, then generates a random number. If that number is below the card's rarity, it will pick another random card and try again. So if a card's rarity is 0, you will always get it if it's the first card picked. If it's rarity is 80, there is an 80% chance that the game will chuck it and go for a different card. Fayzee is 60, so she'll get hucked 60% of the time. However, every card that isn't Fayzee also has a chance of getting tossed, which gives you that many more chances to get her, so it's not a straight ratio...)
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby SammiRei » Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:55 am

Ah, Premium, right. I'll keep trying to get Fayzee, then.

Oh, and while I think of it: the leader Muffy, is her Gold production supposed to be 0? Because it's basically impossible to play using her if it is, since all girls cost gold.
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Re: Rule of thumb

Postby Admiral » Sun Aug 17, 2008 9:17 pm

SammiRei wrote:Ah, Premium, right. I'll keep trying to get Fayzee, then.

Oh, and while I think of it: the leader Muffy, is her Gold production supposed to be 0? Because it's basically impossible to play using her if it is, since all girls cost gold.
I have like 3 Fayzee's, lol. I'm useing her while I enchant muffy with at least 5 gold production, costs a ton :?
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Halcyon » Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:57 pm

Hey all. I use the Card Editor alot to make my own cards, which is buckets of fun, but I noticed that whatever I put in the INTESTINEQUOTE value field never really shows up anywhere. It looks like it's supposed to when a swallowed character faints, but that's not really the case :0

Is it just me? Lol
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