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v0.3 Housekeeping Update: Performance and Avoiding Technical Debt

An incredibly big update with over 320+ files changed. Not much has changed from the end user perspective, but a lot of changes were made on how data is stored and handled in the engine. 

• Files are reorganized to more easily be exported to Godot
• Major Performance upgrade in the Card Editor. The editor no longer reloads the Card Data when it saving.
• The Demo file is decluttered and removed unnecessary data, making it more lightweight.
• Refactored many game data files, therefore previous versions of the demo are no longer supported
• Fixed multiple bugs from existing features
• Created the base infrastructure for many future features such as VN-style Dialogue System, TTRPG-Style Skill System, Dialogue Translations, Game Template Editor, etc.

v0.2.1 Update: Hotfixed

The previous update broke some existing features. It's fixed now.

v0.2.1 Update: States, Scores, and Card Targetting Systems and More

Gameplay Feature Changes:

• Effects
  • The Effects 'Modify Attribute', 'Modify Keyword', and 'Modify State' is now fully implemented
    • Attributes and Keywords are attached to cards.
    • Keywords that contain effects activate properly now.
    • States are variables that is tracked globally. It informs the Game State
  • The flag 'Hide Log'  is implemented for effect logs
  • Implemented scores. Scores are States that are displayed prominently in the UI
  • Player Targeting is now implemented.
    • When targeting cards on the table or hand, the game enters a Targeting state which allow you to aim with your mouse and select valid cards.
    • When targeting cards globally or in a deck, it opens an item list to select the target from
• Bugfixes
  
  • bbcode is now working in the flavor text panel
  • On critically failing a skill test, the critical fail sound effect is now properly working

Editor Changes:

• Added the 'Modify State' effect and it's editor block
• Implemented States in various resource editing windows
• Added Score to the Story Editor, allowing you to designate certain game States as more important than others

A very cool game. Especially as a student project.

While there are still many bugs and issues  you'd expect from an early build,  this is a great start. I won't list them here for brevity's sake unless you are looking for bug reports.

Those with a history background will have a few 'taas kilay' moments (me included) even with the disclaimer. Especially when you call yourself Triple K studios, a direct reference to Katipunan.

I would recommend either going for more historical (by getting experts on the subject) or playing more into the steampunk fantasy to make it more obvious this is fictionalized version of history. If you are interested in further developing this game, that is.

All things considered, I would love to see more and would like to follow any further development. Great job.

A thread for feedback, comments, and reviews that don't want it's own thread. Tell me what you think.

v0.2 Update, State Machines and Scripting

Note: Previous versions of demo projects are no longer supported. Download the new one.

Major News

• Starting this update I will be publicly developing this to whoever's interested, it beats having to work on this alone w/ little to no informed feedback, hopefully.
• Scripting simple card AI is now possible through card effects

Editor Changes

• Behavior Flags are now implemented on card effects
• The effects Capture, Release Card, Modify Attribute, and Modify Keyword is scriptable in the editor. In addition to the Create Card and Read Event effect.
• Card-Based Subbranch Dialogue now has a custom text preview for react to players placing valid cards.

Gameplay Changes

• Effects Capture, Release Card and Read Event are implemented. (With the exception of Player Targetted behavior)
• Implemented the 'Repeatable' Behavior Flag for card effects ('Reactable' still causes issues)
• Card UI State Machines and Gameplay Effect Event State Machines are implemented
• Implemented history logging for many gameplay events
• QoL update for dragging cards to panels
• Implemented gameplay logic for event cards
• Implemented the architecture for different activation timings
• QoL UI update for rolling dice for skill checks.
• Fixed a bug where finishing a Scenario does not open the 'Exit Game' menu.
• Added an AudioVisual Reference viewer to see image refs and audio refs and their details in-game

Miscellaneous

• QoL Change of using a window panel for choosing characters in the main menu.
• Fixed a bug where exiting to main menu from game can delete a dialogue event from the opening scene
• and many small changes I forgot to note

