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Author Topic: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?  (Read 6030 times)

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ackmondual

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+1

Actual difficulty can vary in how you structure your code, but we're talking overall here, given all other variables being equal.

Things like Smithy, Village, and Woodcutter, and 6 others similar to them can be implemented in 10 minutes, TOTAL (not each), but some of them have given some digital implementations a run for their money.  IIRC, they include but not limited to:
Possession
Stash
Black Market
Inheritance
Band Of Misfits
Overlord
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Jack Rudd

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2018, 07:26:49 am »
0

Enchantress must be a fun one, potentially changing what every other Action does.
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2018, 01:32:24 pm »
0

Storyteller and Necromancer also.
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werothegreat

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2018, 03:51:41 pm »
0

Adding Boons and Hexes probably wasn't hard, but it probably took a lot of time.
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Cave-o-sapien

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2018, 04:22:23 pm »
0

Inheritance
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Donald X.

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2018, 04:55:00 am »
+9

For a while, all of the Nocturne cards except Changeling were programmed and being tested. Changeling required autoplay.
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ipofanes

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2018, 05:29:06 am »
0

I would think that unforeseen suspension of rules, for which Enchantress is a good example, would uproot existing programs if they haven't been flexible enough. Villa could be easy to program if the programmer knew from the get-go that it might be possible to return to the action phase in the same turn.
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popsofctown

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2018, 10:06:06 am »
+4

Black market is hard to implement, not hard to implement in a digital format.
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J Reggie

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2018, 12:13:14 pm »
0

Does anyone know why Sentry wasn't implemented for a while? It seems fairly simple.

Jeebus

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2018, 12:16:18 pm »
0

Prince*
Villa
Mountain Pass
-1 Card token (Relic, Borrow)

Maybe cards like Coppersmith, Merchant, -$1 token (Bridge Troll, Ball) and Envious.

*Prince is probably mostly difficult because of lose track issues. If you have solidly implemented lose track from the start, you should avoid many problems. (Unfortunately, I don't think Shuffle IT has done this yet.) I suspect lose track is the one thing that is by far the most difficult thing to implement as a general rule (not special casing it).
« Last Edit: April 10, 2018, 12:20:16 pm by Jeebus »
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werothegreat

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #10 on: April 10, 2018, 02:11:28 pm »
0

Does anyone know why Sentry wasn't implemented for a while? It seems fairly simple.

I think it was the and/or part
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #11 on: April 10, 2018, 04:28:38 pm »
0

I think [Sentry was hard due to] the and/or part
Hmm... I gotta think that it can't take you that long until it occurs to you that "for each card, choose whether A, B or C happens to it" is equivalent to "for each of A, B and C, choose the set of cards it happens to", and that the latter admits of a much nicer UI.

Actually... if your discard pile is empty and Sentry looks at the last two cards and they are Tunnel and Overgrown Estate and you discard and reveal the Tunnel and trash the Overgrown Estate, whether or not you draw one of {Tunnel, Gold} and topdeck the other or leave them both in your discard pile depends on whether you discard Tunnel or trash Overgrown Estate first. I think. Does Shuffle IT get the interaction right? And did I get it right? :)

I think a potentially nice UI might be showing you the two cards, then have three choice buttons, "trash a card", "discard a card", "done". If you don't pick "done", pick a card and resolve the effect. Then show three choice buttons, "trash <name of other card>", "discard <name of other card>", "topdeck <name of other card>". If you pressed done, do a card ordering dialog for the topdecking (unless you revealed two identical cards). I think that should allow for all combinations. It might be slow, though.

Mountain Pass
Why do you think Mountain Pass would be particularly hard? It's not alone in doing things in the after-your-turn phase; the thing it does seems 90% self-contained and 10% impacting two already existing variables (#debt and #vp); and the bidding structure is fairly simple. Is it the per-game memory of "has a Province already been gained?" that you think is tricky?

Maybe cards like [Coppersmith and Envious].
I think they need a per-turn-state field, numberOfCoppersmithsInEffect :: Int and isEnviousInEffect :: Boolean. Set them to 0 and false on initialization and at turn's end; increment the one and set the other to true when you play Coppersmith and return Envious. Modify the on-play code of Copper, Silver and Gold to read these fields. It may be new that basic treasures need to take the per-turn-state record as an argument. It's not new that cards need to remember what happened or didn't happen earlier in the turn, see Hermit.

