Welcome to the second installment of the Battle Dex Developer Diary, where we give you an inside look at the development of the game, and a sneak peek at what's coming up.

TOURNAMENT STRUCTURE

While we've mainly been holding 3-4 player Free For All matches in our pre-beta tournaments, we also have 1v1 and Sealed Deck tournaments coming up during beta. Sealed Deck has players bringing their own 3 sealed packs into the tournament and building a deck on the spot based on the cards they get from those decks. This game type will be a big part of our beta tournament schedule.

With our previous setup, only a set number of players could play in the first round of a tournament (usually 3 or 4 players per match). This allowed for some players to get a bye, or a free pass into the next round, if they couldn't fit into a match based on the settings.

For example, if we had 13 players in a 3-person match setting, the game would create four 3-person matches and the remaining 13th player would get a bye into the next bracket. Woohoo!

... right?



Not necessarily. As you can see in the tournament results above, mjames got a bye in the first round. It was a free pass for him, but it wasn't fair to the other players... and more importantly, he had to wait 20-30 minutes for the rest of the matches to end before he could play. We didn't like this, so we changed the "Players per Game" setting to a "Max Players" setting.

Now, if we set the max players per game to 3 and we get 13 players, the first round will be split into three 3-player matches and two 2-player matches, so that everyone gets to play in the first round. Is this more fair than letting some players get a free pass? We'll let the community decide.

COMMUNITY CONTENT

We want Battle Dex to be a very community-driven game. As we build our user base, we'll be supplying players with the tools they need to get their content into the game to play with their friends. Best of all, you won't need to master 3D modeling software or earn a Bachelors in industrial design to contribute some awesome stuff -- our tools will be simple and intuitive enough for anyone to use.

Next up in our plan is releasing a map editor to the public after our beta launch. We currently have a pretty good amount of maps for several player sizes, but we can't wait to see what our players come up with!

If you're interested in creating your own Battle Dex maps to play with your friends, let us know! We'll run a Design a Map contest to coincide with the map editor release, and the winners' names will be posted everywhere, along with their maps possibly going into the game's full release.

COMING SOON

Stay tuned for the next installment, where I'll cover what's in store for beta, and what's planned afterward. In the meantime, tell us what you think about all this!

What do you think about the current tournament structure? Where can we improve? Are you psyched to be able to create your own maps? Let us know.

-Cooldown

Map editor / Map-Making contest sounds awesome!

[quote="Cooldown"][img]http://battledexgame.com/images/developer_diary.jpg[/img]
We want Battle Dex to be a very community-driven game. As we build our user base, we'll be supplying players with the tools they need to get their content into the game to play with their friends. Best of all, you won't need to master 3D modeling software or earn a Bachelors in industrial design to contribute some awesome stuff -- our tools will be simple and intuitive enough for anyone to use.[/quote]

What did you mean here?

Hmm, dunno why that quote didn't work. I'll check that out.

Basically I'm saying our map editor will be easy to use compared to something like the Unreal Editor, so anyone can use it and upload their maps with a few clicks.

Our contests will also be easy to enter -- for our upcoming Design a Card contest, you won't have to be an artist to design a card... just tell us what you think a cool card could be and why. We'll handle the art and balancing on our end. But that's coming up soon!

very excited to see the proposed community content ideas. I was pleasantly surprised by this game when I first started playing. Definitely has some potential.

I'm just glad to be apart of a game where the developers want to hear from the people that play it. Finding games like this one are hard to come by these days. I cant wait to get my hands on a map editor.

The new tournament rules are much nicer.

Everyone gets to join a game as the tournament begins instead of having to wait around for the first round to complete.

I've wanted to play with the map editor for some time now. So, I'm very enthusiastic about this development!!!

The create a card contest is really cool. I do have a question though, would you consider creating additional functionality if the card idea was strong enough? I assume that's the whole idea, but I would like to know where the constraints are, if you're willing to share just yet. :)

If a card is THAT badass, we'd be willing to make the necessary changes. Already so many good entries and we have a long way to go!

These ideas all sound great, it looks like you guys have a very solid game thus far, and your improvements definitely will make it even better.

yeah!
when can we expect the map editor?

It's in the works. I cant wait to get my hands on it.