Expanding on the existing card builder website

[Sykole]

Hi,

Since we are trying to include influencers and find ways to make understanding the game a little bit easier, why not utilize the card builder website we already have and integrating it as something more than just a card builder for the BF geeks? 

- Build decks, export and share them with others. bfcards.com/decks/<deck> -- Probably suggested before, but I think it is worth implementing. It would take connecting the website to the db so that users can login and such, but would be a great future. Instead of searching endlessly on the forum for this or that guide, we have it so say, Sykole uploads a meta deck for the campaign map Behind Enemy Lines, and if others like it, they Upvote/Honor Sykole, and at a certain point, Sykole gets a badge of honor for his good deeds. This way Sykole has incentive to post decks with a neat description on how to use them.

This will make it easier for players to browse decks, and even filter them by the cards they have, or limit their price to XX. We can have any kind of filter.

Also, why not make it feel more modern? Say for example, making it seem like we have this personal assistant that helps you decide whether this deck is fit or not. Say the assistant is called Moon, she will ask you, is this deck for rPvE or PvP? What orbs do you want to use? Then suggests cards, and when you finalize the deck, she gives you tips. "Hey, you do not have an XL unit, how about using this card?" or "Perhaps you could use more spells in the deck, why not include those XYZ nature spells since you already have a nature orb?" and so forth. A colorful website, no complicated AI or anything, just ifs and elses to make it happen. This way, also influencers can say, "Hey guys, my deck is below. Use the link to equip it and get a free 300 gold!" -- OR even make it so there are certain rewards/quests. "Use three decks by influencers in a match to get 100 BFP". 

- Slot machine. On the same website, there is a slot machine where if lucky, you get a card shard. Completely free every X days where you get a free spin, and when you get 2 or 3 of the same card shard, you can forge it into a card. You can also buy slot charges with gold or bfp, something along these lines. 

- Use the website and forums more one way or another. If the game engine itself is hard to crack, we make our own with blackjack and bookers. But the song im listening to is over so im out of ideas

[Dallarian]

11 minutes ago, Sykole said:

- Slot machine. On the same website, there is a slot machine where if lucky, you get a card shard. Completely free every X days where you get a free spin, and when you get 2 or 3 of the same card shard, you can forge it into a card. You can also buy slot charges with gold or bfp, something along these lines. 

Boosters is RNG indeed, however, we plan to keep the game as "family friendly", therefore I doubt any "hazard-like" mechanics will be ever introduced.

[Sykole]

14 minutes ago, Dallarian said:

Boosters is RNG indeed, however, we plan to keep the game as "family friendly", therefore I doubt any "hazard-like" mechanics will be ever introduced.

I was thinking something like the kind Battlefield heroes had, they called it the Claw Machine, so not a slot machine per se, just the same concept of booster, but as something with extra flavor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLsRfJd0QJw

 

[Lans]

I would love it if I could just click on deck images that we have on forum today and that brings me to website that I can view each card in deck. The allcards website is almost there but problem is it doesn't give link for the specific deck I wanted (when I use the link it gives me, it shows me another deck and I need to select one I wanted from list).

 

The other nice to have thing would be hovering on card in deck also shows the card info and not just the images (maybe top players know cards well enough that it doesn't matter either way for them but I think it would be super helpful for those of us trying to learn). I think I put in @Treim's rPvE10 deck in mocked up screenshot provided (was the closest deck to what I am playing).

[Kapo]

Speaking of decks, what is really missing is some way to get decks in and out of the game. Usually, in other games, this is done by some "code" that is used to import/export a (deck) setup.

Ideally, we could have

• a link that gives you the deck in a browser, like:  skylords.eu/deck/ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG
• a button in the game, where you enter that code "ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG" and it creates this deck for you (a derivative of cloning a deck from someone else)
• forum integration, like if you have the code you can add <deck>ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG</deck>, and it gives you a picture of the deck, when you click on it, you auto-copy the code
• also a discord bot function, !deck ERT6343E654FG23SDFERZHSDFS45DG gives you the picture as well

Right now we are stumbling around in this area, sharing decks with screenshots all the time, so it would be kinda cool to think about a long-term solution for deck sharing.

Edited March 24, 2022 by Kapo

[Lans]

5 hours ago, Kapo said:

Speaking of decks, what is really missing is some way to get decks in and out of the game. Usually, in other games, this is done by some "code" that is used to import/export a (deck) setup.

I don't know how hard/if it is possible is to integrate this in-game but love the idea and I think is a good thing to layout the long term vision (I agree with everything @Kapo). I think what I suggested is doable and the bare minimum (small update to website and view individual decks from generated code) but still a lot better than what we have today (the most "bang for the buck").

Forum integration would make it a lot easier for people to write and use guides.

