Duelyst 2

This project encompassed the development of backend logic for a tactical card game in Java as part of the MSc Group project at the University of Glasgow.

Installation

This game requires Java 11 to run.

Open the Terminal for Mac and Linux, or cmdPrompt for Widnows.

Mac and Linux

1. Check the java version you have enter the command

   /usr/libexec/java_home -V

   this command will show the java versions installed on your machine.

2. if you have a newer version of java together with java 11 then use the following command to switch to the specefic java 11 version. Replace YOUR_JAVA_VERSION with your java version

   export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v YOUR_JAVA_VERSION`

3. Once you have switched to java 11 then run the following command

   sbt run

   this command will compile the code and run the server, the game will be available to play on localhost:9000 on any browser.

4. If you get compilation error or version error then try the following command

   sbt clean

   and then do step 4.

Playing the Game

Once the step 4 of the installation is done, open the link to localhost:9000 on any browser and wait the game will load. once the game has loaded successfull the you will have 3 cards in your hand and you can summon a unit or spell based on their mana consumption value.

Authors

Major Thanks to Saranya, Glenn, Mona and Ruairi for the development and completion of this project.

Board creation

A Board class has been created to accomodate different tile objects and its methods ,which constitutes the board

Drawing tiles

A method called drawTileWithSleep(ActorRef out,Tile tile,int mode,long sleepTime) has been added to control the sleep time after updating DrawTile on the front end.

Player creation

The constructor method has been modified to differentiate both players' attributes and methods

Draw Card

This was changed to ArrayList Deck and Hand in the player class for better handling of deck and hand. the Deck has 2 sets of card for the players and is created through the createDeck() method in player class, Hand gets 3 cards from Deck at initialization using the setHand(ActorRef out, int playerID) method. the cards are removed from the deck whenever a card is drawn using the drawAnotherCard(ActorRef out, int playerID) method.

The end turn class was modified to include drawAnotherCard(out, playerID) to facilitate the drawing of card after endTurn is clicked.

OverDraw

if the hand is full of cards, i.e from position 1-6 then the 7th position will not be drawn on the board, the corresponding card will be deleted from the deck. The method is part of the drawAnotherCard(out, playerID) in the player class.

Player attack ability

An arraylist summonedUnits will be used to keep track of movements and attacks of all the units on board in a turn A PerformAction class has been introduced to include the methods for the implementation of available actions (highlight/move/attack) and perfrom appropriate tasks in order

Added highlightTiles() to highlight or unhighlight the available tiles to move or attack upon clicking on avatar.

Added attackUnit() to implement the avatar attack logic on an enemy unit and handling counter attack

Get tiles containing units

getTilesWithUnits(ActorRef,Tile[][], Player) is a method in the board class that takes in the 2d array of tiles(board) and player and returns an ArrayList of tiles that contain a unit belonging to the input player.

Card Clicked Highlighting

When a card in the hand is clicked, the miniCard will be highlighted using highlightMiniCard(ActorRef out, int position, GameState gameState) method. The hand position is being tracked in gameState using the int variable handPosClicked. I have added a method called highlightSummonableTiles(ActorRef, GameState) in the CardClicked class. When a card is clicked in the front end this method is called and it will call getTilesWithUnits(), which will be fed into the method getTilesToAttack() method to return a list of all adjacent tiles which will then be passed though the highlightTilesWhite() method to highlight all the available summoning tiles for the given player.

BetterUnit creation

I have modified the constructor so the board is passed into it. This is so the addUnitToBoard(tilex,tiley) can be used in the creation of the avatar. The avatar needs to be treated as any other unit for the most part so needs to be accessed through the tiles in the same way.

Move units

The highlightAndMove(ActorRef, GameState, Tile) method is called in the TileClicked class and is used to first highlight the available units moves and then on the second click (if a friendly unit), will execute the movement. If it is an enemy unit, it will just clear the highlighting and the player will be able to click another unit again.

Move and attack units

The highlightMoveAndAttack(mode,player,ActorRef, Tile,GameState) method is called in the TileClicked class and is used to first highlight the available units to move along with the attackable units adjacent to it. On the second click of the same unit, will execute the movement or attack or both. If it is not the same unit, it will just clear the highlighting and the player will be able to click another unit again.

