While working on my BYOND Card game I have stumbled across an important question about a feature.
Would the players be angered if I was to provide special cards for a BYOND dime price? I have recently learned how to do this and I would like to use it to profit from my game slightly, but if it is frowned upon I will find another way (But this may slightly boost subscription price later on).
I don't plan to charge anything unreasonable either.
So far I have 40 characters designed, 10 magic cards, 8 elements, 15 traps, and the strongest card (Which can only be won in the global tournament).
I feel this game will be a great addition to BYOND if made correctly, and I hope it will. I have never been as excited and willing to make a game before, and I like it. I am always thinking of the outcome, it even sneaks up as daydreams during school.
Im curious if this is normal for someone's first byond game, or am I just strange?
I also hope to have a small test running when I reach around 250 cards (To offer some variation and challange)
James B.
...The Guardian of Dragons...
ID:265191
 Dec 17 2002, 1:38 pm
|
|
Maybe have a range of decks at differnt prices. Im not familiar with Card Games like this, but dont they have like the cheap crappy deck, then some better ones?
Maybe 2 Dimes for one of the C Class Decks, 5 Dimes for a B Class Deck, and 10 Dimes for a A Class Deck. Also, a must have feature is a way of trading the cards. Since the cards cost actual money quiet a trading ring could develop. -DogMan | |
dog man and garthor are both right I think. I think a central server would be a must, and so would trading. I like your ideas, and your dedication at the moment. Can't wait til I can see what you got going. Canar
| |
I've got a good system but it won't work. People won't buy. Simple as that.
-Sariat | |
People donate for stats all the time. Just as long as you have something there for starting off. Like someone said, Free Starter Deck and 2 or 3 Boosters.
Ive seen people pay for a lot less. -DogMan | |
These are some awesome ideas guys (Aside from sariat's pecimism) but every post has enlightened me.
I like the ideas of selling booster packs and starter decks for dimes (Single cards too, like they sell singles in card shops) I will start every player with a starter deck of their choice and 2 booster packs (8 cards per pack). Now I realize I have to have twice the amount of cards I wish to beta test.Also I would love to have help with a saving server and the such, if you could please email me the details and what I would need to do, etc.. If you would please. My email is [email protected], The price would be nice also (Hopefully I would have enough). Well guys, I will keep these ideas and realize that I wont be able to have this game test-worthy for a while. I am currently PC-less and am forced to use my school and parent's PC until December 23rd, when I will have a new one. Also as the prices go, If enough people spent dimes on cards and such, I could possibly have chances to win dimes at tourneys also, along with tournament cards or booster packs. (As stated I would have to experiment with this) Does anyone know how I can directly send dimes from my account to another without having to fill in my password manually? If so this would be great, and if not I guess this would be only possible if I was hosting the tourneys. I appreciate the help and truthfulness, and in response to sariat I will probably drop the requested prices some. <font color=teal>James B.</font> <font color=teal>...<font color=navy>Guardian of Dragons<font color=teal>... | |
it would be a good idea to email digitalmouse at [email protected] or you could log in to Chatters. He is usually in, and if hes AFK you could leave him a message
| |
Dragon Guardian wrote:
While working on my BYOND Card game I have stumbled across an important question about a feature. I have plans to eventually work out a BYOND CCG myself. If it goes forward, there will definitely be a charge for expansion packs. My feeling is that the game should be free to play for beginners, though, with starter cards. So far I have 40 characters designed, 10 magic cards, 8 elements, 15 traps, and the strongest card (Which can only be won in the global tournament). I don't think anyone's successfully managed a CCG in BYOND yet. It's ambitious for a first game, but not impossible. I hope it works out for you. One thing I should warn you about, though: I've given a lot of thought to this issue and I'm quite sure you can't trust the standard CCG model of only having limited numbers of certain cards and whatnot. The only decent solution I thought of to expansions is to sell access to expansion packs. The problem: In order to buy or trade cards, you'd be looking at either a big central server (prone to security issues and problems of its own) or client-side storage of what cards people have. But anything that can be stored on the client machine can be hacked, leading to situations where people can develop killer decks with cards they're not supposed to have. My thought here is that for each set of cards, you could either allow an unlimited number of those cards to be used in a deck, or limited by card, like for example only 2 of a certain character card per deck. The sets, however, except for the starter set, would be individual subscription items. Either you can use the cards in a given expansion set, or you can't. This way, people can make up decks of their own with any cards in any set--even sets they don't have access to--so they can change any file they like. It does them no good if the deck isn't playable (too many cards or inaccessible cards used) when they go to try it out, so client-side hacks would be meaningless. This is going to change the way you handle that strongest card idea. You have to proceed from the assumption that every player would want to put one in their deck, and would be able to, so you have to find a way to make illegal decks unplayable. Ultimately I think that means you have to tone down the effects of the card and limit its number in the deck. Another idea I propose: Put a limit on rarity in each deck. Each card can have a certain rarity value, so that the deck can't go above a given total (or ratio). An uncommon card might add 1 point, a rare one 3 points, and an ultra-rare one 9 points. Perhaps then the rule could be that the average rarity per card in the deck has to be no more than 0.8, forcing players to use common cards to balance the ratio out. The more rare or ultra-rare cards you use, the more common cards you need to make quota. And your deck editor could tell people how close to the limit (or how far over) they are, so they could make adjustments. Any illegal deck would simply be rejected by the game when it came time to play. Lummox JR | |
Addendum to that bit on rarity restrictions: It's entirely possible to use those for variations in play, so a beginner-friendly game uses a low rarity limit or excludes certain expansion sets, while a tournament game might set a high limit (or none at all).
