Beta Development begins!

My Visual Studio decided to not import new projects anymore so I needed to work extra hard to get this to compile, but after that I started working on drawing Cards and Creatures to the screen, I already made some WIP textures for cards way back when I designed the game originally(around a year ago):

cards will have art, at first drawn by me, later maybe by a proper artist.

But the real Issue is making card text render properly in game:

(early 18.11.23)

I just couldn't get the text to be in the correct places or not to cut in weird ways, this took some really long time.

after solving the bugs and making things work properly:

(early 18.11.23)

there are still things to optimize there, text boxes to draw and a few other things to polish, maybe even completely pre-render the cards and creatures with things like dynamic stats and counters being the only thing rendered dynamically, but that will mean more work for modding the game later on, so maybe not.

but now that I have that basic renderer working, I can start creating a proper GUI for the game.

Next Stage Drawing real game data:

(late 18.11.23)

Reading the Packet data from the server and interpreting what cards are in your hand and in play.
at this point I'm left with 4 things to do before I can test anything:

• pass only AI
• command UI
• complete interpreter
• render utility variables(deck size, health, energy)

things I need to render but doesn't currently:

Ritual Type Sympols.
Card Backs(for deck and enemy hand).
Turn and Special Counters.

Roadmap Ahead

the Beta phase of development will include most noticeably the client-side GUI, but that is not all there is to it.

Planned Features:

• Client GUI
• Server Setup and decoupling connection ID from Player ID(meaning the server will receive player ID and use it to detect who is playing)
  this will solve reconnection issues and accidental multiplayer/singleplayer
• Player vs Computer, meaning I'm going to code an actual AI for this game for Singleplayer games.
• Deck Editor in Client GUI, Deckbuilding rules, and save/load decks to/from file(already implemented).
• Story/Adventure Game Mode.(fighting AI to collect cards and progress while optimizing your deck)
• Additional Factions?
  I already have another full faction made, I just wanted to limit the scope of the base game so it'll be easy to create.
  each faction took between 4 days to 2 weeks to code and an additional faction, especially the one I cut from the game will drag the development time of the game too far. it's also a faction that comes later in the Lore
• Lore?
  As with most projects that take me a long time, there is a story behind them. the Lore for the game will be featured in the Story/Adventure Mode of the game to some extent and some other bits in the Deck Editor when looking at cards, but it might be on a full release update and not part of the Beta.
  Some Lore parts are guaranteed to be in the announcement of the Story/Adventure Mode because it needs to make sense.

this is the most complete project I've made so far, and I hope it'll be a nice experience once I get it on the right tracks.

I hope you will like it, and lets see how far this adventure will take us.