Song (Dragon Song Dream Dancer)

Song is a card game I made a few years ago, well made up. It was originally intended for actual printing and play. It is not so much a collectible card game, but still a fantasy one. Its full name is "Dragon Song Dream Dancer" Its a game about gang warfare. Sorta.

Each player uses their own identical deck, or can draw from the same one if desired. The cards were to be 'Bridge' sized cards, which are a bit narrower than poker cards. This was to get more cards out of a sheet, I believe 118 instead of 108, so I had sized the decks around that number.

The game is simple, you basically have a number and type. Numbers range from 1-10, with a bell curve putting most around 5 or 6 and very few 1s and 10s. Types were Characters and Equipment, with equips being Weapons and Armor and Artifacts. I had considered a few 'Actions' as well.

You could put a Character in play and the it could attack with its Rank, you could put a weapon on the right to increase attack value letting you best or "KO" higher rank cards and an Armor on the left to increase defense value meaning higher rank cars wee needed to KO that character and remove it from play. There were some abilities denoted by symbols and included in the deck on an index card that explained them.

The game was very abstract with a strong desire on my part to make the game open, so different groups could create different house rules and meanings for some of the symbols. You would purchase a deck for $10-12 and you could play with your friends and possibly where each person had a deck. It was intended to have several different variations. I had hoped some places would have it where you could have as many of the same card as you wanted and in others you could only use the base deck, things like that. In some places cards acted simultaneously in others at the end of the players turn.

So this very abstract game about martial combat that reduces CCGs to basically one number was put on hold because I didnt have $5,000 laying around to hope people would have bought the first 500-1000 decks and Id have broken even and maybe doubled my money depending on shipping. Come forward a few years and I am working on a computer card game that is much more complex with 3 numbers on each card for attack, defense and speed, various powers and abilities and formations on a 4x8 board of cards. I got pretty much to the point cards could be shuffled, dealt and played but got stumped on computer AI and turn sequence. So I decided to take Song and convert it to a computer game since it was a lot more simplified and I thought easier to do.

Another year has gone by and Ive been through a divorce and custody battle and some other issues that have taken me away from development. Life Happens. Now that the dust has settled, Im trying to pick back up on where I was. I have gotten pretty frustrated trying to use AS3 and flashdevelop, I had gone to them because I was hoping to get some revenue off of Kongregate and start publishing really small titles. About halfway through, Kong opened up to unity games so I feel like I wasted a lot of time. I guess I learned a new language and that is good.

I have a Poker demo I wrote for school, it does most everything except flushes and straights, it is kinda playable and has a card class with suit and rank and another class for the game logic. Its not terribly advanced but it is listed here for anyone that might want it as a starting point and such. Anyway, it will be where Im going to start from for Song.

So, onto Song itself then, enough History. Song was a simplified game and Skirmish, its sequel is much more advanced. Id like to get Song working and playable then move onto Skirmish, a true collectible card game in the vein of Magic the Gathering and Legend of the Five Rings or such.

I have a design Document Im working on and some AS3 files also posted below. Ill post some links to the skirmish pics too. Song is pretty simple, there are 3 places on each side of the board you can play Characters to, a place at the bottom for your hand and deck, 3 places opposite you for your opponents characters and a shared 'floor' where discarded weapons and armor get put. "Life" is your deck, characters that are not blocked directly across deal their Rank, plus and Weapon Rank, to the opponents 'territory' and they discard that many cards. When you run out of cards, you lose. It is very, very simple. Right now Im going with decks of around ten cards or so, probably with doubles of everything, so 20 cards.

Here is a link to my design doc, its still in progress:

Design Doc



I need a bit of help getting going and such, mostly on structure, how to I setup my classes and any game states? Do I just use GUI Textures or is making a simple Card Object that is a thin flattened Cube in the shape of a card a better way? These and many other questions next time on "Song" the creation of a Card game in unity! Right now my goal is to get ported to unity, so you will have cards that can be shuffled, dealt out to a starting hand, played, the turn switches to the computer and it plays its biggest card that turn, attacks and this continues until the game is over one way or the other, followed by a victory/defeat screen and a button to play again. A basic menu would be nice. Id like to get Characters played and items equipped and combat actions. Im not worried about adding powers or anything yet. Just basic High Card-Low Card mechanics. This is going to be played with just a Mouse in a Web Browser. I could really use guidance and steering on this, I have been told Im a decent programmer, I just get a bit lost. Thank you oh United Ones!

---Storyteller

Here are some pics for Song!
These are the Gallery versions I will cut cards out of.

Katrine of the Earth House,
she is low rank but gets 'Flight' which after basic play is going and I add powers, will let her be unblocked by characters that cant fly and prevents her from being damage by ground attacks like Quakes or Tremors or Sweeps or anything like that, mostly she cant be blocked unless flying and cant be hit unless by ranged attacks.


Cygus,
a very high rank Earth Character, he gets something like Immune, which ignores powers, so if he is attacking the dont do anything and he cant be hit by ranged attacks and such. Mostly it means his Rank of 8, is actually an 8 and not modified and you actually need a 9 or 10 to hit him.


Saveg
a Fire character, he is pretty strong, rank 7 probably, he gets a 'FireQuake' which deals his damage each turn to everything that isnt immune to fire. So, he is pretty tough. High rank and clears out low characters. He only hits territory if you have nothing in play though, so he isnt perfect.