Lummox JR | |
I've actually been working on the concept for one in my spare time, not sure if I'll even get to the code planning stage but it's still kind of a fun little project.
Anyway, if you used something like AirMapster's RC5 encryption program, what sorts of risks would there still be? I heard it was cracked but it took hundreds of thousands of home computers working together for over a year to crack it (or one istance of it) by using exhaustion. As I've said before, I don't know much about security so what other kinds of security problems could there be if you used a system like that? | |
English wrote:
I've actually been working on the concept for one in my spare time, not sure if I'll even get to the code planning stage but it's still kind of a fun little project. The key to the encryption should be, I believe, available in the .dmb somewhere; either that or it can be retrieved online from a central server, but it still has to be transmitted at some point. Because we have no asymmetric encryption yet, anything approaching decent security can't be done, and even then it's gonna be a witch to do right. Bottom line is, though, that client-side savefiles are somewhat vulnerable no matter how good your encryption is. The only way to have real security with them is to make sure that the data they contain can't cause any trouble if they're heavily manipulated. For example, the deck-saving scheme I mentioned would use client-side saves, but it wouldn't matter because ultimately the .dmb is the arbiter of whether the deck is kosher or not; it doesn't care if you hacked your savefile because a hacked one would do you no good. Whereas if you have a card collection saved, and manipulate that to gain access to more and/or better cards, the .dmb can't tell if you're full of crap or not. (I can think of some hashing schemes that might alleviate part of the problem, but they'd need to be combined with a server and it's still not a perfect solution.) Lummox JR | |
Technically speaking, you'd have to crack into the server to get the DMB if the files were stored client-side; the only thing that is done is to transmit the client's savefile up to the server -- the server does all decryption and re-encryption itself.
Plus, there's still the matter of decoding the proprietary DMB format, which no one seems to have attempted yet. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
Technically speaking, you'd have to crack into the server to get the DMB if the files were stored client-side; the only thing that is done is to transmit the client's savefile up to the server -- the server does all decryption and re-encryption itself. But this is true only if the .dmb isn't downloadable and the key is dynamic. A static key would be stored in the file. Plus, there's still the matter of decoding the proprietary DMB format, which no one seems to have attempted yet. If the key is just a string, it can be read right from the .dmb. Decoding the bytecode would be significantly harder but there's no reason to believe it's impossible. Once this hurdle is crossed--even partly--a lot of existing client-side save solutions even with encryption will become moot. Lummox JR | |
Two things -- one, there's nothing requiring someone to store a decryption key in a savefile (in fact, that'd be something I'd list in the "stupid" category ;-P); one universal static key stored in the DMB itself is completely safe if you're not distributing the DMB.
Two, even if you're distributing the DMB, strings in DMB files are compressed (I've looked). Even if it's just a run-length compression, actually separating what is a string and what is bytecode would require quite a bit of effort. | |
Spuzzum wrote:
Two things -- one, there's nothing requiring someone to store a decryption key in a savefile (in fact, that'd be something I'd list in the "stupid" category ;-P); one universal static key stored in the DMB itself is completely safe if you're not distributing the DMB. Er... I don't recall saying anything along the lines of storing decryption keys in the savefile. That would indeed be stupid. Two, even if you're distributing the DMB, strings in DMB files are compressed (I've looked). Even if it's just a run-length compression, actually separating what is a string and what is bytecode would require quite a bit of effort. Well, that's encouraging I guess. Lummox JR | |
Garthor wrote:
And then you change the encryption every update, and you're done! Indeed; because by doing so, you'll have rendered all your savefiles useless and won't even need to implement encryption at all. Once the key is set, it can't be abandoned as long as there are files that use it. Lummox JR | |
I think what I'd end up doing is probably keeping a list of what cards each player has on a central server and when they purchase more cards have them added to that list. Then let them design decks and such on their own computer using a list they would download from the server. Each time they logged on, the server would just check the list of cards in their deck with the list of cards they have available and look for any inconsistencies.
| |
Anyway, to summarize, people will be pissed if you charge for specific cards, but charging for the game (or for all cards) will suppress these complaints.