I'm programming the Pokémon TCG base set

[Novale]

I'm not sure if maybe this rule has changed since then, but in your latest version on itch I went first and was able to also attack on my first turn, which in modern formats is not allowed

 

[Hey I'm Brian]

I'm not sure if maybe this rule has changed since then, but in your latest version on itch I went first and was able to also attack on my first turn, which in modern formats is not allowed

Yeah I based the whole thing on the original Gameboy game, in which players could attack on the first turn. I'm planning for a future milestone to add togglable variant rules.

 

[Hey I'm Brian]

Milestone 7, finally done. This was more or less finished like two weeks ago but then I got a new job and things have been weird.

A lot of general improvements in this one. The tutorial now exists. If you've never played the Pokémon tcg I would love your feedback on how it works. There's also some minor improvements to the overworld: the club is a bit larger now that the screen can scroll to follow the player. There's also the world map which allows you to travel to the lab, though there's not much there yet.

 

[ziuam]

i dont know if this is only my issue but whenever i fight lexi and i win against her after i win and im about to get the booster it doesnt appear and the game pretty much stops working

 

[Dymdez]

Are you still working on this? I found this thread while trying to learn how to hack the GBC ROMs for the original two TCG games. Definitely checking this out now!

 

[Regi_Grass_mk2]

I'm back. I'm actually the same guy from earlier who made all those bug reports, had to make a new account because I forgot which email/password I used to make the original one. I did a "casual" run of the game and a bit of testing beyond that, haven't gotten around to testing every card but I still found several things to report.

Spoiler: Bug reports

-Perhaps most importantly, the debug option doesn't seem to work. I checkmark the box outside of battle, but then in-battle the debug button still doesn't do anything, and then when the battle's over I check the options menu and it's unchecked again. Testing individual cards gets really luck dependent without the ability to draw cards until I get the thing I want.

-Beating Emmerich (the guy in front of the lightning club, off to the right) gives you a blank dialogue box after opening the card pack and softlocks you. Same thing happens after getting the lightning medal from beating the boss.

-If you go back and fight Trey again after beating him the first time (the dude you need to fight to be allowed into the lightning club), the game tries to give you two card packs. But instead of opening the first, it goes straight into the second and softlocks.

-Aside from the softlocking, Emmerich had another quirk I noticed where he never makes use of his Drowzee's long-distance hypnosis.

-I see that you made the deck-editing menu able to be scrolled through even when your mouse is on a card, that's good. However it still won't scroll in battles while your mouse is on a card, when you're using something like a Pokeball.

-Speaking of which, the Master Ball doesn't have a top-7-cards restriction, you can just pick a Pokemon from wherever in your deck. It's just a Pokeball without the coin flip!

-The AI doesn't seem very capable of using vending Porygon's conversion2, it probably wanted to change its resistance to water here but instead set it to psychic... when it already resists psychic.

to be fair I have a psychic type on my bench here, but I doubt that's really why the AI did it considering the context. Tried using Vending Porygon myself and Conversion2 worked just fine, so it's an AI problem and not a card problem.

-There was a moment where I used an Oak and tried to attach an energy, and was told I already had attached one that turn when I could've sworn I didn't. I checked the log and almost wrote it off as a bug since there was no record of me attaching an energy, until I realized that while the log reports the AI attaching an energy, it doesn't report when you do it. I try it again, intentionally not attaching an energy before using Oak, and it worked as intended so maybe I just misremembered. Maybe the log should report the player's attaching of energies though.

-Jungle Pidgeot's Hurricane sends the target and all its cards to the discard pile, regardless of whether or not they were knocked out. This happens on both the player's and AI's side. A less game-breaking version of the bug happens if the target IS knocked out, where it zooms across the screen to the discard pile from the opposite corner rather than its actual starting position.




-You should make the cards bigger when opening a pack, so that you can read them. There's plenty of room on the screen above the text box.


-When you lose to this guy, one of his lines is randomly a different font and size than everything else in the game.


-The AI had no reason to not TRY and attack here, it COULD have got 2 heads in a row and done some damage. But instead it just passes its turn.



