Okay, an early status email before midnight!
Connection issues are resolved!
An authentication issues remain. Basically sometimes the authentication response from AWS itself is truncated and thus unusable. This invalidates that code since I’ve just spent it getting that truncated response. Apparently it’s because I asked for the response in JSON which is something I can handily decode in Unreal and AWS likes to do that. This is AWS, one third of three quarters of two hundred percent of the whole internet runs on AWS and I guarantee you someone else uses JSON. So I’m thinking it’s still on me somehow.
The biggest thing I worked on today was the framework for individual decks and sets. You own your own cards, hundreds of them, thousands of them, probably more than fifty. But you make a set of fifty that you play with in the deck builder.
BUT we have card rarities, and here is where I’m scoping a change to make our deadline to launch in 7 weeks and 6 days (OH YES. WE ARE LAUNCHING IN LESS THAN 8 WEEKS. THAT”S NEWS FOLKS!). Originally and on Monday I was planning on five levels or rarity with the cards but I’m going to scope it to FOUR.
What do the rarer cards give me?
Well, I’m going to campaign that the rarest cards give you Andy Lanning artwork. I even made some mock up artwork. :-)
But the big thing is that rarer the card the cooler the effect is when you play it and your opponent knows it. The effect on a common card might be two dimensional particles while the effect on a ultra-rare card might be the four horses of the apocalypse riding across and dancing on your opponent. Same effect on your opponent scores, but much cooler right?
Hopefully people will enjoy getting the rarer cards in their decks and seeing them played. No other card game does this as far as I know btw.
But mainly I’m campaigning for Andy Lanning artwork on the ultra-rare cards, remember that we don’t need to launch with a full set of ultra rare available, those can become available in a pack later on (throwing a bone to Andy there).
So why reduce the levels of rarity from five to four?
Because say the aim is to have one hundred cards for launch (one hundred different abilities).
One hundred cards times four levels of rarity is actually four hundred cards at launch. With a particle effect possible for attack, death, defense, and placement, that’s A LOT.
Our active users hitting the game site also increase again today so the game is locked down now to authenticated users only, I did that because the number of unique new IP addresses jumped today. We should probably get on the trademarking and IP protection stuff.
Seven weeks, six days.
Graeme.