Linking players to units

A variable int isPlayer is created in the Unit class to store either the value 1 or 2 which will the used to check that the isPlayer is the same as the current playerID. There may be a better way to do this but for now it gives us all the functionality we need to execute core game logic.

Clearing highlighting with otherClicked

The otherClicked compares gameState.clickMessage with cardClick JsonNode variable for every event class. The gameState keeps track of the last click and if it not then a number of methods will be called in order to prepare the game for appropriate actions. Till now we are clearing card highlighting and subsequent tile highlighting by checking if the gameState.SummonTileList is null or not, if it is then clearCardClicked( ActorRef out, GameState gameState, Player player) will be called. This method has two helper methods CardClicked.clearHighlightMiniCard and gameState.board.clearTileHighlighting

I have created a method clearHighlighting(ActorRef, Board) which is called in the otherClicked class as well as in the tileClicked class int places which simply reloads the tiles with the mode '0'.

GameEnd

A method to check if the game has ended, when the players reach 0 health or have no cards left to play, was created in the PerformAction class gameEnd(ActorRef out, GameState gameState). the method returns a boolean and also sets gameState.isGameOver, it is being called in the Heartbeat.java to periodically check the state.

Loading and drawing units

createPlayerUnits(ActorRef) (player1 and player 2) loads the units into an arrayList and sets their health and attack and isPlayer value. drawUnitToBoard(ActorRef,Unit,Card,TilePlayer) checks which player is being used to call the method, then takes in the cardId and checks it against the unit id as it iterates through the arrayList. if a match (there should always be), the unit is drawn onto the board and the front end features are added such as heal attack and summoning animation. finally, the unit is set to the tile.

Spells

This is a new Class for now. This is used to create spell objects and play them once the cards are played. The only current method is playSpell(ActorRef, Card, Tile, BetterUnit) which creates 4 spell objects, then checks the cardId's to the spell objects Id and triggers some fundamental logic required from the spells. As a side not, both this method and drawUnitToBoard() checks the cardID and also checks the cardId+10 as there are duplicate cards and the second card has an id of the first + 10.

Summoning on the board

A unit would be summoned if a card is clicked in hand and a subsequent tile is clicked which is highlighted. summonCard(ActorRef out, GameState gameState, Tile clicked, Player player) was added in the TileClicked class. the player class was modified to add certain helper method such as Unit getUnitbyCard(int i, Player p) , deleteCardInHand(ActorRef out, int playerID, GameState gameState) and createUnits(Player player) whose tasks are evident of their names.

Computer Player

The computer player and all the logic regarding the computer player runs on a seperate thread startAIThread. this thread runs the logic in form of the method startAILogic and any exception that occurs was handled by interrupting the thread and passing on the turn back to player so that the game does not crash and keep continuing. startAILogic has a flag isContinue which sets how many times the logic should be run. the method starts with getting the game state at that moment like, cards in the hand, checkUnitTiles gives which tiles belong to which player,listPossibleMove gives the possible moves that can be made on the board, i.e. possible summons, possible movement and possible attack. After this the actions are performed based on the game state, these are done using the methods drawCardAndProcessAction, moveAIProcessAction, attackAIProcessAction. These method have additional logic and decide the optimal move to be made based on the data available to them form the listPossibleMove and checkUnitTiles methods. Once an optinal move is finalised the drawCardAndProcessAction will use drawCardAI to simulate the tileClicked event to summon a unit, similarly moveAIProcessAction, attackAIProcessAction will use moveAIUnit to move and attackAIUnit to attack, respectively.

Ranged attack

rangedAttack(ActorRef out, GameState gameState, Unit unit, Unit enemyUnit, Tile enemyTile, Tile startTile) method has been created which is an edited version of attackUnit() method. It will execute the ranged attack logic and will be called inside attackUnitRanged(). I have also added additional checks inside the TileClicked class to implement different subroutines of highlighting if the clicked units is one that has ranged attack.

Silverguard Knight ability

The method SilverguardKnightAbility(ActorRef out, GameState gameState) has been added which checks if a silverguard Knight is on the board, and if so, increased the attck of the unit by 2. this is called inside the attack method which checks if the avatar has been damaged. this will also need to be called inside any spell logic which checks for the avatar being damaged.

Truestrike

The methodtruestrike() is called in the tile clicked, the correct highlighting is implemented in the card clicked class

Sundrop Elixr

the method SundropElixir() is called in the tile clicked and the correct highlighting is implemented in the card clicked class