How many of you play online using the program from overpowercards.com? I was tossing around the idea of making a browser-based version of that program, allowing you to connect with anyone as opposed to getting IP's ahead of time. It'd be a lot of work, but if enough people wanted it I think it'd at least be worth a shot.
I'm kinda working on it, will wait for my school semester to finish before I start work on it. Are you a developer too?
Yeah, mostly PHP but a bit of Flash/ActionScript as well, though I haven't used it in a while. Did you make the original program?
As far as the web goes, there's a few different ways you could do it. I figured if the original developer was around with the source code, the best idea would be to start there. It's probably in C or something similar, and all my expertise is in web languages, but I could definitely learn what I needed off the source code in any case.
What did you have in mind? If you've already got a plan or a good start, I'm willing to help.
I am not the original dev, but I do have an early version of his/their source code. They wrote it in Visual Basic 6 and I do not recommend using it as a base (VB6 is old, and .NET is unfamiliar territory for me).
I won't be using Flash as it's not browser friendly. I might use HTML 5 if they are obvious advantages to using it. Javascript (primarily jQuery) will be used. The backend code will be PHP with MySQLi (or PostgreSQL if we need to expand).
I have the updated database and it is currently used for the character look up (http://overpower.ca/characters.php). I will be working on that (look up all cards + OpDeck) after my semester and launch it as it gets finished. I'll be doing a re-write to make the code more modular to make browsers happy when they cache things.
The actual 'game' would be a chat room in a way. My theory is that we can either create our own or modify an open source project. The commands to interact with cards on the table will, from the database point of view, be like regular text. That way it will be easy to keep a log of things to save current game state, replay games and to watch games as they happen.
Nice. PHP/JQuery is right up my ally, though I don't know the differences between MySQLi and regular MySQL.
You can share you plan's in depth when the times comes, and I can help where needed. The funny thing was that before I found that very character look up, I was writing my very own with mostly the same search ideas. Of course I stoped when I found that it had already been done :p
No difference with MySQLi vs MySQL in terms of language, just what functions to use with PHP.
My code repository is currently on my server and I haven't really fancied the thought of having a partner to develop with.
Your call, of course. I honestly couldn't see myself finishing a project like that in any timely fashion unless the demand was heavy. I would have definitely started something, though. At any rate I'd love to hear progress.
I am interested in beta testing... Looking for a smartphone friendly application.
@metaphist: I'll likely need help, I'll map things out once I finish my semester and see what I can divide up. If you want to help out on the OpDeck, that would be great too!
@CoS: Beta testing will definitely be something I'll look at. As for a smartphone version of OpOnline, I really doubt I can get the interface into the resolution of the phones, the current program is already roughly 1024x768, just barely enough to fit on an iPad. I'll look into developing the OpDeck part to work with phones.
Post Merge: July 11, 2011, 01:46:21 PM
Here's the source if you want to look around.. I was able to compile it on VB6 SP6 but it's version 1.5 I think (versus the 2.5.3).
http://overpower.ca/OPOnline.tar.gz
Quote from: Jack on March 29, 2011, 05:22:21 PM
@metaphist: I'll likely need help, I'll map things out once I finish my semester and see what I can divide up. If you want to help out on the OpDeck, that would be great too!
@CoS: Beta testing will definitely be something I'll look at. As for a smartphone version of OpOnline, I really doubt I can get the interface into the resolution of the phones, the current program is already roughly 1024x768, just barely enough to fit on an iPad. I'll look into developing the OpDeck part to work with phones.
Jack though all this is over my head I was wondering if what is being proposed is similar to the OP online site Bios use to have? I never got to play on it, but I did build a few decks. He had the best homemade cards I've ever seen anywhere, especially for dc characters. That makes me think of another question. Do you know what happen with Bios? ???
In a way yes, though the implementation will be different. It will be more like a version of the current OpDeck and OpOnline. I'm not 100% sure of what Bios had, but if I remember correctly, there was a lot of hand-holding when creating decks, something I want to avoid.
As for homemades, I will probably consider putting them in as long as they don't introduce any weird game mechanics that you can't do in the current OPO. The default game will allow only the officially released sets and Marvels.
I actually played a game with Bios last night online. Guess he has been playing fairly often offline with friends, using homemades, and he hasn't really had the urge to play online much lately.
Quote from: Jack on March 30, 2011, 09:40:27 PM
In a way yes, though the implementation will be different. It will be more like a version of the current OpDeck and OpOnline. I'm not 100% sure of what Bios had, but if I remember correctly, there was a lot of hand-holding when creating decks, something I want to avoid.
As for homemades, I will probably consider putting them in as long as they don't introduce any weird game mechanics that you can't do in the current OPO. The default game will allow only the officially released sets and Marvels.
He had it set up to so there were two playing modes. One used only official cards and the other replaced some of the offcial character, special, and location cards with homemades either with the same or different names. Below are a few example of his cards.
