HTML [Dev Log] :: Updates on what I'm working on

[Satori6]

Link to the download/game thread. I'll continue using this one to post news and such.

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I had posted this in the General Discussions forum before I found this one:

So I've had a few projects in mind for a while now, and due to an accident and its resulting long recovery, I've found myself stuck at home with little to do.
I've taken this forced opportunity to start learning javascript, and I'm making a game to learn and practice.
I've been working on it for 3-4 months and I feel like I've reached a point where I'm confident enough with my coding to continue moving at a steady pace.

It will be a deck building/card battle game. My goal is for it to be very moddable, so that I can focus on adding new mechanics, and players can add cards as they please. I also plan on adding a deck sharing system early on, so people can post their decks and others can fight against them.
The game is heavily inspired on Infinity Wars, with a few tweaks.

The short of it is that some people can use their sexual energy to summon and control characters from anywhere, anytime: it can be someone from around the corner, or someone from a different universe and year. The character cards will reflect that.
It will feature a story mode that hopefully will be humorous.

I'm using AI generated pictures that I then edit to remove errors. I'm also learning to draw, but this way I can get a good picture in a day, as opposed to 2-3 weeks when drawn by hand, plus they are much better looking than what I'm currently capable of producing.

Here are some captures of the current state of the game:

The match system is 90% done in terms of mechanics, and around 70% done in terms of graphics.

Those commander pictures (the big ones at each side) are placeholders. The deployment area (tall rectangle) will also be split to make room for a different zone.
I'll add a background at some point, but likely not for the first version.


One of the things that I dislike the most about many games is the unnecessary amount of menus and buttons. I'm aiming to make this fully playable with a single hand, and with as few buttons as possible.
You can simply drag a card to move it to a different zone:


Or drop it onto another card on the same area to swap their positions:


You can click on a card to get more information, as well as getting a larger picture:


Right now I've only worked on character cards (like the one above), and general abilities like this one:

I plan on adding targetable abilities down the line, and a few other card types that I have in mind.


When a character is defeated, their picture will change:

Right now there are only a few generic defeat pictures.
Down the line the idea is that the defeat picture is based on the kink of the attacker: if the attacker has an anal kink, the defeat picture will reflect that. This way players will be able to stack decks with cards of the kinks they enjoy the most.

Based on my current pace, I expect a prototype to be ready before the end of the year. The prototype will be a fully functional match.
Version 0.1 (including a deck builder) should be done within a month after the prototype.

 

[Satori6]

Since then I've added a few things:

A side bar for controls and links. Game speed will also be able to be changed with the muse wheel or keyboard.
The council area won't have a use during the prototype, but it will be used on 0.1


I've also added targetable abilities. I was planning on adding these way further down the line, but I've taken a liking to adding the most complex mechanics first - it will make it much easier to focus on new cards and mechanics later on.


Just like most other interactions, using a targeted ability will be a matter of dragging and dropping it on the target.

 

[Satori6]

New cards, new abilities, new mechanics, new art, yet progress has slowed down a bit because I'm having a hard time building an AI that can keep up with me:

The more abilities and mechanics, the more complex the strategy gets, and decisions that may came logically while playing can get tricky (and tedious) to replicate for the AI.

Granted, part of this is due to the cards being quite unbalanced, and the AI using the exact same deck as me, but still, I'd like to get it to a point where it can defeat me at least 15% of the time, as it used to do before the newest mechanics were implemented.


That was from before the newer mechanics.

Now it's doing way worse - I won 7 games in a row before I stopped testing. Some were won with an abysmal advantage:


While others had parts where the AI was doing well, but once you turn the tide of the battle, the AI rarely ever makes a comeback:


I'll focus on ticking boxes from the roadmap so that I can meet my goal of having a functional prototype by the end of the year, and then spend the remaining free time working on the AI.

 

[Satori6]

The recorder I use has potato quality.

What matters is that active skills are functional now - or at least the ones that don't require a target.
The first active that I tested was having a card evolve.

Now on to spam some cards with active skills and make it even harder to build a decent AI.

 

[Satori6]

So I've been working on the AI, and now the results are all over the place.