Black Market is hard to implement, not hard to implement in a digital format.
How so?
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DG

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #12 on: April 10, 2018, 06:16:59 pm »
0

Alchemists and schemes have a been a problem for UI design going back to Isotropic and Goko. It presents a different type of selection but the real problem is doing it in a way that doesn't confuse the user.
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crj

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #13 on: April 10, 2018, 08:36:06 pm »
+1

It feels to me like there are two different kinds of difficulty here.

Firstly, there are cards like Stash which must be an absolute pig to implement under any circumstances.

The second category is cards which are so unexpected they might break preconceptions the implementers baked into their code concerning how the game works. Crown is an example of a fairly simple card that might break things quite badly: the first ever card that can be played when you're playing Actions or when you're playing Treasures. (Werewolf, by contrast, was probably easier to implement because once you've got Action-Treasures, Action-Nights aren't such a nasty shock.)

Inheritance was probably a pain to implement in both respects. (-8
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Cave-o-sapien

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #14 on: April 11, 2018, 12:27:44 pm »
+3

This thread of existing Card Bugs provides some evidence/context for this discussion:

http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1226.0
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Commodore Chuckles

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #15 on: April 11, 2018, 01:27:03 pm »
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Black Market is hard to implement, not hard to implement in a digital format.
How so?

Have you ever tried playing with it IRL?
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LastFootnote

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #16 on: April 11, 2018, 03:39:49 pm »
+3

Crown is an example of a fairly simple card that might break things quite badly: the first ever card that can be played when you're playing Actions or when you're playing Treasures.

In fact, Crown was the catalyst for DougZ giving up on updating isotropic. Or seemed that way, anyway. It was around that time.
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navical

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #17 on: April 11, 2018, 04:51:15 pm »
0

The one I've not seen mentioned yet is Moat (Lighthouse and Guardian, too, but Moat is the worst of the three). Anything that stops something happening is a pain.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #18 on: April 11, 2018, 06:19:02 pm »
0

Have you ever tried playing with [Black Market] IRL?
I have not. I've seed it played in videos. It looks... cumbersome but reasonably straightforward. I can see tracking issues IRL: you have to remember how much of your money you've spent. What am I missing? Or is your point just that: that it's cumbersome?

I can see myself coding up something that does Base and Intrigue, and then being surprised to learn that treasures can be played in your action phase—and even more, that you can buy something in your action phase. But your claim wasn't about that, so... I'm still not seeing the thing that should make my head explode?
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Gazbag

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #19 on: April 11, 2018, 06:49:04 pm »
+2

Have you ever tried playing with [Black Market] IRL?
I have not. I've seed it played in videos. It looks... cumbersome but reasonably straightforward. I can see tracking issues IRL: you have to remember how much of your money you've spent. What am I missing? Or is your point just that: that it's cumbersome?

I can see myself coding up something that does Base and Intrigue, and then being surprised to learn that treasures can be played in your action phase—and even more, that you can buy something in your action phase. But your claim wasn't about that, so... I'm still not seeing the thing that should make my head explode?

I think they're just talking about setting up the Black Market deck being a pain.
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Cave-o-sapien

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #20 on: April 11, 2018, 07:37:24 pm »
0

Have you ever tried playing with [Black Market] IRL?
I have not. I've seed it played in videos. It looks... cumbersome but reasonably straightforward. I can see tracking issues IRL: you have to remember how much of your money you've spent. What am I missing? Or is your point just that: that it's cumbersome?

I can see myself coding up something that does Base and Intrigue, and then being surprised to learn that treasures can be played in your action phase—and even more, that you can buy something in your action phase. But your claim wasn't about that, so... I'm still not seeing the thing that should make my head explode?

I think they're just talking about setting up the Black Market deck being a pain.

So much so that many people use a randomizer app for the black market deck. Only if you buy something do you fish for the physical card.
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ackmondual

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #21 on: April 12, 2018, 12:55:09 am »
+2

Have you ever tried playing with [Black Market] IRL?
I have not. I've seed it played in videos. It looks... cumbersome but reasonably straightforward. I can see tracking issues IRL: you have to remember how much of your money you've spent. What am I missing? Or is your point just that: that it's cumbersome?

I can see myself coding up something that does Base and Intrigue, and then being surprised to learn that treasures can be played in your action phase—and even more, that you can buy something in your action phase. But your claim wasn't about that, so... I'm still not seeing the thing that should make my head explode?