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture2.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/batman.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/batman2.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture7.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture8.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture10.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture11.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/wolverine.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture4.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture3.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/NewPicture.png)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Bios%20cards/myst.png)
I love the "comic" logic he uses in many of his specials and inherants. I find that it better represents their actual skills while making characters more playable.
Yeah, that Gambit Inherent is pretty cool. I think his Grid was fine as-is, though.
The overpower youtube video I found yesterday gave me an idea about OP online. It was based on some of the gif images he used in the close of the video. I know this is waaaaaaaaay overly ambitious, but wouldn't it be cool if certain card actions could be tied to a gift image of the characters performing the attack or defense?
Here's my team.
(http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w184/fpunk/gif/gambit-cmon.gif) (http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f172/mrchamplin/wolverine.gif) (http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b272/poisonthepoet/Deadpool.gif)
Reserve ;D
(http://i678.photobucket.com/albums/vv148/splitterherz/Marvel%20Animated%20Gifs/Avengers/Hawkeye.gif)
(Unlimited imagination unbound by the restrictions of reality as well as a great ignorance of the difficulty huh? LoL!)
Too much work, I'm not even add "rules" to OpOnline...
Though, I can add the option for emoticons in the chat interface that feature these.
Quote from: Jack on March 31, 2011, 02:45:09 PM
Too much work, I'm not even add "rules" to OpOnline...
Though, I can add the option for emoticons in the chat interface that feature these.
WHAT!?
You force me to play a few choice cards on you Jack!
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Images%20and%20gifs/wounded.jpg)(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Images%20and%20gifs/Wolverine_Crazy_Slash.gif)
If that didn't get the KO then this! (activator card)
(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Images%20and%20gifs/missile.jpg)(http://i1114.photobucket.com/albums/k523/bluemarine30/Overpower/Images%20and%20gifs/Iron8.gif)
I'm just playing. ;D I know it was way out there. Just toying around. ;)
Oh and thanks for the specials. They came in the mail yesterday. Those were my first from the X-men set. I noticed they seemed glossier and didn't have the rough 'playing card' texture of my other overpower cards, but it was great to have a new peice of history. You're the best!
Apparently there was a guy working on a browser based OP player, that gave up on it not too long ago. Check out the comments on this facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/OverPower-CCG/133168156746356?sk=wall
You can see what he had so far from his link. Some cute ideas are there, like buying and opening packs, though I don't really see the point of doing that for OP in particular. At any rate, I posted a link to the forums here, so hopefully he'll stop by and maybe add something to the discussion about browser based OP.
I took note of their project, I didn't like the 'RPG' aspect of the game. It makes sense with other CCGs where if you throw a mass amount of money at cards, you can have a deck that'll win 85% of the time. With OP, you can build a pretty good deck but still only have a 60% win ratio across a broad spectrum of decks.
If he's familiar with PHP/MySQL, then I'll welcome him to the team if he wants to join. I'm slowly working on the redesign of the Character search right now.
Quote from: Jack on April 20, 2011, 01:27:16 AMIf he's familiar with PHP/MySQL, then I'll welcome him to the team if he wants to join. I'm slowly working on the redesign of the Character search right now.
That would be interesting if we ended up with a three man team tackling OPOnline :P
For now I'm just going to be tooling around with the card generator though.
I know this may also be overly ambitious but it is not new:
In GCCG (the server based program were I play Decipher's Lord of the Rings CCG) the "CCG" aspect works like this:
When you start out you can build decks with every card in the game. However, when you sit down at a table and start a game the message generator first tells everyone (including the watchers) 1) if your deck is legal and 2) how many proxy cards in your deck. If you win the match (both parties can declair either they won or lost or were undecided (so you can resume later) and both can "agree" with the results. If you win you get $36 if you lose you get $9. If you played the game with no proxies regardless if you won or lost you receive a random "promo" card in your collection. You then take the $$$ and buy packs or starters OR go through your collection and buy cards you are missing from other players who have set the price for those cards. If two players are selling the same card you buy from the one with the lowest price listing.
Once you complete a "set" of cards you can register that set for a large amount of $ depending on how hard the set was to collect ($100~).
This all with virtual $, but it adds in the CCG feel. You can trade and "give" cards to other people if you like.
You can click on any players icon in the lobby and see their win/loss record, win %, number if cards owned, total $ earned, total cash currently.
Additionally, some of the tables have set betting limits (20, ,50, 100) were the player but nit the observers wager on the outcome of a match.
This system captures the CCG aspect of the game and generates a robust online community.
Cheers!
Quote from: CoS on April 20, 2011, 11:15:02 AM
I know this may also be overly ambitious but it is not new:
In GCCG (the server based program were I play Decipher's Lord of the Rings CCG) the "CCG" aspect works like this:
When you start out you can build decks with every card in the game. However, when you sit down at a table and start a game the message generator first tells everyone (including the watchers) 1) if your deck is legal and 2) how many proxy cards in your deck. If you win the match (both parties can declair either they won or lost or were undecided (so you can resume later) and both can "agree" with the results. If you win you get $36 if you lose you get $9. If you played the game with no proxies regardless if you won or lost you receive a random "promo" card in your collection. You then take the $$$ and buy packs or starters OR go through your collection and buy cards you are missing from other players who have set the price for those cards. If two players are selling the same card you buy from the one with the lowest price listing.
