Sun and Moon [Legend of the Five Rings Online]

I’ve created a client for playing Legend of the Five Rings online that I think players of the physical card game [by Alderac Entertainment] will like. It’s called Sun and Moon.

THE STORY: About this time last year, I created its antecedent for my good friend Ben. Ben got me into the L5R CCG when I was thirteen years old. Those of us inspired by his enthusiasm, however, eventually went separate ways, and playing L5R online has always been a haphazard affair. No longer, I hope! Thanks to encouragement from this coterie, and with guidance from Alderac, I’ve finally been authorized to release Sun and Moon to the community.



THE SYMBOL: The Sun and Moon are essential icons in Rokugan’s cosmology, but they are also excellent ciphers for the game itself. Rivalry between two players is what literally birthed the L5R world. Players chase the one after the other, turnwise, until, one caught, a new cycle begins. This process is part of how one operates the game client itself: priority can be passed from player to player, enabling smooth gameplay without the otherwise constant refrain that has bothered remote L5R players for years: “do you have any open actions?” “Are you done yet?”

THE SYSTEM: Sun and Moon solves several other huge issues with playing L5R online today:

1) Matchmaking. Matchmaking and gameplay in Sun and Moon is done in Photon Cloud, obviating the need for IP addresses, router configuration, and other shenanigans.

2) Experience. In Sun and Moon, cards flip, slide, animate, and adjust in 3D using the LeanTween library by the talented @dentedpixel. L5R should be tactile, even while the computer moots the tedious process of shuffling, hunting for cards in a cardboard box, and so on.

3) Flexibility. If someone posts an interesting decklist to a forum, you want to be able to instantly copy and paste that sucker for playtesting. All of Sun and Moon’s decks are parsed flexibly from plain text files. Players can create their decks like usual in Notepad with the Oracle of the Void open in a browser or in the client’s own rich deck editor. It’s up to them.

4) Exposure. It’s no substitute for the official learning materials, but I’ve built in a tutorial to help explain the very basics of L5R to new players. It’s hard to get people into a CCG these days, especially esoteric ones like L5R—the more new players the better!

Finally, Sun and Moon uses the same XML database and image resources that other L5R clients do, making it easy for players to use several clients if they wish. But I’m guessing they won’t. : )



THE SITUATION: I’m just one Unity developer who loves L5R. I would love to develop the app further (don’t you think it would be cool on tablets?), but I have to balance time and money. I have no idea if there will be enough demand to see the client maintained and developed further, but I'd hope so. We'll see. I'm calling this a "beta" now because it's free and essentially unsupported. If there is enough interest I'll publish it officially in the various app stores, buy a mobile device for testing, and probably put a price tag on it.

I've also created a simple but (I'd like to think) rather attractive website for the game here.

If you play L5R or are interested in L5R, I think you'll love this.

-Drew

 

Here are some more images.

The main menu, with the primary features listed:



The deck editor with filters for different card characteristics, all created in Unity's new UI system.



Customizable controls ingame:

 

Looks great Marble! I wonder if it will be too much of a barrier to entry for players to have to download the latest art manually? That might be the first thing you would want to try and target before thinking about bringing it to tablets. I know there may be some issues with permission to use the artwork directly in the app, but maybe if it's offered as a download step that is all handled within the game client it would be ok?

Otherwise Unity makes it pretty easy to port to other platforms/devices, and I would definitely encourage you to do so. Let me know if you need any help with porting it to different platforms, I have had a fair amount of experience with that.

 

Thanks dentedpixel. I value your praise and advice very highly! As usual, you're right. The client now comes with the most current card images preinstalled (any more and my 25MB app has expanded into a 1GB monster).

Streaming those images on demand over the WWW would seem to be the most elegant solution. This is one of those roads paved with good intentions, I think!

 

I just wanted to pop back in here to say that the app has gained a bunch of traction since release. Thanks to feedback like dentedpixel's, I've added a bunch of new features, including automatic image downloads and a spectator mode. Unity makes iteration so fast (sacrificing your winter break helps too ).

 

Wow it looks great! It's very professionally done, I hope the game gets some traction amongst the card community.

Haha, I totally know how it is to give up breaks/vacations to work on your games/libraries. But it can be such fun sometimes it is the best vacation.

One thing that wasn't so obvious to me when I visited the site is how can I download the game? I didn't realize the icons for the different operating systems were links until a lot of staring at the page. I can be a little dense, but I am sure there are others as dense as me . Maybe just providing the links in the getting started page too, since that will be the #1 step before you can get started.

 

This is the best kind of suggestion: easy to oblige! I've changed both pages; thanks for taking the time to make note.

Meanwhile, here is a video a user created while spectating a game with a slightly earlier version.

 

I know this was ahile ago however is it possible you could compile this for iOS and android as well? I love l5r and honestly I'd love to play it anytime anywhere.