I think they're just talking about setting up the Black Market deck being a pain.

So much so that many people use a randomizer app for the black market deck. Only if you buy something do you fish for the physical card.
I've seen someone just a make a BM deck with the randomizers.  If you buy a card, remove the randomizer from the deck, and then find a copy of the appropriate cards.
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ConMan

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #22 on: April 12, 2018, 03:31:43 am »
+1

I've seen someone just a make a BM deck with the randomizers.  If you buy a card, remove the randomizer from the deck, and then find a copy of the appropriate cards.
I've done that, and once you have enough expansions it is a huuuuuuge pain.
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ipofanes

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #23 on: April 12, 2018, 04:54:14 am »
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I've seen someone just a make a BM deck with the randomizers.  If you buy a card, remove the randomizer from the deck, and then find a copy of the appropriate cards.
I've done that, and once you have enough expansions it is a huuuuuuge pain.

I don't have BM but I always randomise decks from two or three expansions only (everything else would be a bit of a pain). With BM, I would only pick a stack from those expansions.
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jonaskoelker

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Re: Which cards are the most difficult to implement in digital format?
« Reply #24 on: April 12, 2018, 12:24:49 pm »
+1

This thread of existing Card Bugs provides some evidence/context for this discussion:

http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=1226.0

Excellent, I like evidence, much approved. Maybe what we can learn from this list is how subtle some cards and interactions are, which is different from how much effort it took to implement them. This is a list consisting only of bugs that were not caught before the cards were released—we can't really know from the outside how many Possession bugs were discovered and fixed before Shuffle IT went live.

Here's my take on whether the bugs are due to the cards inherently presenting either deeply tricky issues, many finicky issues or otherwise demanding lots of effort and thought:

- BoM/Overlord bug (VP Calculations): Inherent to BoM/Overlord/plays-as-another-card
- Blessed Village (Boons out of turn): on-gain abilities and gaining cards on someone else's turn, not inherent to Blessed Village. Ambassadoring a Border Village is the same kind of timing; the Boons deck is new, maybe attribute this to the boons deck.
- Changeling (autoplay bug): really an autoplay thing, not inherent to Changeling, though Changeling is probably unique in having an on-gain exchange ability (the others are on-discard on Travelers and on-play on Vampire/Bat.)
- Crumbling Castle and Haunted Castle: finicky timing and UI issues, landmarks.
- Fool: purely a UI issue.
- Governor: seems like a simple mistake rather than Governor being hard.
- Inheritance (with Fortress): sounds like it might be related to the essentials of Inheritance. Maybe half a point to Fortress as well.
- Inn: really about Possession.
- Magic Lamp: seems to be about tricks in relation to double-playing cards and is maybe mainly because Magic Lamp is new? Let's give a full point to Magic Lamp and half a point to Crown and Counterfeit. And maybe action-throners are hard as well for the same reason, except they've already bug-fixed that by now? I notice there's no bugs about Tragic Hero, another conditional self-trasher.
- Possession (UI stuck): yep, that's Possession being long-haired for you.
- Prince (with Scheme): yep, that's Prince being tricky.
- Quarry (cost-reduction with Inheritance): that's really about Inheritance.
- Royal Carriage: yup, that's about the essentials of Royal Carriage being tricky to get right in all cases.
- Sauna: that's really about autoplay.
- Scheme: that sounds like a poor UI but no rules misinterpretation? If you play Village, Wharf, Scheme, go to cleanup phase, you should be able to choose Wharf with Scheme even though that doesn't do anything, right?
- Small Castle: seems like a simple oversight.
- Stonemason: a scenario is made impossible by an unfortunate UI choice; it's only relevant thanks to a quirky interaction between Villa and Storyteller.
- Temple: I'm not sure whether to attribute that to Temple being tricky or an only-very-bad Dominion AI being tricky. I think Vault had a similar soft lock bug a while ago and Vault wasn't on any one's list of tricky cards.
- Villa: going to your action phase with pending effects being resolved in your action phase, yeah, that's Villa being sneaky.
- Wall: hard to reproduce, so it's hard to judge.

Cards with 2 bugs due to inherent finicky-ness: Possession, Inheritance.
Cards with one such bug: BoM/Overlord, Prince, Royal Carriage, Villa, probably Magic Lamp, somewhat Scheme, maybe Stonmason, arguably the Boon/Hex mechanic.

The rest I counted as minor bugs and simple oversights, not due the card in question being inherently complex.

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