Once you complete a "set" of cards you can register that set for a large amount of $ depending on how hard the set was to collect ($100~).
This all with virtual $, but it adds in the CCG feel. You can trade and "give" cards to other people if you like.
You can click on any players icon in the lobby and see their win/loss record, win %, number if cards owned, total $ earned, total cash currently.
Additionally, some of the tables have set betting limits (20, ,50, 100) were the player but nit the observers wager on the outcome of a match.
This system captures the CCG aspect of the game and generates a robust online community.
Cheers!
I think that would be a lot of fun. Especially for competitive play. Have a 'full game' option with all the cards, but this version would be a blast. We'd all have to go out and re-find those brutal rares! Goodbye DoW... :P
-BBH
You guys have no idea how hard it is to do this stuff. :P
For a system like that to work, you need a big community. I'm approximating about 150 or so people are still "active" in OP. Those numbers aren't substantial enough to generate enough matches to have a system like that.
People will game the system, since drawing 8 cards, betting 7 and conceding can happen so quick, the likelihood of people gaming the system is much much higher.
To avoid the above scenario, you want to create NPCs to play games against players. I won't go into how hard it is to make a good AI that can play OP well.
Of course, once I'm done school, I'll investigate these matters. Just don't expect them to be out in 1.0 :P
I'd like to know "who" a person has played and their win/loss record against individual opponents as well. This way if you 100 wins no losses to flunky1 you know it is an inflated record and should be reported to admin. It would also show CoS v. Onslaught 0-16 0% win percentage because that can't be made up ;)
Quote from: Jack on April 20, 2011, 12:07:15 PM
You guys have no idea how hard it is to do this stuff. :P
For a system like that to work, you need a big community. I'm approximating about 150 or so people are still "active" in OP. Those numbers aren't substantial enough to generate enough matches to have a system like that.
People will game the system, since drawing 8 cards, betting 7 and conceding can happen so quick, the likelihood of people gaming the system is much much higher.
To avoid the above scenario, you want to create NPCs to play games against players. I won't go into how hard it is to make a good AI that can play OP well.
Of course, once I'm done school, I'll investigate these matters. Just don't expect them to be out in 1.0 :P
Oh, I can only imagine it's a pain, but I was just speculating on how much fun it would be.
I think a list of a player's record might be do-able, though. Do you think you'd be able to implement an ELO ranking system? That would be neat.
-BBH
Quote from: BigBadHarve on April 20, 2011, 12:54:16 PMOh, I can only imagine it's a pain, but I was just speculating on how much fun it would be.
I think a list of a player's record might be do-able, though. Do you think you'd be able to implement an ELO ranking system? That would be neat.
-BBH
Tracking wins and losses is easy, but emulating the GCCG functionality is pretty far beyond our scope for the reasons Jack mentioned. Most of the OP community know enough about the game to go straight into advanced deck building anyway, so virtual money and trading aspects aren't as important as they would be to someone new and learning as they go. It would be a great system to use to draw in new players and have OP catch some fire, but it's a pretty tall order. I think between the interest of Jack and I, and possibly another programmer, there should be enough fuel to at least get the basics working in a browser at some point, but don't hold your breath for the rest :P
However, one aspect of the GCCG I find very attractive for us is the accounting for proxies. In our case, it would be home made cards - there should definitely be a way to add homemades to the system, but have them flagged as such so both players can agree to use them or not. I think it'd be really cool to have that restricted as well should something we make actually take off for new players, as in achieving a certain record would unlock the ability to add homemade cards to the system. That could serve to control the amount of ridiculousness that may ensue from allowing just anyone to add cards.
But again, as Jack pointed out, we'd have to come up with something that couldn't be "gamed" so easily, since you can quickly run through many OP matches in the way he described.
Quote from: metaphist on April 20, 2011, 02:08:32 PM
However, one aspect of the GCCG I find very attractive for us is the accounting for proxies. In our case, it would be home made cards - there should definitely be a way to add homemades to the system, but have them flagged as such so both players can agree to use them or not. I think it'd be really cool to have that restricted as well should something we make actually take off for new players, as in achieving a certain record would unlock the ability to add homemade cards to the system. That could serve to control the amount of ridiculousness that may ensue from allowing just anyone to add cards.
But again, as Jack pointed out, we'd have to come up with something that couldn't be "gamed" so easily, since you can quickly run through many OP matches in the way he described.
Has anyone talked to Bios about what he had online? There were 2 different modes of play. One used homemades and the other only used the basic cards + marvels.
I should be able to add homemades, unless there's a really obscure inherent or something that I don't support (say.. May place and play <Character> <special> and <special>, I only have the logic worked for the current set of characters.
The ELO ranking system, if it's nothing too complex, I can add it in. Anything statistical is very easy to implement. You just need to tell me everything about it.