 

Great to get a response on here, Core! Have you heard the news that AEG has sold L5R? I had been planning to build the project for mobile devices, but I'm reconsidering now. It doesn't make as much sense to develop new features for a game that is going to be redesigned in 2017 under a new owner.

Sun and Moon has developed a substantial following and many new features have been added since my original post (draft mode, 3+ multiplayer, automatic updates, custom playmats and cardbacks, visual upgrades, and many other L5R-related essentials). It's been a pretty incredible experience.

 

Just wanted to say I am really impressed with this work. You have obviously put in a ton of time and effort (especially for a 1 man dev team) and it shows. I was actually considering doing something like this, but then I came across your game. I am even more stoked that you did it in Unity.

Just bad timing on the sale of L5R; I would really have loved to see this on tablets.

 

Hey thanks Texaggie! I really appreciate it.

 

Hello, Marble,

I don't play L5R since 2012 because it lost the popularity here in Brazil (never was so popular due to MTG), so the stores stopped importing cards, some players started to left the scene, until the game almost died

Since then, from times to times, I search on internet for some sort of L5R online and yesterday I found your project

It is AWESOME². First because its a way to play online, second because it is pretty well built and coded

Congrats!!!

Since I don't played for a while, I went through the "Learn to play mode" (even to know how to play in this software). I noticed some "changes in the rules" that I want to ask you:

1. The first scroll teaching how to play says that there is EIGHT Great Clans. It was 9 when I stopped to play: Crab, Crane, Mantis, Spider, Unicorn, Phoenix, Lion, Dragon and Scorpion. Is it right?

2. You don't mention to refill the provincies from left to right, and when refilling, I can put the card in any province (even moving face up province cards to the left/right). Is it valid in the real card game?

3. You say that I can spend money from holding like mana in MTG. You say that if I bow a holding that produces 4 and a holding that produces 2, I can "buy" from provinces two cards that cost 3. When I started to play, it was forbidden. If I produce 4 gold and buy a 3 cost card, I will throw away the leftover gold, it will not accumulate to sum up with other holding productions. What is the right now in 2015?

4. You didn't say that if a player plays for the Empress' clan (for example, if the Empress is from Dragon clan and a player plays with a Dragon clan deck), it starts with the Imperial Favor. Did this rule changed?

Sorry to bother you with gameplay questions, but I think that this also helps to improve the game

Thank you for your work, I will give it a lot of tries and try to make people play again

 

What a great post to wake up to! I'm glad you like it.

1. You're right that there are nine great clans, although whether the Spider would survive this arc was a story question. Typo!

2. One still refills from left to right at the beginning of the game. After that the provinces are pretty much static (unless a card adds a new one). The ability to move them around is there just in case a player accidentally plays a card, pops a province, or otherwise needs to put a province back where it came from due to error.

3. In Ivory Edition, gold became "pooled" per phase, so now it floats like in MTG. I must say I preferred the old way – less counting.

4. Dragon doesn't start with the Imperial Favor anymore, alas. I guess their influence wore thin at court.

 

I was watching some videos from AEG now while I have lunch, so the doubt about the gold production was explained in the videos and I came here to edit, but there is no more reasons to edit since you also answered

1. Are you serious??? Spider could be no longer a great clan? They were my love at first sight when I got to know L5R (until I know the Mantis Clan, I prefer the aggressive strategy from Navals, but still love the Demons and dishonored Personalities)

2. Hmmmm, ok. Thought that I was playing "wrong" since the start (like if filling from left to right was a habit)

3. I prefer the old way too There was some "drawback" due to this change? Holdings producing less gold? Cards costing more?

4. Dragon was an example because in 2011 the Empress was from Dragon Clan, but the doubt was about the rule itself. When someone plays with a deck from the Empress' Clan, it no longer starts with the Imperial Favor?

Thank you for your quick answer and sorry for the gameplay/game rules questions. I need to get back to this universe, find forums and such. I played until The Path of the Destroyer (and can't get all clan starter decks because stores here stopped importing it)

Now I need to buy from somewhere else (like Cool Stuff Inc.), but is too expensive since my currency is weak against USD :/

So nostalgic... Wanna dig up my decks from my mother's house and aggressively accost someone to learn to play and play with me, lol

(By the way, there is a place where Sun and Moon players hangs around? IRC? Forums?)

 

Ever since AEG sold L5R and closed its forums, the L5R scene has been mostly on Facebook. Check out these groups:

L5R in general

L5R unofficial tournament scene

L5R Sun and Moon (a great place to find games; there are still people around looking for a match these days even though the game is EOL)

Re: #4—yeah, no player ever starts with the Imperial Favor (unless you're deliberately playing a legacy game in Celestial edition).

Re: #3—The main drawback to changing the gold scheme, I think, is that gold is more generic. A holding with 1GP used to be more valuable as a way to pay for stuff more exactly. Now it's just inherently less valuable than a holding with 2GP. Probably the change made designing the game a bit easier.