Finally being able to import/export decks from game itself (I am sort of expecting UI challenges but worse case: /addeck deckname <code> and maybe /getdeck deckname and server does the right thing). Tying this back to max number of in-game decks issue, this could a workaround for that (you can have in theory infinite number of decks with this but would need external management)! 🙂

[Kubik]

"/addeck deckname <code>"

can be added on 3 places, in LUA, in proxy, on server
I already tried to do it in proxy, and I can say that it is a terrible idea
Doing it on server will not refresh decks so you would need to close the game and log in again for it to take effect, which is also terrible
So only reasonable option is to do it in LUA where both chat UI, and decks are accessible, but we lack people to do that 😞

exporting deck is not any better 😞 so we lack the person to do the LUA part

I would not expect a big UI challenge with this, but it just needs someone who does LUA.

I do not see it realistic to create new tags specifically for forum. But maybe some of the web developers know how to do that.

generating and posting images on discord does not look like good idea, because I think the bot would reach upload limit sooner rather than later. 😞

Card base is outdated, which is one of the reasons why it was removed from the top row on forum, and does not support importing decks 😞

 

 

[Lans]

Honestly I would deprioritize exporting deck from game if that is hard because if deck builder website is updated and enhanced a little like regardless of deck order, list out:

    T1: [orbs of all cards in T1] [units] [spells] [building] -- maybe even average power by card type and overall average???
    ...

Or whatever statistics/analysis that people like. In that way, deck builder website would generally be better than in game deck building (only reason why I would then want to do it in game is to make sure I got the cards/upgrades/charges needed). The goal is to push people to build decks on website and share/import to game.

[Kubik]

And do you know someone who can update that website?

And exporting the deck is not hard, just needs the right people.

[Kubik]

sr_deck.exe making an deck viewer that works with card IDs (which can be easily shared as string) takes only few minutes (and then over two hours figuring out where to get images).

You can find card IDs on wiki in Statistic section.

[LEBOVIN]

48 minutes ago, Kubik said:

sr_deck.exe making an deck viewer that works with card IDs (which can be easily shared as string) takes only few minutes (and then over two hours figuring out where to get images).

You can find card IDs on wiki in Statistic section.

use the left column of this link instead, maybe easier than opening each page one by one https://skylords-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/ID_Lists/Card_IDs

Edited March 24, 2022 by LEBOVIN

[Ultralord]

Maybe it makes sense to extend the API which @fiki574 provieded a while ago.
If the API would have "all" information for a card and reads that information form the liver Server/DB we would have a alwayse Up-to-date CardBase. (Maybe even the textes / translations)


At the moment in dont think the information would help you:
https://hub.backend.skylords.eu/api/auctions/cards?id=1561

 

Spoiler

[ {
"cardId": 1561,
"cardName": "Abomination",
"rarity": "Rare",
"expansion": "Amii",
"promo": "No",
"obtainable": "In packs",
"fireOrbs": 2,
"frostOrbs": 0,
"natureOrbs": 2,
"shadowOrbs": 0,
"neutralOrbs": 0,
"affinity": "Frost",
"cardType": "Twilight"
} ]

 

[Kubik]

Well the app I posted uses only publicly available sources, I was considering to obtain the data from the game (including pictures), but that would be super easy tool for someone to reverse, and last information I have from @Zyna was that she wasn't yet sure if she wants to make the database format public or not, if that changes I can easily make it load images from game itself, and all the up to date data (or test server optionally), which should be much easier than getting them from wiki.

[Ultralord]

@Kubik Do you think you can share the rust code of your Deckbuilder / image loader that you posted?
Currently i play around with PHP Replay Parser from @dreaddy.
Besides some minder bugs, the passer requests cards from Cardebase as well as the image:
https://cardbase.skylords.eu/Cards/GetCards
https://cardbase.skylords.eu/lrms/GetMediaData?id=5f3324a3c6ee954ccfe9bebf

Switching to the API is not the problem, but getting the Image from the Wiki looks like a lot of work…

[Kubik]

main.rsCargo.toml I do not mind these 2 files `card_templates.rs`contains enum `CardTemplate` which I take out from the proxy, so that contains some `secrets` and I am lazy to filter that out 😛 it also derives `strum_macros::EnumIter` which should be enough for Rust programmer to imagine what it is, and for non Rust programmers the source code would be unreadable, because it is generated with macro.

[WARNING] The code looks terrible, because I did the main logic it in just few minutes 😄 and especially the part that obtains the images is terrible, which was actually harder that the main logic itself 😄 and it contains really hack for mapping IDs.

https://cardbase.skylords.eu/Cards/GetCards is useless because it does not have all cards, like "Amii Paladins", "Bandit Minefield", "Bandit Sniper", "Banzai Lord", "Coat of Protection"...

And fixing that page would not be an easy task 😞 I know because I did looked at it, but if @T1421 want to help... we can talk about it 🙂

[Ultralord]

THX so much, that helps me a lot.
Helping to fix the Cardbase sounds interesting, but I think you will need someone with more Web-Dev-experience then me 😉