-Some text cutoffs.


-A typo

-When the AI uses base set Ninetales' lure it never selects a benched Pokemon to switch in, softlocking the game.


-Very questionable AI choice here. He could've given a second energy to Ratticate and attacked, but you see, at the start of the turn that Ratticate was a Rattata. It seems he went through his "attach energies" step before his "evolve Pokemon if possible" step, meaning he instead gave it to that other Rattata on the bench instead.

-And finally, I suggest you add a "confirmation screen" or an "undo" option if you click "clear" on your deck screen. It's very easy to click it on accident when you meant to click "edit".

I know it's been a while since you worked on this, and I understand, I haven't been here in a long time because real life's been keeping me busy too. Just leaving these here if you ever do come back, I hope you do. TCG fangames might start getting more attention soon now that Nintendo's releasing a TCG mobile game.

 

[Hey I'm Brian]

I'm back with 0.7.1. Or more accurately, I'm done lurking. Rest assured I've been keeping an eye on both this and the itch.io page near daily since I last posted. Over the past month I've been getting better at developing a new work-life balance, and so I've gotten back to work on milestone 8. That starts with fixing all the bugs found in that time, and there were many. I also added the first new feature of the Milestone: the enhanced deck builder. It's definitely an improvement, though I may still need to get used to it. I already have some ideas for how to improve it. If you have any feedback in that regard let me know.

 

[Regi_Grass_mk2]

Good to see it's back! There are still bugs to be found of course. These were the results of a "casual" playthrough followed by a quick test of each grass type:

Spoiler: Bug reports

- First and perhaps most significantly, my game would sometimes enter a strange bugged state where whenever I drug a card around, it would leave that spot highlighted while the card itself either teleported back to my hand or the corner of the screen. It looks like this:

other than that, the game can be played as normal... up until the point when someone gets knocked out. Whether it's me or the opponent, when the game prompts me to either pick a prize card or send in a new Pokemon, I am unable to do so. It's not a complete softlock as I can still concede the duel from the menu, however the next duel will still be in this bugged state as well. There have been 2 or 3 occasions where this weird game state appeared and disappeared without softlocking me, but 9 times out of 10 when it happens the only cure is to reload the page. And it turns out, saving your progress just doesn't "count" when the game's in this state, when you reload the page you'll be sent back to your last save BEFORE the glitch happened. As for what causes it to happen, I've seen it occur most often the duel after I use the debug menu (even if I don't actually do anything but open and then close it). However, it doesn't always happen, and rarely I've seen the game enter this state when I had never even touched the debug option.

- Speaking of the debug menu, the "show AI card priority scores" option doesn't appear to do anything.

- The little icon that indicates which deck you've selected is still slightly on screen at all times in the overworld.


- When testing the grass types, there was this weird thing where the game only let me put 3 Paras cards in my deck instead of 4, and then it happened again with Grimer. But later when I went back to them at another time, the game let me put all 4 in. No idea why that happened.

- When you use Charizard's Energy Burn, the game log says the opponent did it and not you. It's just the log though, you're still the one benefiting from it.

- Speaking of Charizard, one time when I used Fire Spin the animation and game log showed him discarding 4 energies when he only discarded 2 like he's supposed to. The log also showed the enemy taking 100 damage twice, but I'm not sure if that actually happened in-game either. It's worth noting that neither were actual fire energies, they were both lightning energies that had been energy burn-ed. I tried some more testing to see if I could nail down an exact cause, but was unable to replicate the glitch even when I did everything the exact same. I know it happened the first time though, here's a screenshot.


- There's a minor visual bug where if you attempt to retreat while confused and fail, the on-board icons of the energies you discarded stay there until the start of your next turn.

- When the AI uses Promo 1 or 3 Mewtwo's energy absorption and there are 1 or 0 energies in the discard pile, the game softlocks. I assume this is because you didn't think to write a function for the AI to click "cancel" if it can't complete the move it's using.

Of course, you don't want to JUST add a cancel function and call it a day, or the AI would get stuck in an infinite loop of trying to use the move and cancelling. It should either check beforehand if the move's possible, or if it tries and fails the first time it either tries the second move if it can, or if it can't, ends its turn.