Since the L5R CCG is over, players are now playing games in various sets. So you'll see tournaments in the most recent edition (Twenty Festivals) and for really old editions (Diamond, etc) too. It's kind of chaotic but fun all the same.

 

Wait, so, has the game been discontinued? Found out recently about it and it would be such a shame.

 

I'm afraid so. The CCG is discontinued, but the property has been sold to Fantasy Flight games for a "living card game" reboot in 2017.

 

"Living card game"? What is that supposed to mean? Like online? And is the exact date set yet or is it just 2017? And will you update your own creation after the update they'll make? Thanks for answering the questions in forward.

 

A "living card game" is like a CCG, but all the cards are fixed in each set, so there is no concept of rarity and everyone plays with the same cards. I guess the idea is to make the game more accessible to new players. It is a silly name, though.

Last I heard, the date was just "2017."

I won't be able to keep developing Sun and Moon. AEG was very generous about letting me use their intellectual property – we even worked together on several systems – but I understand FF is much more protective of their IP. I haven't received a cease and desist or anything, but once the game relaunches, I bet they will want to have full control over their brand.

 

I see. And living card game is a stupid concept in itself, but that's just me. Sucks for your game, though.

EDIT: Why was the game sold, btw? Has it not been bringing in profit?

 

I'm not completely sure. My speculation is that AEG had become more interested in a different audience over the years, and that L5R was struggling to compete with innovations in other CCGs like MtG and Hearthstone. I'm not totally thrilled about the new card game format either, but with any luck the brand will find itself in the custody of a company more committed to its success.

 

I see. Thank you.

 

Please keep working on it until someone says not to.

FFG and LCG's suck big time, hate their games and format. The old L5R CCG will live on Online just like Star Wars CCG has (Holotable) after Decipher lost the license for their game (WOTC got it and made a crap game). The old CCG players will need an app to play online, if not you then someone else will make one and release it. I like yours though.

 

Thanks! So far, no cease and desist. From what I can tell, the community is using Sun and Moon to continue running the CCG by adding new sets, etc. I'm so glad that the spirit lives on.

 

is there any way you couod export this to .x86 and not .86_64? i have an old computer right now(switching computers all the time is a pain, and i used to have a newer one, secondly my an a friend have a TON of boxes if cards going back before diamond, and we are going to play, so i agree itll live on, however is there any way you could export it to iphone anyways?

 

Sure! I presume your old computer is running Linux because of that application naming convention? Here's a direct download link.

I would have loved to publish it to iOS and Android, but I never got there before L5R changed hands. A pity!

 

Hi all !
I have a problem with the client Sun and Moon. I have windows. When i unzip the client, I have only "Sun and Moon updater" application. When I launch the app, downloading the update ans the window close as soon I finished to download the updates.
How can I get the application to launch the game?
Thank you very much for your answers

 

Hi there Iuchi! Sorry about the snag. The most likely reason for that is Windows hasn't given the updater permission to write the full application into that folder. A couple things to try: right click on the updater before you launch it and "Run as Administrator"; also make sure that the folder that you unzipped has write privileges in Windows.

If neither of those work, then there may be an output_log.txt file in the Sun and Moon Updater_Data folder. PM that to me and I'll take a closer look.

 

could i get an .x86 version of the latest update? sadly still on an 32 bit computer

 

You bet. Thanks for reminding me!

 

I had a similar problem with the mac version, do you have a possible solution? I was able to get the "Sun and Moon Updater" and it opened fine. but just stays on the opening home page with a list of updates. doesn't give me any options or ways to move to another screen etc. would love a way to get on and play.

 

EDIT: FYI, a user sent me a log with the same issue which made it pretty clear what was going on. macOS has a security feature called AppTranslocation that is preventing it from running from its original downloaded location. Apparently you can switch off Translocation for this app by simply moving the folder that contains the updater from its downloaded location to a new folder, i.e. your user folder, desktop, or Applications folder.

 

Hi Marble,

I'm new to this game, and this is such a fantastic way to play it!

I did have a gameplay question: when playing 3+ player multiplayer, how does an attacking player resolve the "Invite Allies" segment?

Simply clicking the sun won't pass the action as it does elsewhere, and I have yet to find a combination of highlights and arrows that will allow me to move forward.

Any insight would be deeply appreciated, but I'm already very grateful for the platform as is!

Best,

Zhong

 

Hey @Zhong23 ! I'm delighted that, after all these years, people are still discovering and enjoying this game. It's been so long since I wrote the code that I had to go back and look at the source to remember what users are supposed to do when inviting allies.

If you highlight any of the cards belonging to the player who you would like to invite as an ally (I usually pick the stronghold), and then advance the phase (by clicking on the sun), anyone whose cards have been selected should be invited. If you don't want to invite allies, it looks like simply pressing the sun again should pass your opportunity to do so. I popped online for a test, and it seems to work this way.

If I were to make the game again, it would definitely have clearer direction for phases like that!