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>>>>>>>>>edit: See page 2 for details on Alpha testing the project. <<<<<<<<<<<<
Hi folks, I'm currently working on a personal project as a bit of portfolio building and creative challenge. The result has been the beginnings of a fairly solid LoL DDCG (edit: I've found that a more up-to date industry term is 'living card game').
DDCG's are basically CCG's without the collecting element, you generally get all you need to play in a single deck of cards, and all players are on an even footing. My goal was to recreate the 'feel' of a league game as closely as possible in the major generalities (different champion roles, scaling, importance of fights early and late, importance of laning matchups etc). The result I think is fairly elegant but has incredible potential depth, in very much the same way as LoL itself
Here's a basic outline of the game
- players draft from either a personal (standard) or shared (friendly games) pool of champions similarly to normal league picks and bans
- there are three types of card: champions, items and summoner cards. Champions are persistent cards with abilities and stats, to which item cards can be attached. They gather tokens as a resource, and expend them to use abilities or buy items.
Item cards are designed to be appended to champion cards. By slotting them under the champion card, they extend its statistics area and give it new abilities.
Summoner cards represent summoner spells and 'plays' either individual (jukes and dives) or team based (teamfights or baron attempts), these are kept as a traditional hidden hand of cards.
- there's a simple 'core' play structure, with each player alternating turns making an action with a champion along the line. These turns involve farming, attacking the lane opponent or roaming, which renders the champ vulnerable but lets them gank, buy or laneswap. A full set of 10 turns is a cycle, each cycle players redraw summoner cards and the stakes get raised a bit (kills are worth more, summoner cards become more powerful etc)
- on top of this, champions have unique sets of abilities and players have access to summoner cards to shift the balance in a few places where needed. These drive the pace of the game
I'm taking a break from crunching the rules to do some card designs and I thought you might appreciate a look, since that's usually more interesting for folks than the gritty details of nutting out a game. Enjoy:
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/TF-1.jpg)
The TF graphic and rune graphics are filched from official art, the rest are my designs based on the ingame LoL UI
I'll try and put some notes here and there to appraise folks of progress, In time I'd love to get some people interested in playtesting, so let me know if this takes your fancy. If any of you out there have a real hard-on for analogue game design, PM me and I'll get you in on the gritty stuff.
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Pootie too good!4331 Posts
This looks so awesome! I would definitely be interested in trying to play this. Keep up the good work and keep us posted! How long do you think you have left until you come to a point where you need alpha testers?
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If you need alpha testers for the game, I definitely want to do it :D
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On February 23 2013 01:10 Abenson wrote:
If you need alpha testers for the game, I definitely want to do it :D
Yeah, sign me up for this as well if possible.
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edit: I updated the preview card in the OP to something more complete. Still WiP but with more of a feel for the final product.
Alpha testing will probably begin in a couple of months. It'll probably take about a month to design the three card templates given all the intricate art I intend to put into them.
My plan is to design a 'starter set' which includes the 18 alpha champions in two decks, each of which contains 6 shared and 6 unique champs. The standard champion pool size is 12- enough to allow 1 ban per player and still have enough champions that you don't have to pick duplicates if both players have the same pool.
you then have up to 40 item cards and a deck of at least 30 summoner cards. These will mostly be shared but I'd anticipate having to do maybe 50 item designs and 40 summoner card designs. This is where most of the work will come in, because even with a standard template bashing out all those cards will take a while. Once that's all done I'll draft up a testing rulebook and we're set to go.
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so I've more or less finalised the champ card designs and drafted up a few examples. I'd appreciate some feedback if anyone has thoughts on the design and what might be tweaked for better clarity and visibility. I should stress that these cards are 1.5 times the dimensions of a standard poker/magic card and consequently have a little more than twice the surface idea. For a good idea, put two playing cards side to side, that's how big the champ cards will be.
Hope these graphics aren't too big for folks, if you shrink them down to net resolution you miss a lot of the detail that would come out in print.
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/TwistedFate.png)
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/Annie.png)
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/MasterYi.png)
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Can you explain a little as to how the mechanics work exactly?
I'm really interested in this but I can't quite wrap my head around paying rune costs and what the little symbol for 'pay ___' is.
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Ok, so originally I had 3 stats: health, ad, ap. It was pretty elegant but it just didn't really allow differentiation of champions and items etc.
The stat bar now has three sections. The large icons at left and right represent the overall physical (red) or magic/ability (blue) damage. The smaller icons represent stats that contribute to that overall strength (for physical it's AD, ASP, Crit for example). When an ability deals damage equal to the large icon, it means you combine the three smaller ones and do that much (plus a synergy bonus in some cases). If it lists a smaller one, you deal only the amount of that particular stat.
