PACG and GenCon

[hfm]

Jason S wrote:

I'm a software developer and that's exactly how we work. They want the entry price to be low, but these extra cards and characters take time to code and test.

Agreed, and there's some crazy flow bending stuff that starts happening in adventure decks past 1. I seem to recall a certain one that depended on gathering allies. The amount of rules to keep track of is crazy.

[ryric]

Oh yeah, the sheer amount of stuff in this game that a human mind effortlessly handles yet would be crazy to explain in programming language - I'm not surprised at how long it's taking. A scenario that has no villain but simply wants you to close all locations is an easy switch for a person, but a dramatic change in the structure of play for a computer.

I'm not a programmer, but I've done some coding back in school to run astrophysics simulations. Game rule "legalese" has nothing on the precision required in programming.

[pH unbalanced]

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

I hear tell there was a reward for GMing in the RPG that lets you play Arueshalae in organized play, as well as other such card guild related boons. ("Boons" in this context refers to RPG rewards, not cards in the card game.) So, anyone got a list of all the possible PACG related boons like this?

Just to be clear, they gave the Arueshalae boon to people running the Card Game, and the GenCon RPG GM boon to people running the RPG. (If you ran both...they guessed which you wanted.) When you went and rolled for the boons, you needed to specify whether you wanted a Card Game boon, or an RPG boon.

The tokens are redeemable at future GenCons *or* PaizoCons.

[hfm]

ryric wrote:

Oh yeah, the sheer amount of stuff in this game that a human mind effortlessly handles yet would be crazy to explain in programming language - I'm not surprised at how long it's taking. A scenario that has no villain but simply wants you to close all locations is an easy switch for a person, but a dramatic change in the structure of play for a computer.

I'm not a programmer, but I've done some coding back in school to run astrophysics simulations. Game rule "legalese" has nothing on the precision required in programming.

I'm a software engineer/architect by trade. Building the rules engine for this sounds like a recipe for spaghetti code central if you don't plan everything correctly up front. Even then, you're at the whim of whatever Paizo thinks up for future base sets and AD's.

I would imagine they worked pretty closely with the card game designers to create some abstract concept buckets for the different scenarios. I would imagine there's been a refactor as this went along and it's definitely not surprising me at all the time it's taking.

I'm sitting here thinking of how I would attack this to get the most reuse out of the codebase and I start getting daunted by the sheer amount of time it would take for the up front planning.

[Nathan Davis]

This.

..sort of.

Local Heroes was actually relatively easy to implement. There's actually a lot of stuff that worked well and didn't require that much effort to get 'technically' right. The real challenge comes in how you convey all of that to the player consistently.

And yep, refactors happen. To try and combat this, the team plays the physical game a couple of times a week. It helps us understand what new complications are down the line so that we create scripting tools that are flexible enough to handle more situations than initial card power requires.

Genuine thanks from us for appreciating the mountain we are climbing. It's like anything in the end, start with a small piece and make sure it's good, then build on top of it.

[hfm]

True. Iterate Iterate. :)

[Rebel Song]

pH unbalanced wrote:

When you went and rolled for the boons, you needed to specify whether you wanted a Card Game boon, or an RPG boon.

WHAAAAAAAAAT. They didn't ask me, so I just let my friend pick an RPG boon for herself (since I don't play the RPG, only the card game). Ah well, there's always next year. :)

[Andrew L Klein]

Nathan Davis wrote:

To try and combat this, the team plays the physical game a couple of times a week.

Let me get this straight

You get to make video games
And get paid for it
To make it the best you can, you have to play other non-video games.
And get paid for it.

I am in the wrong. Line. Of. Work.

[Keith Richmond]

It's a tough job, right, but someone's got to do it.

[zeroth_hour]

Andrew L Klein wrote:

Nathan Davis wrote:

To try and combat this, the team plays the physical game a couple of times a week.

Let me get this straight

You get to make video games
And get paid for it
To make it the best you can, you have to play other non-video games.
And get paid for it.

I am in the wrong. Line. Of. Work.

Except everyone else has the same idea, and thus abuses can occur in the industry (see EA)

[Parody]

Also you probably wouldn't find it as fun the 50th time you're replaying the same chunk of level (or, in this case, scenario) to recreate a bug.