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

Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Duamutef » Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:32 pm

You remember that beta 2 version of Cartovore 2 that I kept swearing up and down I was going to upload?

Well, I uploaded it. It's available here. (If the link doesn't work, just try again later.)

A lot of things changed in the time between beta 1 and beta 2, so you'll probably want to uninstall the original if you still have it (your characters wouldn't work anymore anyway--sorry about that part).

This is still a beta, and while it's a leap ahead of beta 1, it's still a nascent game, so there will be more before I decide it's finished. Feedback is also a good thing.

According to my project plan, Beta 2 is the card engine milestone. There is one other change I want to make, but it's a change that might break the game in several places that won't necessarily be easy to spot, so I figured I'd upload this (mostly) stable version before I did it.

There's several directions the game can take after that. I have a few other milestones I've put down which are mostly optional, but would enhance the game quite a bit I think (and wouldn't take as long as the game has to this point).

However, the game has already surpassed what I had originally planned for it, and some folks are clamoring for VRPG 2 (or an ending to the Shells story). For my part I'm undecided. Knowing what everybody wants will help me decide where to go from here (hence the poll). Keep in mind, though--each Cartovore 2 milestone will probably take me a month or two, whereas VRPG 2 will probably take 6 months before there's even an alpha, and as many as 2 years for a full release.

Please feel free to post any other thoughts you have, and, of course, any bugs you find.
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby dbltrouble » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:06 am

Personally, whenever I have multiple projects I like to finish them one at a time so I can give it my full concentration. Other people like to switch back and forth to prevent getting frustrated or bored. If you got multiplayer mode working on Cartovore along with a private chat, it would spark much more interest in the game. This would likely lead to new cards being generated and more eyes bug hunting.

As far as programming, I would think that making the biggest changes first would simplify the process. Of course I have almost no experience, so I could easily be wrong, but that's what I would do.
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby wsensor » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:08 am

hmm when I tried the enchanter... nothing seemed to work at all on my pc...

it would not decrease the tokens or enhance anything T_T made me a bit sad...
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Duamutef » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:41 am

Personally, whenever I have multiple projects I like to finish them one at a time so I can give it my full concentration. Other people like to switch back and forth to prevent getting frustrated or bored. If you got multiplayer mode working on Cartovore along with a private chat, it would spark much more interest in the game. This would likely lead to new cards being generated and more eyes bug hunting.


That's why the decision is important...If I try to split my attention between CV2 and VRPG2, neither will get anywhere. If I start on VRPG2, development of CV2 will stop.

As far as programming, I would think that making the biggest changes first would simplify the process. Of course I have almost no experience, so I could easily be wrong, but that's what I would do.


You are correct about this. However, when you're working with a project that's 90% done, making a big change can have a lot of unforseen side-effects.

It's moot, though--I made the change and it didn't break anything, but it didn't speed the game up very much either.

hmm when I tried the enchanter... nothing seemed to work at all on my pc...


Yeah, someone else told me that too. It worked for me when I last tested it, but that was like a week ago, and somehow this game can mutate tremendously in a week...
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Xenodeus » Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:32 am

Woo! Bugs! It doesn't seem to A) record how many resources I have, B) care if I have them when I play my cards. In other words, I can play all of my cards at once, and it doesn't cost anything :|
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Aelina » Fri Apr 20, 2007 4:07 am

Well, I can tell you DID change the AI from 2, as you mentioned before though. XD Aelina actually managed to win for once!...although the tactics section also really helped too. >.>;

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Hi!

Postby Deathworks » Fri Apr 20, 2007 5:42 am

Hi!

Well, I am currently downloading the new beta, so no new information from me yet.

I already voted, though, because my heart lies with the single player content (I am offline at home, so this is really important for me). Of course I also like the VRPG and would love to see it done, but I am definitely not patient enough to give it preference above something that is likely to yield interesting results in the very near future.

ALL: Duamutef gives his e-mail address at his homepage for bug reports and other comments, but I strongly recommend to also consider using forums: This would help see what information about a given bug has been provided to Duamutef by others and if there is any solution or anything Duamutef has to say about it, he needs to say it only once.

Since I haven't installed the new beta yet, I don't know, but the old one also created HTML versions of the current screen. This came in quite handy when you had bugs with error messages or other things that might be difficult to explain. If that is still the case, I suggest trying to incorporate them in bug reports as needed.

Also try to provide information about what happened when. The reason for a bug may be a bit upstream, so such additional information can be helpful in locating some of the nefarious bugs. In other words, try to include any bit of information that might be useful.

I am not trying to be mean, but a bug report is only useful if people can respond to it. And lack of information is probably the biggest unnecessary problem people may face when handling bug reports.

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Re: Hi!

Postby Throku » Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:10 am

No offence towards Cartovore, but I really like that the poll is going "my way" :P VRPG for teh win!
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Re: Cartovore 2 Beta 2.012 Update

Postby Duamutef » Fri Apr 20, 2007 2:33 pm

Xenodeus wrote:Woo! Bugs! It doesn't seem to A) record how many resources I have, B) care if I have them when I play my cards. In other words, I can play all of my cards at once, and it doesn't cost anything :|


As for the first bug, resources no longer accumulate--you can spend a certain amount each turn (as determined by how much you generate), and whatever you don't spend is wasted.