- Nazim, the guy in the club's side room with the fire/water deck, is pretty buggy. He can randomly crash the game mid-duel, and one time when I defeated him I spawned outside of the room after the duel (I was able to walk back in no problem though). And remember that glitched game state I talked about earlier, the one where the cards act funny when you drag them around and the game won't proceed past the first knockout of a duel? The only time I've seen it happen even when I had never touched the debug menu, was when dueling Nazim.

- Rika, the girl in front of the club with the water deck, can also crash the game mid-duel but it's less common than with Nazim.

- Dark Raichu has 90 HP instead of 70.

- Dark Weezing's Mass Explosion causes the main attack's damage to each Koffing and Weezing in play, instead of 20. So for example, if there are 2 Koffing/Weezings in play, the attack does 40 damage to the opponent and 40 damage to each Koffing/Weezing, when it should be 40 damage to the opponent and 20 damage to each Koffing/Weezing.

- Neither of Vending Zapdos' attacks inflict self-damage on a tails... but only when the AI is using it! When I use it the self-damage works as intended!

- The AI now ALWAYS uses Rocket Drowzee's long-distance hypnosis, even when it has no reason to and only stands to be hurt by it. Such as when I'm already asleep, or when Drowsee himself is active and has enough energy to use Nightmare which is a guaranteed sleep anyway.

-Every effect that I've tested so far that takes a Pokemon out of the deck and places it on the bench has been bugged in the same way, so I think it's a safe bet to say they all suffer from it: The Pokemon is placed on the bench but not removed from the deck, duplicating it.

- The AI could have won the game right here by switching Dewgong in and attacking, but instead stayed in with Staryu for seemingly no reason and ended up losing for it.


-Similarly, the AI could've won the game right here if it had just attacked. But since it was at low HP and on its last prize card, it's hard coded to run away if possible. So it did, into a Pokemon who couldn't attack, and turned what would've been a win into a loss.

In fact, it COULD'VE switched into Charmander, still attacked, and won, but nope. It seems the AI only ever switches to whoever's in the left-most bench slot.

- The "rare" star symbol in the deck builder is missing.

And I do have a suggestion for the deck builder: It's slightly annoying when I want to search for a trainer card, and initially nothing comes up because I previously I was looking for Pokemon by type, and now I gotta go back and click "all types" again in the menu. Very minor thing but I suggest making trainer cards count as all types instead of as none.

A non-deck building suggestion I have is to have a way to see what you get from a booster pack instantly, skipping the animation of all 10 cards sliding across the screen. Currently if you try to do that by clicking "Done", it just exits the screen and you don't get to see what you got.

 

[Regi_Grass_mk2]

Here's the bugs I found while testing the Fire, Water, Electric, and Fighting types:

Spoiler: Bug reports

- The AI could've gotten a kill here if it attached the energy to Seaking and attacked, but since it seems to do its "attach energies if possible" step before "evolve Pokemon if possible" step, it gave the energy to Bulbasaur instead.

I remember a similar AI quirk happening in the last version of the game.

- On a related note, when the AI first evolves Gloom into Vileplume it won't use heal until the next turn after. I guess it does its "use abilities if possible" step before its "evolve if possible" step as well!

- At some point the game had stopped accepting inputs from my keyboard, something that I didn't notice until I tried to rename a deck I had cleared out. No idea when it happened or how, but it's worth noting that it did. It was fixed by reloading the page.

- Dark Wartortle's doubleslap has a cost of 2 energy when it should be just 1. Similarly, his big brother has a cost of 3 instead of 2 for Hydrocannon, although it still calculates its "extra damage" normally. So you do 50 damage with the "minimum" amount, and it caps at 70 like it's supposed to.

- Dark Golduck has a retreat cost of 1 instead of 2.

- Vending Omanyte's Fossil Guidance softlocks the game whether you get a heads or tails. In the case of the heads, you get stuck infinitely drawing fossils out of the deck, and in the case of tails you get stuck waiting for the game to end the effect.

