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#11 - LSL Cards & Combat - Texturing 3D Assets

Chris Buckingham

6 days ago
2 min

#11 - LSL Cards & Combat - Texturing 3D Assets

Following on from the previous post on prepping 3D assets, it's time to play with textures. The files below came with the asset previously downloaded in step 10. They are: : .PNG: the object texture : .MTL: ignore this, it's a texture file for .3DS objects :.OBJ: this is the 3D object file :.RAR: the zip file all of these came from, downloaded from Turbosquid : Metal.PNG, Normal.PNG, Rough.PNG: these are all lighting and surface maps that can be used in a variety of programs

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#10 - LSL Cards & Combat - Preparing 3D Assets

Chris Buckingham

Apr 3
2 min

#10 - LSL Cards & Combat - Preparing 3D Assets

If you're following along I'll assume in part it's because you want to know how the development of Cards & Combat can help you with your own project. So the next few posts will focus on customizing and enhancing a Table Top Simulator project. Once you have the tools and know-how, you'll also be able to create your own custom assets to incorporate into Cards & Combat or any other game you're playing using Tabletop Simulator. - Sourcing Assets. There are plenty of places onlin

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#9 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Master and Player Resources

Chris Buckingham

Mar 28
1 min

#9 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Master and Player Resources

This may not have been covered yet, but, every Game Mode has a Game Master (GM). The role is quite different to a typical Role-Playing GM. The Cards & Combat GM sets up the board and deck, rolls encounter tables, controls NPC's, and is dealt a hand of cards that they can use just as the players do. Being the GM is like adopting a different play style more aligned with that of a mischief making referee. That said, the GM needs to be able to organize, coordinate and use a range

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#8 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Controls Overview

Chris Buckingham

Mar 20
1 min

#8 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Controls Overview

For this game's development the program we decided upon is Tabletop Simulator, as a digital board game platform it offers a few opportunities that you won't get with a physical game. I won't get into the details of mouse and keyboard controls, if you want to know more follow this link for Basic Controls and follow this link for Advanced Controls. The general summary of the links is: you have full movement in a 3D play environment with zoom, you have object manipulation and yo

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#7 - LSL Cards & Combat - Combat Overview

Chris Buckingham

Mar 13
2 min

#7 - LSL Cards & Combat - Combat Overview

Combat is a centerpiece of the game's 'cards and combat' foundation. As mentioned in an earlier post, Cards & Combat is a casual adventure sandbox game, and in order to make the gameplay accessible to a wide player base the combat needs to be simplified, but, in order to retain seasoned players combat also needs some degree of tactical agency. While I could go into the basics of dice rolling and perk modifiers, let's skip over it and look at: MY APPROACH TO ENCHANCING SIMPLIF

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#6 - LSL Cards & Combat - Cards Overview

Chris Buckingham

Mar 6
2 min

#6 - LSL Cards & Combat - Cards Overview

Along with Combat, Cards are the centerpiece of the gameplay. In the case of this game we researched decks from adventure games (eg. Zombies!!!), from deck builder games (eg. Pokemon) and even decks from family games (eg. Monopoly). These gave a wide variety of perspectives on game modification, enhancement and complication while keeping many of the Cards & Combat cards tied to familiar tropes. In the end I settled on a Core Game Deck that governs actions when navigating the

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#5 - LSL Cards & Combat - Character Modifiers / Perks

Chris Buckingham

Feb 27
3 min

#5 - LSL Cards & Combat - Character Modifiers / Perks

While aiming to keep the gameplay experience light, it felt a little too simple to have every Playable Character be assigned the same attributes (e.g. moves per turn, combat strength). Each Character in the comic has a personality and it needed to be reflected in the gameplay. And every time the game is played it felt important that players had a variety in the buffs, de-buffs and surprise features that could change their play experience when they select from the 100+ availab

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#4 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Modes Overview

Chris Buckingham

Feb 20
3 min

#4 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Modes Overview

With a name like 'Cards & Combat' it's pretty clear what you're in for when playing the game. The Card and Combat elements of play are the foundation on which everything is built, we'll explore these in future posts, but for now let's have a look at what I hope will elevate the project beyond being a typical adventurous brawler. There are 8 game modes in development. On launch and during open beta testing there'll only be 3 modes available (two simple modes, one standard mode

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#3 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Board Features Overview

Chris Buckingham

Feb 13
2 min

#3 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Board Features Overview

The next few posts cover portions of the game concept and how they're intended to play out. First up, let's address a few 'surprise outcomes in play' built into this 'sandbox arena'. A SANDBOX BOARD GAME??? The term sandbox typically refers to an open world in a video game that allows free roaming and a degree of creative problem solving to achieve any goals. For Cards & Combat the board is designed in a way to allow freedom of movement with limited bottlenecks in movement t

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#2 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Concept

Chris Buckingham

Feb 6
3 min

#2 - LSL Cards & Combat - Game Concept

It all starts with a 'big idea'. How's this game different? What's the genre?... I'll get to that at the bottom of the post, but to start with... ...when 'anything you can imagine is possible' it's easy to go off the rails and lose focus, so every project needs some sense of self-imposed guiding limitations to provide boundaries on a project's scope while adding clarity and focus to the development process. The guiding limitations I started with are... MY RULES FOR BOARD GAME

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#1 - LSL Cards & Combat - an Indie Digital Board Game

Chris Buckingham

Jan 20
2 min

#1 - LSL Cards & Combat - an Indie Digital Board Game

I've always had a drive to make a game, any game - who knows why. Early 2020 corona had kicked in, my 2D Tyranobuilder game turned out to be a bust, I'd played with GameGuru to create a 3D Machinima for the web series, I had a heap of design assets for the upcoming comic series and time up my sleeve. When introduced to Tabletop Simulator... everything sort of clicked. In a couple of weeks while procrastinating on the comic I built a prototype board game... since then the proj

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