hello, community. I’ve been working on my own java project for a while. Yesterday, i just found this awesome forum and decided to join. Plus, i do have a question to ask, it’s at the ending, after introduction of my game.
Currently I am working on a board game. If you ever played the board game called “bang!”. You would just understand my game really fast. There is a Chinese board game called “SanGuoSha”, which is a great update on the original “bang!”.
So let me explain the rule of “Bang!” first: There are 8 or 5 players. At the beginning of the game, each player gets an identity card. Only the player himself knows his identity, and this identity will goes with the player through the rest of the game. There are 4 identities, the sheriff, the officer, the bandits and venegade. The pupose of the game is simple: Sheriff and officer will work together trying to elimante bandits and venegade, Bandits will try to kill sheriff, and the venegade is the hardest to play. Venegade is supposed to kill every other player in the game, and by killing sheriff the last, venegade wins the game.
Other than getting your identity, at the beginning of the whole game, you also choose the hero you wanna use. Every hero has either 3 or 4 health points(hp) and 2 or 1 special abilities. After hero choosing is done, all players draw 4 cards. After the initial game settings, player with the identity of sheriff will reveal himself and start his turn. Each turn is composite of 4 phases, judging, drawing, playing, and discarding phase. (This 4 phases get a little complicated, which i think it’s better to skip for now. if you want to know more, please refer to the “bang!” game)
So, there are 3 basic cards: Attack, Dodge, and Heal. In your playing phase, you can play an Attack to a target(notice that you do not know he is enemy or not, his identity is concealed.) Then the target player is supposed to play a Dodge card, or to take the damage and reduce his hp points. If your player is damaged before, or is dying because you were attacked and your hp is 0, you play Heal card to recover 1 hp back. You can also play Heal to save other dying players.
Other than these 3 basic cards, there are tons more cards, all around these 3 basic cards. Steal card allow you to steal one card from another player. Horse card can increase your distance from another player so other player cannot attack you because you are out of range. Weapon card allows you to increase your range of attack… and many more.
All the above are ideas from the game “bang!” and “SanGuoSha”. Following is my new ideas added on to the original game:
The original game decides the distance between players by placing players around a table, and the distance between two players is one plus the number of players sitting between you two. I change the battlefield from a round table, into a 4*4 grid table. So that the distance will be just 1 plus the number of grids between two players.
Originally the distance between A and B are fixed, unless the players sitting between A and B are killed, thus shortening the distance. In this new 4*4 battlefield. Players are allowed to play “Dodge” card to move himself. Horse card, is now used to increase your range of movement. Moreover, i can add hero skills to push a player away in a direction or draw him closer. Or “attack while move”. “Move after being attacked”…
Now. this is the most exciting new feature i added on. Originally, you are assigned your identity and your goal of game. I was a big fan of the game and played hundreds of games. Then I gradually found it turn out to be tedious. If i am assigned a officer role, I will surely choose a support hero, to support the sheriff wiping out bandits. And I will do certain action at certain time. As i get better and better. I basically can predict all people’s move. Yes, the identity system is very cool. However, it gets tedious because you know what you are going to do. all you do in game is just carrying out the same action you probably has did before.
In my game, i will still support this identity mode, Also, i will support a new mode i call, Dynasty. In Dynasty, instead of being assigned an identity, you are assigned a role. All roles are: 1 king->2 bishop-> 2 general-> 2 knights and 1 queen for 8 players. The new rule says: the last 3 players are the winners. And players are allowed to talk and make friends/enemies instead of being doomed to team up with police or bandits. All players are on his own and can make decisions very dynamically. Last round I work with the king, but he is falling, now i should cling to some general for protection.
To prevent this free-for-all mode ending up in total chaos. I have a new Honor system. all players are born with 1 honor. and the amount of card you draw at each turn is (|your honor| +1). If you attack the person right above you in hierarchy,(1 king->2 bishop-> 2 general-> 2 knights, arrows indicated hierarchy.), your honor will be reduced by the damage you’ve done on your boss. All action other than “Attack” is not penalized. Notice that, you can still choose to attack your boss. If your honor ended up at -2, you can actually draw 3 card, which is more than the original 2.
If you kill a person with negative honor, you can draw |his honor| number of card as a reward. Also notice that, if you attack a person 2 level above you, you will not be penalized, a general can attack a king without penalization.
Roles, instead of setting winning condition for players, setting the hierarchy of players, also, roles will give the player 1 more ability. King can increase one’s honor, bishop can force two players to trade 1 card, general can force a player to attack another player, and so on…
Yeah. that’s pretty much all about my game. Here comes my question:
Do I need to worry about copy rights stuff? What I am thinking is making this game and make it un-commercial open source, so people who like it can add more heroes, and special abilities as they like. But i don’t want to get myself into legal issues. That’s also part of the reason I add the new game mode Dynasty. So what do you guys think?
Thanks! I will update the progress on my project later. Now I finished the (not so good-looking) UI, the server/client protocol and basic turn stage.