- Fossil Zapdos has the wrong icon in the "deck" tab of the editor, it uses Fossil Raichu's. There is also sometimes a very minor visual error in that list where when you add or remove cards, other cards in the list have their orders flipped around.

- Gameboy Marowak's Bone Attack doesn't have it's "Leer" effect, it just does 10 damage and nothing else. And yes, Wail has the same bug as all the other bench summoning moves. So does Jungle Marowak's Call for Friend.

- Vending Magnemite's Magnetic Call softlocks the game in a similar manner to Vending Omanyte's. Also the game log calls it "Radio Static" for some reason.

- Remember that old bug where the game log would say "player uses Moltres' wildfire" once for each card milled? Yeah that's back. It's only a log bug though, in the actual game it seems to work as intended.

- I don't know if PokemonAaah.com is the one who did this translation, but whoever did made a little oopsie:

They forgot "if heads". So if you really want to take the card literally, then you flip a coin that does absolutely nothing and deal 50 damage regardless of if it's heads or tails lol.

- The little status icon for Dark Wartortle's Mirror Shell stays there forever, although the actual effect lasts 1 turn like it's supposed to. Also, the damage it deals to the attacker ignores the defender trainer card, which I don't think it's supposed to do.

- There was one time where when I tried to start a duel with Kim (the girl in front of the club with the fire/fighting deck), the game stopped in between one of her dialogue lines and I couldn't do anything until I refreshed the page. I think it was when I said "yes" to her challenge? I don't remember exactly.

- Promo Pikachu 2's recharge still doesn't let you take an electric energy out of the deck, and just forces you to cancel and waste your turn.

- Promo Magikarp's Dragon Rage crashes the game.

- Rocket Mankey's Mischief doesn't end your turn, allowing you to use it and then a second attack. Or shuffle your opponent's deck an infinite amount of times, if that's more your style.

- Some minor textbox oddities:


- Tentacool's cowardice shuffles the deck for some reason.

- Electrode's Chain Lightning is acting naughty again. Now, for every matching Pokemon on the opponent's bench it deals an extra 10 damage to the defending Pokemon, and for every matching 'mon on your bench it deals the damage to Electrode himself.

- Dark Golduck's Third Eye says "draw up to 3 cards", implying you have the choice to draw 1 or 2 instead. Currently the game just makes you draw all 3.

- Similarly, Vending Vulpix's Foxfire says you "may" switch the opponent's Pokemon, implying you have the option not to, but the game forces you to.

- When you use an attack, there's a window of time you can still click "end turn" and things get a little crazy when you do. In the same vein, when you switch your Pokemon you can click "confirm" again mid-animation for some weird shenanigans.

- The tooltip for the defender's on-board icon says it reduces damage by 10 instead of 20.

actually, it says "10s". Don't know why there's an "s" there.

- There was a crash when dueling Trey (the guy who blocks the club entrance). Granted, it was a rather extreme case where I knocked out a bunch of Pokemon on both sides of the field with selfdestruct. I think it had something to do with the AI having to draw multiple prize cards?

After all, you can see the log reporting Trey picking up his prize cards twice.

- Vending Charmander's growl reduces damage after applying weakness and resistance, when it's supposed to be before. You probably copied the code from cards with similar effects, not realizing that this one's an exception.

- Vending Dewgong's Aurora Wave does 20 instead of 30.

- Vending Diglett's Trip Over doesn't flip a coin and just does 30 damage automatically. Also in the deck list it's called "Promo" instead of "Vending".

- Vending Hitmonchan's Mach Punch doesn't flip a coin and hits a benched Pokemon automatically.

- Vending Krabby's Bubble doesn't attempt a paralysis.

- Vending Shellder's Water Spout caps at 30 damage instead of 40.

- Vending Voltorb's retreat cost is 1 when it should be 0.

- Vending Squirtle's Aqua Power just does 10 damage. It seems you accidentally put the same code as Pound there.

- And finally, to contradict what I said earlier about the AI being too trigger happy with switching when it's close to losing, here we see it refusing to switch at all when it's on the brink of losing! I even passed my turn a couple times to see if it ever would, and it didn't!