KCP - a Kerbal Card Game with the VASSAL Engine

[capi3101]

Work on the KCP VASSAL mod is underway.

Obviously it's in a very preliminary state right now. I've been a bit too focused on the cards it seems...haven't given any consideration to backdrops or any of the other auxiliary artwork. At this point, there's not much the mod can do - it can roll dice (up to ten six-sided dice at once) and you can move the Jeb card around the board, send it to the discard pile and then reload it into the draw pile. Jeb's the only card in there at the moment (appropriate that he went first, right?).

I'll be taking some time to work on the mod's structure over the next day or two. Hopefully I'll have something approaching a playable card game by the end of the week.

[capi3101]

A little more progress to report today:

Decided to use the KSC image for people's rocket-building zones and replaced the main play area (the one with the Parts and Debris Decks) with a white logo motif. I intend for this area to serve as the "junkyard" for each player as well. The Parts Deck has been seeded with the crew and you can see that pretty well in the first image. It also has zoom capabilities at this point, as apparent in the second image. Was simply fate that Jeb wound up in the Debris Pile...

I still need to design the destination board, player hands and the scoring chart, and I need to make the decision of how many cards (and of what types) are going to be in the Parts Deck. I also need to finish typing up the rules.

Edited August 15, 2013 by capi3101

[capi3101]

Long post ahead. Last night's progress:

I finished seeding the cards into the Parts Deck; that means the bulk of the cards are now into the game. I also built a set of "chips" for each player to use as their own marker; I mainly had these designed for use with the VP chart, but they can also be used to keep track of whose cards are whose in the junkyards.

VASSAL lets you zoom in on individual pieces by hovering over them with the mouse. You could also just zoom in, but you lose track of certain areas of the board that way.

-- VP Board empty

The VP chart is in and fully functional. You can see that it comes pre-seeded with all four markers and that they can be cloned, deleted and moved around at the discretion of the players.

-- VP board in use

An example of how it's meant to be used. Red completed the Kerbin mission, so there's a Red marker on the Kerbin symbol and Red claimed five points. Similarly, Yellow completed a seven point Mun mission. Those markers would move as the players accumulate more points; for example, if Red next completed a twelve point mission, he'd move his marker from 5 to 17. Simple math. If a player goes over fifty, they place a marker in the fifty circle and roll their markers back to zero or wherever it needs to be on the main point board. Each marker in the circle represents fifty points. Green for some reason is claiming 100 points despite no apparent reason to do so; I suppose he's just being a smartass. Blue's indicating zero points.

-- VAB preliminary

Work is also continuing on the VAB areas. Players will be able to build up to three rockets at a time, hence three "Rockets" on the board. It does look like I need to make that board bigger, though...otherwise there probably won't be enough space to contain all the cards in a rocket. I also intend to add tools for keeping track of the rocket's available delta-V.

Overall, a productive day. I caught an error on the SRB cards (I'd forgotten to add a Thrust stat for them) and got it fixed before they were added to the Parts stack, and got an image built for the Missions board as well. I still need to get the VABs finished up and implement the Missions board, set the cards not to form stacks (they stack directly on top of one another right now instead of "fanning out" like I want them to), and I need to update the dice to output individual die rolls. I also need to re-map the die roll hotkeys...right now, they're just associated with number keys. As a test, I typed in "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't 1" into the Message Box; as expected, the mod rolled 9d twice and 1d once...

Still working on getting the rules typed up. I've got the card description and setup sections complete at this point; still need to finish the "how to use the mod" section and the actual gameplay rules.

[capi3101]

No new screenshots for y'all today but I figured I'd give a quick update. Last night I got the Mission board with the Location Cards and Action Card Deck implemented; it works as intended. I also added the first of the player hands in the game and made several essential tweaks. At this point, I need to get the stat trackers into the VAB, add the "Whack" button to the interface, duplicate the VABs and Hands add then add player sides to the hands (so that other players can't look at their opponent's hand). At that point, the mod will be ready to go. I'll just need to finish typing up the rules and it'll be ready for playtesting.

[nettcod]

This is great, I love it!

[capi3101]

Alright, the mod's ready. Now I need to finish typing up the rules. Something tells me I'm going to wind up having to put more radial decouplers into the game.

[capi3101]

Got some screenshots of the finished mod this morning

-- Main Board

This is the main board with a game in progress. You can see I've changed things ever so slightly and added the WHACK button, which is meant to be used whenever somebody notices a rules violation (somebody building rockets when it's their turn, attempting to launch without all the proper prerequisites, etc.). The notion is that it would work like a game of Hands Down - the mod will register whoever hits the button first and then that person bears the responsibility for proving the rules violation. There will be some kind of penalty for whichever player is in the wrong, which I have yet to decide upon.