As for the second, if you're using a Girlyburp deck or somesuch, it's possible that this is just happening by coincidence (the Girlyburp starter has cards that are so cheap that oftentimes you can pay for your entire starting hand on the first turn). It will also show your card plays whether you can afford them or not--it just won't put them into play. Instead, it will have a message saying "(Player) can't afford (cardname)" at whatever time the card would normally have come into play. For example, if you play a character card you can't afford, it will still appear as one of your card plays, but since characters enter play during Phase 10 (near the end of the turn), it won't try to pay for it until Phase 10, and that's when it will tell you you couldn't afford it.
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Postby Karbo » Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:57 pm

I admit I have not been too much into your cartovore serie. I vote shell then VRPG2 :)
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Re:

Postby Beany_one » Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:30 am

Upon loading for the first time (and every subsequent attempt), only the center box with all the pretty pictures of cards and crap displays properly. The top left and top right frames are blank black boxes, and the lower left and lower right ones display IE errors, which really confuses me. This of course means that not only can I not play the game proper, but I can't even buy cards. Is there something I'm missing that I need to play the game?

If it helps any, I recently reformatted my hard drive, so any and all programs I had I'm having to slowly reacquire. But I reeeeally want to get this working, even marginally.
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Re:

Postby HS » Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:14 am

Don't worry Beany_one. Those IE errors only show when the boxes have no actual content to show. Just click the small shopkeeper icon once you have entered the shop, and they start working.

As for my bug, the game randomly shows "Run-time error '9': Subscript out of range" error windows every now and then. Not too often to ruin the game, but often enough to severely annoy.
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Re:

Postby Xenodeus » Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:37 am

No, I really can play all my cards first turn no matter what. I'm playing as Charaina(sp?) Gurglemeister, and I can play Kyachuga immediately. I can play three girls first turn regardless of cost. It's possible that I just don't understand how the mechanics work, With the display showing 5 gold should I be able to play three girls and a demoness first turn? Some of whom cost more than 5?
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Won't start

Postby Deathworks » Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:28 am

Hi!

Geesh, it seems that I am the first one who can't get the game to start at all (or does it take more than 10 minutes before displaying anything on a 2.2 GHz machine? (because after around 10 minutes of nothing happening, my patience grew a bit thin)).

Installation was without much to report. First the installer informed me that some files were write-protected and required me to allow over-writing them anyway (otherwise installation wouldn't start). Then it asked about "dx7 vb.dll" and "VB6 STKIT.dll" (or something like that), because the versions installed were in a different language than the ones it was trying to install.

Regardless of whether I allowed the installer to overwrite the abovementioned two dlls or not, the game will not do anything. The task manager shows that it eats as much CPU capacity as it can, but beyond that, no reaction.

When I use the task manager to abort, the game itself gives a runtime error that some unspecified parameter was out of bounds.

Besides me using German XP SP2 with Japanese support activated, the other noteworthy fact may be that my standard browser is Firefox (Cartovore has a history of involving browsers, that's why I mention it).

I recently got a new internal C: hard disk, so I did install the game first at C:/Cartomancer and then ask the installer suggested at C:/Programme/Cartomancer .

I am reporting this issue, but frankly I am considering pulling out completely out of Duamutef's games. Not because of the quality but because of the installer. It doesn't really seem trustworthy to me and I am afraid of it destroying some important dlls without even telling me.

Getting all the different things I downloaded over the years to run was a hassle sometimes. There seem to be many different aspects of VB 6, for instance, so that you sometimes need to search for a specific variant. Then there are times when a specific dll is nearly impossible to find. Under these circumstances, I am not willing to put things at risk like that.

I know that XP has the system restoration function, but that does not seem to work correctly for dlls.

Sorry for this tough stance, but I have to set priorities. As long as the games only come as installer versions, I will keep my hands of them.

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Re:

Postby Beany_one » Sat Apr 21, 2007 9:07 am

Xenodeus wrote:No, I really can play all my cards first turn no matter what. I'm playing as Charaina(sp?) Gurglemeister, and I can play Kyachuga immediately. I can play three girls first turn regardless of cost. It's possible that I just don't understand how the mechanics work, With the display showing 5 gold should I be able to play three girls and a demoness first turn? Some of whom cost more than 5?


It displays them at the beginning of the turn saying you "played" them. Scroll down further and you'll see that it rejects it during the course of turn calculations.

I've noticed that I can never complete a game using the Gurglemeister deck. I always get so many turns then the game crashes with a script error (similar to the one that plagued VRPG oh-so-often).
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Postby Wanderer » Sat Apr 21, 2007 9:53 am

personally, i would most like to see some Fae and Angel starter decks, as they are my most favorite preds (isn't it quirky, that my favorite preds are invariably the least logically pred like?)

after that, more single player content would be nice and MAYBE multiplayer if you can swing it.

after that, i would consider Cartovore 2 complete enough and join the clamour of rabble yelling for work on VRPG2 ^_^
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Re:

Postby Number-2 » Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:14 pm

^ I'm with him in every way, I especially like fairy preds. At first, I didn't really get into Cartovore but now I really like it and would like to see a little more done with it, mainly the new starter decks and some more single player action.

Of course, I'm also greatly looking forward to VRPG 2 but that won't be for a while. Cartovore, VGame, or study for finals...hmmm...
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Re:

Postby okc_ohno » Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:24 pm

I put a Premium Shiacanda in my deck... and sometimes it tells me I have no player cards.
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Re:

Postby Silent_eric » Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:31 pm

I agree with those two. Fairy and Angel decks are needed. I'm apparantly in the minority, but I'd rather get some content every now and then than wait years for something.
Besides, I find that Cartovore has more replay value than the VRPGs.
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Re:

Postby HS » Sat Apr 21, 2007 3:29 pm

I agree. Cartovore definately has more replay value.

Oh, and it seems that when a character gets stunned, she never recovers from it. Not too much of a problem with weak cards, but stunning a Green Dragon and getting it out of play for good is sort of ridiculous.
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