Project Changes

• For performance reasons, I removed the educational game that I am developing within Cardology. It can now be found in the educ sp project file, but no changes are made to it.
• The Demo project file now will contain a simple base template of known game genres that can be made in Cardology. Some card sets are available, but no actual gameplay of them is available yet.
• Created 5 new cards for the tutorial, the tutorial now showcases cards of every type:
  • Scene Card - Opening Tutorial
  • Action Card - Tutor
  • Item Card - Data Cards and others
  • Event Cards - Playable from hand
  • Opposition Card - The Data Thief, who steals a Data Card every turn
  • Upkeep Card - Anon, who provides you an item every turn
  • Encounter Card - The skill test

Version 0.1.2 Update

• Refactored the CardUI architecture to account for editability
• Made the Skill Check UI 
• Created a cleaner implementation to remove orphaned Cards in the demo project
• Saving objects to projects no longer automatically saves the project to the filesystem (for performance reasons)
• Closing the program automatically saves the project to the filesystem
• Attributes and Keywords now display properly in the game

Demo Project File

• Added flavor text to relevant cards in the Tutorial scenario
• Cleaned up orphaned files

Version 0.1.1 Update

Starting today I will be tracking the software version.

•  Fixed Story Editor Card Blocks. It is no longer possible to accidentally delete Card Data there.
• Added Template Infrastructure for editable Game UI
• Table input is now blocked during the opening
• Added a clickable menu button from in-game
• Fixed bug where it initially requires pressing Escape twice before opening the pause menu

March 19, 2025 Update:
- Fixed a bug that crashes the program when trying to set unimplemented Effect Tags in the Card Editor.

This thread lists and documents changes to the engine. 

Please report any bugs found in the demo in this thread.

Thanks! 

I'm actually trying to make a no-code text-rpg engine (of sorts) which would allow me to make more of these in a short amount of time. Though it would take awhile before getting anything working out of the box.

Is using prebuilt custom-tools allowed (e.g.Card Editor, Dialogue Editor) or does everything need to be built from the ground up?

PS: Also for those looking to form a team, let me know.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

The nitpicks are valid criticism tho. And I actually originally tried to address some of those, but couldn't figure out how to animate them  properly. I'll get back to develop it further eventually but real life is giving me more pressing matters right now so I'm leaving it like that for now. 

I actually wanted to implement a Tagalog language. But with time constraints and also the lack of readily available open-source non-english dictionaries make other languages harder to work with.

I can't seem to find you on discord. Are you sure that andybugs is the username and not the profile name?

Anyway, you can try finding me in discord. My username is unbound_subject

I'm looking for a team as well. I'm 26 and trying to build myself up to a better game developer since I want to make it my career. 

I've only develop one game which is very recent on a month long game jam as a solo but now looking to upgrade.

I can do UI, Data, and writing. I also have a background in psychology which may be relevant in this jam's theme. Wanna team up?

Are you still free? Would like to have someone with music on board.

New Godot dev looking for a team.

I specialize in UI, Data, and Writing. But can and willing to wear other hats. Hoping to make game dev a career and is trying to jump from hobbyist to professional.

I also have a background in psychology which is relevant to the theme.

Yes. But word lists, technically. But I took the master list off from an open-source dictionary and converted it to a custom resource w/ a string array. Then divided the master list into multiple lists for performance. The game checks the list based on its initials so it doesn't have to check the entire word list. It was a pain to get right. 

"Also how do you check if its a valid word? And do you make sure there are always valid words on the board?"

Not really. The words validate after the player finalizes it in runtime. I made an algorithm to basically make sure that letters are randomly generated from a pool of letters. Each letter generally being proportional to how often they occur in basic words (so that the Zs, Ws, and Vs, only occur once per set so they don't clog the grid). But it is possible to have multiple copies of them in-game if you ignore them on the grid long enough.

I've updated the description of the game to have instructions. I'll integrate them on the build soon.

That's a really good point. I'll bump that as a priority. 
Pero to put it in the simplest way possible, it's basically scrabble except all the tiles are on the board. You just need to find ANY word that belongs to the English dictionary and it is valid.