So TF adds only the amount in the leftmost blue column to his basic attack if he uses pick a card, while Annie deals the total amount in all three of the blue columns when she uses disintegrate or tibbers. If yi has a *shell* value of 3, he multiplies his healing amount by 3.
The central section is hitpoints, armor and MR. armor and MR subtract their value from attacks of the relevant type, hitpoints are hitpoints. The hitpoint bubble is larger because I'm planning for people having a die or something on top of it to keep track of current HP.
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ok, so I was originally going to do some more designs for the summoner cards based on the LoL air client UI, but I really liked how the colours and feel of the champ cards came out so I just hacked together a design from that, which leaves only the item card design to do. that one *will* be a little more complicated, but I can still use a fair bit of the champ card designs I did. Anyhow, here's a showcase of three summoner cards.
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/Flash2.png)
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/Ghost2.png)
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/BaronNashor2.png)
For a brief explanation:
- summoner cards are used like your hand in magic, but they don't have creature cards, only the equivalents of sorceries, instants, enchants etc. Rather than have categories, each card has the conditions under which it may be played listed clearly
- the icons at the top right are the card's discard value. You can only have set amount of cards in your hand, so you sometimes need to discard them. When you do, you get tokens (the universal resource of the game) equal to their discard value distributed among your champions. More readily useable cards like flash, which you can always find a good use for, have a low discard value because... Well, otherwise they'd be way too good. More circumstantial cards like Baron Nashor have higher discard values so they remain as valuable throughout the game as cards like flash- early game you can toss them for a big token haul, late game you can use their primary effect to make game winning plays.
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I finally have all the types of card design done. So here are some sample item cards.
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/Longsword.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/trinityforce.jpg)
These are designed to slot into the base of a champion card so you easily keep track of their stats like so
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/cardsample.jpg)
now comes the dreary task of drafting up a hundred or so cards. Oh goody.
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Infuriatingly annoying with all the unnecessary abbreviations. What is a DDCG?
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My apologies, though as far as I can see I'm not abbreviating all that much. DDCG stands for dedicated deck card game, a catchall term for card games that use cards specific to the game rather than standard sets like poker cards. Collectible/ trading card games (CCGs and TCGs) are varieties of DDCG, but this game isn't really either of those.
I should probably have realized that not everyone is familiar with game design jargon 
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this looks amazing -- although I've never really tried card games too much (I tried pokemon/mtg very briefly) and not entirely sure how you're gonna make this work, I'm interested in keeping up with your progress and maybe you can add me to alpha/beta test list? :p
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On February 28 2013 08:45 Thereisnosaurus wrote:My apologies, though as far as I can see I'm not abbreviating all that much. DDCG stands for dedicated deck card game, a catchall term for card games that use cards specific to the game rather than standard sets like poker cards. Collectible/ trading card games (CCGs and TCGs) are varieties of DDCG, but this game isn't really either of those. I should probably have realized that not everyone is familiar with game design jargon
That came off harsh, sorry. Thanks for the explanation. Unnecessary abbreviations pop up everywhere in the LOL forum, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you.
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Excellent, I would love to give a hand for the alpha !
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Pootie too good!4331 Posts
Looking better every day! I would definitely be interested in trying this one day.
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I just got done editing all the champ cards together, so they're set to go, we have 18
6 common champs: ryze, TF, ashe, nunu, sivir, jax
6 'light' champs: alistar, yi, kayle, teemo, tris, soraka,
6 'dark' champs: Singed, warwick, sion, morgana, annie, fiddle
These distinctions are mostly for aesthetics, but the playtest decks I'm doing up will have 12 champs each- the 6 common champs and either light or dark champs. Adds a bit of colour to the game, though it can just as easily be played with all 18 as a common pool.
As an aside, if there are any comic or graphic artists reading this who would be interested in helping out doing card designs for the summoner cards, I'd love to hear from you.
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United States15536 Posts
Still super cool this thing here.
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Little update, I've posted up the first overall rundown of the game on my blog, whence most of the playtesting and so on will be organised. there isn't a whole lot new for you guys, just a few nifty graphics and a gameplay rundown
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Melbourne5338 Posts
Am I invited to pre alpha testing? I have boxes of spare mtg cards if you need. not so much in the sleeve department.
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If you haven't caught it yet, Master Yi's ult says "enter and engagement". ^^
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Your blog is really interesting dude. I look forward to reading more of it!
Also
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This looks amazing. Don't hesitate at all to PM if you need help with anything or are looking for people to help play test. Keep up the good work!
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Am I invited to pre alpha testing? I have boxes of spare mtg cards if you need. not so much in the sleeve department.
You will be! but I'm not sure there'll be a pre-alpha, it'll go to alpha the moment I get the cardsets finished.
If you haven't caught it yet, Master Yi's ult says "enter and engagement". ^^
yah, that's been fixed on the master card *blush*
Your blog is really interesting dude. I look forward to reading more of it!