-- VAB with Hand

Here we've got the completed VAB with the player's hand area in view. The VAB's are public, so people can see what you're creating; this originally wasn't going to be the case but I figured that it'd save time if other players could be witnesses to a player's launch. Cooperative players may point out when a player's launch is wrong; competitive players......

The hands are private. Red player can't look in the other player's hands, hence the reason why they're grayed out in the display.

-- VAB in use

The VAB in use. The right two rockets are actually complete and ready for launch in this shot...had Mertney in the center rocket; he just did the Kerbin mission and the rocket was so stable that success was assured. Bob rode the crazy chair towards Duna, and missed the roll by one lousy point...

I do know through testing that I need to add some additional zoom levels to the VABs. Right now at maximum programmed zoom it's difficult to read the Delta-V charts on the fuel cards; VASSAL does let you zoom in closer but it's still something I should probably address sooner rather than later.

I need to finish the rules and I'm seriously thinking about adding more decouplers to the Parts Deck; it's looking like as things are written they're going to be utterly crucial (otherwise the game's going to be pretty boring). I'm also reconsidering my original rules for putting parts into rockets - right now, you're only allowed to play parts to rockets from your hand, and the only way to get cards in your hand is to sell items from your junkyard; you get a number of cards equal to the value of cards that you sell...and most of the cards have a value of zero......

[capi3101]

Alright, the first draft rules are finished. I just need to tweak the mod at this point. Also need to figure out where I'm going to distribute this from...

[Tw1]

Alright, the first draft rules are finished. I just need to tweak the mod at this point. Also need to figure out where I'm going to distribute this from...

Maybe you could play it in the games section of the forum!

[Scorpi15]

This looks cool! When it's ready I would totally play it if I had a windows... Just checked, VASSAL is on Mac

Edited August 20, 2013 by Scorpi15

[AilinNyan]

This is awesome, good job!

[capi3101]

Occured to me reading this morning's posts that y'all might've never heard about VASSAL before. Here's an overview of the engine from their site. The mod I created runs in the VASSAL engine. You'll need to have the VASSAL engine installed to play the game. VASSAL is dependent on Java, so you'll need a Java Runtime Environment installed on your box as well. They have versions of the engine for Mac and Linux as well as Windows (they also have "other", which I'm not quite sure what that is, and the source code up for those who want to build it their own selves). Bear in mind that there have been issues reported with VASSAL on machines where Java 1.6 and 1.7 are both installed; you'll need to uninstall 1.6 if that's the case. The mod itself should be playable as long as you've got a working engine.

Maybe you could play it in the games section of the forum!

Possibly - PBEM and PBF is something that VASSAL mods are capable of doing; you just pass the save game around with a log file that records what happened during each turn. The rules for rocket building might need to be altered a bit to accommodate that sort of change, though (less opportunity to hit the WHACK button...).

This looks cool! When it's ready I would totally play it if I had a windows...

Like I said, totally playable on any platform as long as the engine is installed, and there are versions for Mac and Linux. Now, I did package the mod itself as a Windows executable for distribution last night, so I'll have to work up something for non-Windows users. Shouldn't be too big of a problem.

I'll go ahead and distribute the mod on VASSAL's wiki; I'll post the link to this thread when it's ready to go. I did include a user agreement with the mod that basically says that I didn't obtain Squad's permission to use anything and if they say so, you've got to delete the mod from your system (the VASSAL folks will delete the page upon request). I'm hoping that doesn't happen but it's in the realm of possibilities; if it does, I'll put up official notice in this thread to y'all. Most of the mods on the VASSAL engines are from games where the big box publishers have given the mods their blessings; to date, the only company that's been a royal turd about people making mods out of their games has been Games Workshop...which I firmly believe has been to their detriment.

[capi3101]

Alright, the page is up!

[Scorpi15]

Woohoo! Now to wait until somebody is playing...

[capi3101]

I've been thinking about developing a set of solitaire rules (no one I know is going to want to play the game besides my son - and he's only four). Just curious if any of y'all who have tried out KCP so far have fiddled with the notion.

[Isabelle.V.Fuchs]

Hi!

 

I just stumbled over this game while I was looking for some nice games in VASSAL, which I like to use for my strategy games.

This is a nice idea and I will definitly try it out.

 

best wishes,

- Isabelle

[capi3101]

I hope you enjoy it - I can't say in the three years since the game was built I've heard of too many people playing it.

Can't believe it's been three years...KCP is in need of some updating, no doubt...