I'm certain that it's due to how unbalanced the cards are at this point: I'm including very powerful cards on the vanilla set, which is meant to be the weakest one. Many of these cards will be migrated to different sets in the future once they're added, and the stronger ones will have even more restrictions in place.

But there is a clear pattern: getting a very strong card early on (eg; Nova) is almost guaranteed to result in a crushing victory.
Cards like the Technomancer that can damage enemies in the deployment area can also be exceedingly strong and hard to deal with for the AI, as they'll often kill many of their cards before they even get a chance to fight.

Still, when the AI gets lucky with its draws, it can perform almost as good as a human player and gain an overwhelming advantage:



I added a simple battlefield background:

It won't have any effects on 0.1, but battlefields with special mechanics are planned for future versions.

I also added a system to include descriptions for the defeats:

(that pic obviously still needs post editing)

Other than that, plenty of sneaky issues were caught and fixed, and I spent a couple of days cleaning up some of the code. I'll finish the cleanup by 0.2.

At this pace, I should be able to complete over 95% of the planned code by the end of this month, then the next month will be spent creating art and new cards and balancing them before the prototype is released.

 

[Satori6]

I caught a cold or something. It wasn't too bad, but it was bad enough to prevent me from doing any heavy thinking, so very little coding was done in this past week: I only implemented a couple of new abilities - I think I have close to 30 unique skills at this point.

For 0.1 I'll have to spend some time building a ton of weak cards, because most of the ones that I have right now are way too powerful for a starting deck.

Since my mind wasn't cooperating due to fever and general tiredness, I spent some time reworking the cards: I tweaked the stats of most of them. I also created the pics for some new cards - the difference in quality is going to be a problem: due to my computer's limitations, pics that require few and simple prompts will produce higher quality pictures, while complex ones will use more resources working out those details at the expense of quality.

Simple prompt example:


Complex one:


There isn't really much to do about it, since it's a hardware issue, so the quality discrepancy will remain unless I get a powerful enough computer to be able to generate complex pictures with as much quality as simple ones.

It doesn't bother me much - after all, I'm mostly making this game in order to learn Javascript, HTML/CSS, and the game is being designed with the idea of players using their own pictures for the cards.

I'm feeling better now, so I'll see if I can make up for that lost time during the weekend and get the project back on track for the 0.1 release.

 

[Satori6]

It's been a slow month due to the holidays, but we're on schedule.

These past few days I've mostly been improving what's already there instead of adding new content, as I want to make it a habit to focus on the quality of a release instead of releasing broken files and only fixing them after everybody starts complaining.

I'm sure there will be bugs that I may have missed, but I'm doing my best to take care of all of them. I've also cleaned most of the currently used pictures - there shouldn't be too many mutant fingers.

Some examples of hand post-editing:




Some are much cruder than others, and will need post-post-editing (?), and there's one that will require a complete remake from scratch, but I think most editions are only noticeable if you're truly looking for them.

Then again, I expect most people to use their own pictures for the cards once modding is implemented, so these details won't matter too much.

Anyway, I'm tired now, and I still need to check the game posting guidelines and finish touching-up a couple of details, but the prototype should be ready for download within 24 hours of this post.

 

[Satori6]

I guess it's pending approval or something. I'll add the links here while it's moved to the games forum.

DOWNLOAD
All platforms:

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[SerokMinmas]

I really believe this to be some of the best use of AI I've seen around here

But it still has that "glow" that AI stuff seems to have, its really hard to describe what it is, and I dont really know if its only psychological (As in, I know its AI because of the Tag, so I start noticing stuff that reminds me of other AI stuff), but hey I liked it as is, so I guess it doesnt really matter all that much

I'm using AI generated pictures that I then edit to remove errors. I'm also learning to draw, but this way I can get a good picture in a day, as opposed to 2-3 weeks when drawn by hand, plus they are much better looking than what I'm currently capable of producing.