Also
You...
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Lol I forget what I was going to say but my posting has gotten fucked up lately, lol
I think I was going to ask about the game testing or something.
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this looks really cool but I am so simple minded idk if I could figure any of it out @___@ but really interesting ~~ gj!!
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On March 27 2013 08:54 Thereisnosaurus wrote:Show nested quote +Am I invited to pre alpha testing? I have boxes of spare mtg cards if you need. not so much in the sleeve department. You will be! but I'm not sure there'll be a pre-alpha, it'll go to alpha the moment I get the cardsets finished. Show nested quote +If you haven't caught it yet, Master Yi's ult says "enter and engagement". ^^ yah, that's been fixed on the master card *blush* Show nested quote +Your blog is really interesting dude. I look forward to reading more of it!
Also You...
I figured but the earlier it's caught the better ^^ Love the concept!
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So bit of a progress report for the folks around here. Contact has finally been established with Riot (if that was you Mogwai, cheers ^^) and it seems I'm ok to use the artwork for this project, so it's all ahead full. I don't have a huge amount to show other than text, but I thought y'all might appreciate a sneak preview of the rulebook taking shape
![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/prev-1.jpg)
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United States23745 Posts
On April 08 2013 14:57 Thereisnosaurus wrote:So bit of a progress report for the folks around here. Contact has finally been established with Riot (if that was you Mogwai, cheers ^^) and it seems I'm ok to use the artwork for this project, so it's all ahead full. I don't have a huge amount to show other than text, but I thought y'all might appreciate a sneak preview of the rulebook taking shape
That's cool they're okay with you using the art. Also definitely some interesting concepts with the game itself.
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This is really amazing that you got contact with Riot now. I saw this thread before, and it seems like your making some real progress.
personally a huge fan of CCGs(i play a bajillion of them) , really interesting to see this go forward.
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Have you had any updates with this?
Can I alpha test? 
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Hi guys, the time for my solitary grinding is drawing to a close and the alpha will soon be upon us. As TL is my home community I want to give you guys the first chance to get in on this thing, so here we go
First things first, for the alpha tests I'm only taking people who have the skills, resources and commitmment to really be valuable testers. At a later stage I'll open up for more laissez-faire testing, but the alpha process will be one with a lot of micromanagement and very specific testing mechanisms. An alpha game is just not anywhere near finished and in many senses is unplayable. Testers need to be able to bandaid broken bits on the fly so they can focus on the particular stuff that is the current focus of testing.
What I'm looking for in the alpha group is the following:
1) you need to have reliable time and opponents to set aside ideally once a week, at least once a fortnight to spend perhaps 3-5 hours playing the game for several months. Since the alpha group will be small, I can't afford to have weeks where half the testers don't get games in so we have massively limited testing data. Committing this much time to a game is pretty siginficant, so don't take it lightly
2) you need to have the resources to get yourself a cardset. I'll provide templates, but you'll need to print them and cut them. the best way of doing this will probably be using a photo printing service to print the cards- probably about 120 individual photos worth- and then trimming them all with knife or scissors then sleeving them. You can get away with home printing, but you'll burn a lot of ink. You'll then need to do it all again in six months or so when the cards are updated for beta.
3) you need to be able to provide eloquent feedback, not just multiple choice checkoff or things like 'it feels good' or 'it's too slow'. significant experience with card and board games will be pretty essential. Being able to analyse your own play as well. Since I can 100% guarantee you will find things that are utterly broken in the game, you'll need to be able to bandaid those on your own so you can keep testing without needing to go through me, so confidence and opponents who are willing to muck around with shit on the fly (IE not sore losers, or hyper competitive people) are pretty vital.
4) you'll also need to be able to keep things somewhat under wraps and have friends who can do the same. Even with Riot's consent on the project, there are a whole bunch of things that people could do which would not be cool if testers released their testing material.
In summary: You need time, money, discretion and skill to be an alpha tester on this project. Why the fuck should you bother?
1) because I'm being picky about my test group, you will be working with other people who have time, money and skill. Consequently, you will probably be meeting some cool cats and having a really interesting experience.
2) alpha testers will be considered part of the design team and you'll actively get a say in how the game develops. You'll be listed in the credits as part of the team and if riot decides to do anything nice for us, you'll get it before I do.
3) I'm going to make every attempt to make this something noticeable and professional. The sort of thing that you can put on your CV and not feel awkward about having there. So if you're looking to develop a portfolio in the area, this project might help that. If it snowballs hard enough you might even become a community celebrity XD
So, that all said, if you think you'd like in, send me a PM and tell me a bit about yourself. The wall of text might seem a little frightening, but really all there is to it is I want people who'll stick by the project and join in, not grab a copy of the rulebook, lose interest or send it to their friends and peace out. If you're not someone like that, you're probably set ^^.
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EPT
