standard Plugin Template?

[Strategy31]

Hey, after my initial question in another section, i saw that my follow up question kind of should belong to here:

I have basic programing skills and want to make a multilplayer strategy card game. Card creation should be no problem with another program.

I wonder if there is / someone offers, the source code to any existing plugin?

As for my card game i would just need to change game and folder names (Deck, Hand, Graveyard, Discard Pile etc.) to names that suit to my game.

Would be a great help in comparrison to code a plugin from scratch.

thx.

[CrazyChucky]

The good news is that I think the issue is simpler than you expect. Plugins aren't really programs or code, just settings and data in plain text (plus image files, of course). Try downloading any of the plugins from the master list and take a look at the files. There's nothing stopping you from taking one (or several) and editing it as the basis for your own. There's also a plugin creation tutorial to explain the various pieces.

As you look through all that, feel free to ask if you have more specific questions about it.

[Strategy31]

thank you.

I took a look at the 1e Stccg plugin i have installed, found where the folders are labled. The tutorial also seems very helpfull.

The plugin also contains a 48 kb exe...
1e-lackskillz.exe

Any idea what that is for?

I do have a assumtion... in this plugin its possible to search for cards in the deckbuilder based on stats...
integrity, cunning, strenght, skills, weapons shields.. which is in the txt file.

Would it be possible to have such a search function also in the game? I guess there would be programming required. Any tutorial to create such .exe files?

[CrazyChucky]

From a bit of Googling, it sounds like that executable is some sort of deck-checker to make sure your deck is legal in a format.

Cards can have scripts to spawn other cards, like how Magic cards can spawn tokens. You could, if you want, hard-code a spawn script for each applicable option on cards, but it would be all one long list, not anything convenient like opening a window to search in. Creating an executable file to run outside of Lackey is one option, I suppose, but of course then it's not as platform-independent as Lackey itself is. (For instance, .exe files don't run on Macs.)

There may be other ways to accomplish this in Lackey, depending on what you want to do. For instance you can set a saved state for games to always start with. You could make a shared deck or zone that always has certain cards in it, in a certain order, to scroll through and select. Or if you make tokens, they'll all be available (and searchable by name) in the token pane, to spawn as needed during gameplay.

[Strategy31]

Is it possible to give different cards/decks different background images by now, for identification purposes during the game? If yes, how?

Also is it possible to have one really big card, to use tokens/counter on it, to remember stuff?
Like techlevel of empire 5
Diplomatic relations etc.?

well i guess using different regular sized cards would work too...

[CrazyChucky]

Is it possible to give different cards/decks different background images by now, for identification purposes during the game? If yes, how?

Yes. See this section of the plugin tutorial and define the ISALLOWINGMULTIPLECARDBACKS setting. Note that once enabled, any card that doesn't list a cardback image will still use the default cardback.jpg.

Also is it possible to have one really big card, to use tokens/counter on it, to remember stuff?
Like techlevel of empire 5
Diplomatic relations etc.?

well i guess using different regular sized cards would work too...

You could do a workaround like that, but it sounds like what you probably want to do is define some global stats and/or player stats.

EDIT: If these are stats that you'll only have sometimes, or that are attached to various things on the table rather than to players, then spawning token cards and putting counters on them makes a lot of sense. That's what I do for player counters in Magic. (Certain cards put counters on players rather than on creatures and such, but it only happens occasionally so it's not worth cluttering up the UI. I spawn a card to track them when needed.)

Really you should take a look at that whole tutorial, it's got a lot of information in it. Probably the best way to learn how plugins work is to give it a read, then refer back to it while reading through an existing plugin or two to see what the different parts do.

[Strategy31]

Ok, danke (=thanks).