Setup Finished (Nov 07 2025)

I've finished programming most of the things required for the game to be playable. The only things left really are: being able to toggle whose hand you're seeing when spectating, and seeing stats at the end of the game. But for now it's to most of the fun part of making card games, actually making cards.

I decided that instead of green and red coins, I should give them actual symbols. I decided that green coins can be a shield, and red coins can be a sword. Which makes sense, since shields are (mostly) used in the phase where you use abilities that help you (and I'll call it the Defend phase now), and swords are (mostly) used in the phase when you use abilities to attack the other player (the Attack phase). I also cleaned up a lot of the code related to making decisions/undos, and for accessing custom properties. I'm sure there are even more ways they can be cleaned up, but even just right now it's so much easier to work with.

One thing I worried about when making cards is, abilities in the Attack phase may be very limited in variety. Mostly this phase will be attacking the other player and their cards, but there's not much else that can be done. If I want players to spend resources like their cards, swords, shields, and actions in the Attack phase, then I can't make any attacking abilities that interact with the other player's resources. Which means I can't do anything like "they discard a card" or "they lose a sword." Another idea is, you can stun a card. Stunned cards can't use any of their abilities, but works weird in the Attack phase (you stun their card, but that card is still attacking you. Another idea I had is, you can stun a card. If a card is stunned, you can't use its abilities. But one weird thing about this would be: if you stun another player's card in the attack phase, that card can still attack you. The stun would have to apply to the next round instead.

At first I was going to accept that I couldn't make any of these effects, but while typing this I had a solution. I could have these effects happen at the start of next round instead. For "they lose a sword", if it happened later, it won't have any issues of, 2 players are trying to change something at the same time. It also won't have issues like, they already spent all their swords and the ability just misses. I could even make Defend abilities that make your next turn better ("next round, +1 shield"). This all sounds great, although I don't think I can do things like "they lose 1 action next round" cause if that ability is stacked, they can never do anything for the rest of the game.