I think this is DEFINITELY the proper way to go, and the mistake most AI devs seem to make is not editing stuff just using it as a way to get thousands of shit images generated, AI is a tool to help, not a free worker with a mind on its own

One of the things that I dislike the most about many games is the unnecessary amount of menus and buttons. I'm aiming to make this fully playable with a single hand, and with as few buttons as possible.
You can simply drag a card to move it to a different zone:

This is a really good idea thats very hard to do with javascript and HTML, my honest suggestion is go to Unity or Godot, javascript as a game language is janky as fuck, and HTML is prehistoric, if you want your game to still run online, thats totally doable with either of my suggestions, and you would save yourself a massive headache

But I understand that this is what you learned and already started the project in, I wish I saw your post back in november so I could suggest this earlier

The difference in quality is going to be a problem: due to my computer's limitations, pics that require few and simple prompts will produce higher quality pictures, while complex ones will use more resources working out those details at the expense of quality.

Well, is it possible to remove complexity from the background and throw it into the character, like using a "green-screen" background and then generating a background for the character you generate? maybe that would help

But that really is one of the major limitations of AI, theres no real way of going around that, even with a better computer, you would eventually reach the limits of the model/algorithm

I guess it's pending approval or something. I'll add the links here while it's moved to the games forum

The prototype is good but I had some issues figuring out the rules of everything, but thats really an issue of it being a prototype, I cant really expect a good tutorial on one, now that I've read this thread I know how to play

Also didnt really like the way you indicate when a play is legal or illegal, right now it just changes the mouse cursor, but that really isnt enough, took me a while to figure out what was legal or not, but again, prototype issue

I think your major "competitor" in the Porn Card Game genre is TF Card Battle, if you havent played that one, you should, one of the things they do that you dont is the use of Real Porn gifs and webms, it still isnt possible to generate proper AI animations yet, but the effect they have there is pretty good, have you thought of complimenting the AI stuff with Real Porn? Animations or Cards even

Great effort, will be looking at it next updates

 

[Satori6]

...

Thank you so much for the feedback!

I agree that post-editing is key for AI use. I've actually been meaning to make a short post about it to help other devs who are using AI.

HTML/JS is definitely janky! While researching how to do some things, half of the answers I'd find would be "use this other language instead" haha, but I guess it'll have to do for now.

Regarding the green screen - that's definitely something I've toyed around with, but I've had difficulties getting consistent styles between backgrounds and characters, and they end up looking like an actual low-quality green screen where it's very clear where the character ends and the "green screen" begins.

And yes, I've played TF Card Game and enjoyed it - I'm actually planning on burrowing that mechanic about changing the display picture of the commander depending on how much damage they've taken.

I'm not a fan of mixing drawings with real porn, but the cards will be fully moddable, so people will be free to mix and match their favorite pictures.

 

[Satori6]

This week I implemented the council, then I spent two days fixing bugs added by it, including one caused by typing "coucil".



So what is the council about?
The council will serve three purposes:

1: Down the line, I will include different card factions, and the faction that each card in your council belongs to will determine how many cards of a particular set you'll be able to include in your deck. The reasoning will be explained in the story.

2: In later versions there will be a loyalty value for each card.
Cards with higher loyalty will be much stronger (they may be cheaper, have higher stats, or better skills), but they will require your deck having as many council members of their faction as their loyalty value.

This way, the more characters in your council from the same faction you have, the stronger cards you'll be able to use, at the cost of limiting yourself to cards from those sets.

3: These cards will be available to you from the start, reducing the luck factor involved in drawing them: you will be able to build decks around the mechanics of a few characters.



I've also added some basic code to allow the AI to use the council.
Once story mode is implemented, I will create custom AIs for every story commanders so that they can make a good use of their deck.

I also changed it so that you can now rearrange cards in your hand:



This way you'll be able to place the least useful ones at the start and prevent the stronger ones from being discarded when your hand is full and you draw extra cards (either at the start of the turn or due to a skill or ability).

Next week I will begin working on the deck builder.

 

[Satori6]

Some progress on the deck builder.
I'll redo the way that the cards in the deck are displayed on the left so that you can click on its name to remove it.

Save, load, share and import shouldn't be too hard to implement.
I'll also include a preview of the card with details on its stats.

The deck builder should be done by next weekend.
After that I'll create the free play/training screen where the player will be able to select their deck and the AI's deck and load them for a match.

 

[Satori6]

Save mechanics seem to be working now.

Implementing these is very simple - the most time consuming part is adding the visual elements; I don't enjoy working with CSS. I'm adding very crude interface elements right now due to this. In the future I'll see about making these elements prettier; right now I'm more concerned about function over form.

