Note: Get your images from either of the high-quality rightmost sources. The "EVE-ccg" source has gifs, which, due to a bug, will cause the table revert to showing text when playing against jpeg users.
* How do I find out which one is my deck / which are my cards. * Is there a way to keep other players from peeking at my cards. * Is there something like a hand?
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Vhati
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Posts: 25
Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/15 10:14* How do I find out which one is my deck / which are my cards.Like a real table, you can arrange decks/cards however you want, usually top vs bottom or left vs right.
I proposed one layout in the linked thread.
* Is there a way to keep other players from peeking at my cards.If you can't trust your opponent, there isn't much point to playing, is there?
In any case, there are cards that let you peek legally, and enforcing maleable rules and making every card intelligent are beyond the scope of this 'table'.
* Is there something like a hand?Surprisingly there are only rare occasions when the concept of a hand matters. I'll add such an object in future versions, but here's how it works now...
When you're playing against someone, cards are independently visible to you or your opponent. Your 'hand' is simply any pile of cards that are face up for you alone (everything you draw is like that). When you play a card, you drag it elsewhere and 'Remote Flip' it to show your opponent.
Post edited by: Vhati, at: 2008/04/15 10:19
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Kempeth
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Posts: 367
Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/15 15:29Ok. Thanks for the answers. I didn't see the link to the other thread. I will check it out. Vhati wrote: * Is there a way to keep other players from peeking at my cards.If you can't trust your opponent, there isn't much point to playing, is there?
In any case, there are cards that let you peek legally, and enforcing maleable rules and making every card intelligent are beyond the scope of this 'table'.if you have no way to know if someone was just better or if they cheated, suspicions will grow... I think you underestimate the temptation and there rarely is any need for a player to manipulate the cards of an opponent (Mutiny being the only instance that springs to mind)
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Buhallin
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/15 17:14I've gotta agree with Kempeth on this one... For a system to allow your opponent to peek at your deck without even telling you it's happened is... wrong.
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Now that I think about it, it is notifying, whenever someone looks at or manipulates a deck, an orange lock appears to let you know something's happening. If you're not doing it, you can suspect cheating.
There are just sooo many other ways to cheat: Like quietly rotating/moving cards.
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Now that I think about it, it is notifying, whenever someone looks at or manipulates a deck, an orange lock appears to let you know something's happening. If you're not doing it, you can suspect cheating.
There are just sooo many other ways to cheat: Like quietly rotating/moving cards. A written notice is better since you might miss the symbol/overlook the symbol.
Also how can I make counters visible to the other player? I need some way to count my ISK and it is kind of pointless if both players have to keep track of both players ISK. And just imagine the funny arguments if they happen to disagree at a critical point of the game because of a mistake long ago...
Some zooming functionality would also be great...
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Vhati
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/16 11:49Also how can I make counters visible to the other player?Whenever you change the value of your counter and click elsewhere, the new value appears in the chat for all to see.
Some zooming functionality would also be great...Zooming seems good until you imagine using it.
If you want to zoom in and read the cards, you can only fit a few on the screen at a time. If you want to zoom out, you're moving blurry squares around.
That's why there's a full-size window that shows whatever card you wave the mouse over, and a minimap for truely epic games.
Post edited by: Vhati, at: 2008/04/16 13:46
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Buhallin
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/16 14:27Vhati wrote: There are just sooo many other ways to cheat: Like quietly rotating/moving cards. FWIW I don't think this should happen, either.
When I wrote TableTalk, EVERY action came with a log description, especially something which provided any opportunity for actions outside the game rules. IMHO, you have to have some system for ensuring compliance with the rules - if you aren't going to implement full rules (and who would want to??), the only option left is to leave it to the players, and the players can't do that if you don't tell them what's going on.
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Vhati
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/16 23:38Automated notices:I moved "UberShip" a few pixels to the right. I moved "UberShip" a few pixels down. You rotated a card 90 degrees. You group moved "This" "That", and "The Other" 70 pixels up. I drew a card from a deck (which deck, there could be 7 gotta identify them). There are no game-specific zones like in-play, or hand, or mine/yours. To have zones, would mean defining a LOT more and losing layout freedom.
Terms as well would need defining, are you mining, patroling, tapping, spending, or bowing? Then it snowballs to the point that the table can only play one game, no alternate/house rules, and risks breaking when a mechanic changes. These are of course the strengths and weaknesses of having a rules-aware engine.
