One of the most powerful features of the Action system is the way it can chain together actions with reactions into a long sequence of events. At the moment we have only implemented a single action – changing turns, but in a game like Hearthstone, this action will always have at least one reaction. When a player starts their turn, they are supposed to draw a card. Let’s go ahead and implement the draw a card feature as a reaction to the action for changing turns.
C#
Make a CCG – Action Viewer
In the previous lesson, we implemented the systems and models necessary to change turns. However, outside of watching a checkmark appear in a unit test, there was no visible evidence of anything occuring. Having a “view” to represent the data is an important step of the process, but is something that really can be anything you want, and therefore should be separated as much as possible. The final result could be 2D or 3D. It doesn’t have to be animated, though it definitely could be, and might even include stuff like flashy particles, who knows? The important thing is that a user can understand and interact with the game.
Make a CCG – Changing Turns
We’ve laid some nice foundations in the past few lessons, and now its time to actually start building up the game on top of it all. We’ll start with somthing pretty simple to help drill in the basic ideas, while also adding a little more functionality. Since we are making a turn based game, we’ll begin by learning to change turns.
Make a CCG – Action System
In a game like Hearthstone, every action is significant and can serve as the trigger for a whole new sequence of actions. This includes obvious actions like attacking and casting spells, but also includes less obvious actions such as drawing cards and even changing turns! Although you may already be familiar with event-driven programming, you may not have thought about ways to sort event responders by custom criteria, or considered how to invoke the handlers over time so that you can also play animations in sequence. Let’s look at some architecture to support these ideas.
Make a CCG – Data Modeling
We started out by creating an architecture to allow systems to talk to each other, and still don’t have any systems. Even worse, we have no models for the systems to operate on! Let’s take a few steps back and start building up our game from the beginning.
Make a CCG – Aspect Container & Test Runner
Whenever I begin a new project, the first thing I think about is how I want to set up the architecture. Basically I am looking for the answer to this question: “How will all the stuff know about all the other stuff?”. In the past I usually resorted to a pattern called the Singleton to make it easy for data to be accessible from anywhere. In this case, I don’t want to rely on Singletons because I want my code to be testable, and from what I have read, the two don’t tend to go together well.
Make a CCG – Intro
The goal of this project series will be to create a foundation from which you could make your own Collectible Card Game (CCG) / Trading Card Game (TCG). I sent out a poll to see what everyone would be most interested in building, but the results were pretty much the same for every entry and included a bunch of games I had never played. So, I decided to base the series primarily on Hearthstone, since it is my personal favorite.
Unofficial Pokemon Board Game – Complete
Congratulations, you’ve reached the final post on this project. We’ve come a long way and added a ton of features. In this lesson I will just add a bit of polish, and then round it out by adding some challenges for you to try on your own.
Unofficial Pokemon Board Game – Audio
Audio can make a huge impact on the immersion you feel with a game. In some cases the right music and sound fx can get you excited even when there is nothing visual or interactive to influence you in the same way. Since a goal of this project is to make it feel very complete, we will need to add this important feature.
Unofficial Pokemon Board Game – Saved Games
We are nearly feature complete with this project. There is enough in place that we can complete the entire game flow now. This means we will actually add the “game over” state, and declare a winner. We will also add the necessary functionality to save and load a game so you can come back to it later.