Loading is next on the list. Then import/export, and that will be it for the first version of the deck builder.

In the future I'll add a way to filter cards by name, tags, kink, as well as sorting them based on different stats. I don't think it's necessary right now due to the low amount of existing cards.

 

[Satori6]

Ok, the deck builder is fully functional now.

This week I'll work on the main menu and if I get time to finish it before the weekend, I'll also start working on the quick match screen where players will select their and the AI's deck, as well as other options (AI script, handicaps, etc.) in the future.

 

[Satori6]

The menu is mostly done - it's only missing a title/logo, but I still don't know what name I'll be giving to this game.

The background is a random picture from another project I was toying around with, but it will do for now. After all, I've been considering using a similar character for this game once I start working on the story, so I'll leave that as a placeholder for now.

 

[Satori6]

That will do for the Free Play setup screen for now.
In future versions, commander selection, AI script, handicaps, battlefield, and other options will be included.

I'm aiming for Feb 3-4 as the release date for 0.1, so I'll spend this week writing the tutorials, adding descriptions to all of the cards, and fixing a bug that I found with Grave Robber.

If I get any time left after that (doubtful), I'll try to tick as many checkboxes from the roadmap as I can.

 

[Satori6]

Most things are ready. I'm just missing adding some card descriptions and building the itch.io page

However, writing the tutorials was awfully boring (ADHD, yay!) and I feel drained after doing it, and I don't feel like writing descriptions and then building that dumb page. Not yet anyway.

I'll take a couple of days to bring myself to tackle those tasks and hopefully have it uploaded by this weekend.

In the meantime I've been trying different things with the AI generator:



This is done by the same model that I've been using; I'm just feeding it wildly different prompts and spending an unnecessarily long time editing the images. I'm still not sure whether I like this style better than the simpler one.

It's visually appealing, but it needs way more post-editing, as imperfections are more noticeable as detail increases, and
since the pictures on this game are meant to be modded, I don't know if it's worth it spending the extra time on the art when I could be using it to work on the code.

Including pictures that didn't make it into the prototype, there's art for around 20 new cards. I'll probably add them along with many new ones on the update after the card modding one. The mass-nerf/rebalance update will likely be included there as well.

 

[Satori6]

0.1 is live now.

As I was about to publish it, I noticed that the game was still lacking a name, so I spent the few final hours thinking of one.

Next: Character card modding.
As modding was the main feature in mind when designing this game, I'm quite excited to finally start implementing it.

Future versions will allow further modding: abilities, skills, commanders, AI... but I'll take it step by step and start with what I think players will like the most: being able to make their own characters and using the pictures that they like.

 

[Satori6]

Ok, so that worked.

There will likely be bugs, and a lot of testing will be needed, but so far it's working: vanilla cards can be edited and new cards can also be added in the same file.

Enabling and disabling mods will be as simple as writing or deleting their names from a file.

I'll spend this week polishing this implementation and writing a modding tutorial, then I'll seize this chance to catch up with all of the tasks on the to do list and reworking/rebalancing all existing cards in preparation for the factions system.

 

[Satori6]

I will be out this weekend, so I'll post a quick update for now:

I have been mostly working on the AI. Fixing bugs, adding new logic, and implementing changes. The plan is to take care of every single item on the to do list by next update, so they don't start piling up.

Besides that, I've been mostly working on cards. Making art for the ones that will replace the currently unbalanced ones, as well as editing all pictures to make them stand out more against the battlefield. I've also added one or two new defeat pics.



It looks much better, right? Thanks to telotelo for the suggestion.

So far I've replaced Bondage Vampire, The Magician, Olympian, and Meditating Ninja.
Many more will be replaced, but they will all eventually come back once the new factions and council mechanics are added.

I'll also include all of the removed cards in a mod so people can restore them in a minute if they want their overpowered cards back.

All of the cards that are being replaced are swapped by weaker versions of them.
For example, Meditating Ninja was replaced by this card, which gains half as much damage as Ninja did:



Next week I'll continue working on the same: all remaining items on the to do list, creating art and replacing cards, and -if I get time-, I'll start working on further improving the graphics of the match screen.