It's much more natural to simply tell your opponent the salient bits of what you're doing.Crime Pays expires. I get 2 cards and 8 ISK Imicus's assembled +20 ISK I got a Legal Department, bounce your Market Research. : ) Imicus warps over to Gneiss and starts mining. Done This of course assumes neither player is going to render the whole endevor pointless by tossing out the rulebook.
Is a win fun if you cheat? The test of skill is gone when you know the future or get ISK from nowhere. If winning is all that matters, you'll get more wins per minute predicting coin tosses or playing rock-paper-scissors. If you lose, why assume the other guy cheated? If he is a compulsive cheater, don't you call him out on the forums and get him ostracised?
Getting philosophical, the importance of winning is immediately moot once it's over; all that you'd look back on are the fun bits and how your deck performed.
I'm not underestimating the temptation to cheat, I'm puzzled that it exists at all.
Post edited by: Vhati, at: 2008/04/17 01:27
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Buhallin
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/17 05:00<shrug> I don't disagree. Like it or not, though, they're out there. I've played them in real life, and I've played them online. An ode to the silliness of cheating doesn't make it go away, and it doesn't stop a community from disintegrating once a rep for cheating develops.
I do see what you mean about the reporting - making TableTalk strictly EVE allowed me to implement the sort of things that a generic system like Arcanist would have a very hard time doing.
Is there any way to attach cards to each other? If you could link or attach cards somehow, then reporting changes in rotation and linkage would provide most of the necessary coverage.
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A permanent parent-child effect, no. However you can form temporary groups for mass moving/rotating/counting/etc by shift-dragging a box around several objects. It's really just a convenience for repeating actions.
This keeps the relative positions intact (attachments above/left/right/labels/tokens/etc).
Place one card on another; then later: box em up, move, and ungroup.
If you've got a ton of cards attached, you can store em in an empty deck, drag that around, and list the contents when necessary.
One trick that Warlord players use (in real life too) since they have attached cards that have to rotate, is to keep them off to the side with a note that they belong on their main guy. Then that card can move about the play area without cluttering things up.
Essentially, whatever you might do at a physical table, ArcanistCCG can do.* Attached cards aren't glued together, but you can pick some up and relocate them or scoot a thick pile around and tell your opponent they're attached.
(*except for dropping cards from above )
Post edited by: Vhati, at: 2008/04/17 08:07
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Kempeth
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/17 08:26I like how your program is so flexible that every game can define it's own fields for card attributes. A nice extension on this would be if the games could also define standard groups. In EVE's case those would be 'Hand', 'Regions', 'Scrapheap' (or does it already have a scapheap?) then If you need to play with open hand you simply select the 'Hand' group and make it visible to the opponent. As for drawing cards you could simply drag the card from the deck to the 'Hand' group...
The next idea comes from my dealings with OCTGN. Every card there can only be manipulated by the player who played the card. This gets around all the issues of peeking at opponent cards. Notifications in the chat like '<Playername> looks at the cards in his deck' would expose any peeking at a player's own cards. The only problems this way occur with regions and with Mutiny. But that is easily solved with a 'Give control to <Playername>' option in the context menu.
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Vhati
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Re:Playing Online with ArcanistCCG is Easy Now - 2008/04/17 08:52Hmm, region objects will be an excellent addition: labelled zones (literally rectangles) that report when things enter/exit. Not defined by the game, but rather another element that can be placed. Could get chatty, but hey, right-click: Remove.
Scrapheap would equate to an empty deck, aka discard pile.
I plan to make a hand object (draggable listbox) that functionally resembles a deck you can always see inside. For now, a clump of you-only cards suffices quite well. This object will be mainly for when the clump gets huge or for choosing random cards.
If you need to play with open hand you simply select the 'Hand' group and make it visible to the opponent.Box up the clump of cards you think of as your hand, and "remote flip".
As for drawing cards you could simply drag the card from the deck to the 'Hand' group...Click a deck. The card appears face-up to you face-down to the other guy by default. Drag it to the clump of cards you call your hand.
The next idea comes from my dealings with OCTGN. Every card there can only be manipulated by the player who played the card.This is a powerful concept. Thanks. I see why they settled on donation. Prompting or 'lend'/'take back' could get messy. And it will make notices more meaningful by adding 'your'/'his'. Yeah ownership will definitely get worked in.
I hope you guys aren't judging entirely from screenshots. It only takes a couple minutes now to get it playing EVE. And remember, objects on the table have context menus, as do the tabs in the chat window. Combined with grouping, you can play just about anything.
Its minimalist interface should not be confused with a lack of features or alpha-ness.
Post edited by: Vhati, at: 2008/04/17 10:03
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