WTactics CCG
intro
Open source customizable card game playable online and with real cards. That's our goal, we're on our way and we also need you. Below follows the deluxed and more informative version, well worth the read:
Real:
Ever played a trading card game or a customizable card game like for example Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon or maybe Star Wars? Do you remember the amount of fun and costs involved, and did you ever think that you could create such a game, but do it better? Good.
Then here's your once in a lifetime chance: WTactics, a free & libre card game, is looking for new crew members that want to join our small and ambitious team. We are creating a professionally looking and playing customizable card game (e.g. like Magic: The Gathering) that will be open, innovative, free & gratis, and that's playable both with real cards as well as online.
The game is oriented towards strategy and has the CCG genres versatile and open ended nature, making it easy to modify, create new rule sets and cards for, and in that process also make it a game that is more community powered than is usually the case in the world of card games.
We take pride in only using open source licenses for all our assets - everything from docs, and original art to code, and expect the same of anyone who joins us.
We have
- The will and means! We have been around for a while already and follow things through, are patient & the crew is mostly made up of adults. We're serious, here to stay and see this is a long-term project and hobby.
- Open source webbased client in the making, designed to run any CCG via browser, PvP. (AJAX, PHP, HTML5 etc)
- Open source desktop based cross platform client/server for playing any CCG in the making (Python)
- A working infrastructure, located at WTactics.org: blog, wiki, forums, IRC chat, also a web app that's brewing to allow us to easily create cards together within the community, surveys to gather playtesting results, code repository and some other minor stuff as well. Whatever is needed is or will be there.
- Already a huge pile of top-quality artwork renowned in the open source community.
- A steady flow of new original coherent looking art coming in. (We also contribute to opengameart.org. Check out our account here).
- Some cards ready for concept testing.
- A set of nicely developing rules.
- Half of an interesting background story in place.
- Ongoing translations with global and minority ambitions.
- Concept test patch for playing online using.
- Design documents and much more.
What is planned
- Core set with around 250-300 cards.
- Keeping a healthy community with a real influence.
- Releasing future expansions, frequent mini-releases instead of slow elephant sub-projects.
- Active revisions to keep balance.
- Only make cards official after rigorous testing.
- Availability in all major (and minor) languages.
- Making the game playable on any and everything, amongst others: gCCG / OCTGN2 and LackeyCCG, for online play.
Open positions
Coders: Any and all are welcome. We already use Python, PHP, AJAX, MySQL, HTML5, JQuery (among other languages) coders for our site tools but we also need coders of real languages that are interested in creating a desktop client an/or AI. All code must be open source, using the license of your liking.
Game designer: Wizard responsible for designing and working with cards and rules. Needed skills: Knowledge and experience in the field of collectible card games. Duties:Providing and judging ideas for new cards and rules, keeping things up to date across dev. team and card base, coordinating effort. Concept- and playtesting.
Game tester: Person responsible for providing reliable feedback. Needed: Background in CCG playing. Duties: Playing our game, providing formalised feedback, keeping an eye on current state of the game, also taking a somewhat active part in development.
Writer/proofreader: Individual responsible for error-busting here and there and/or developing the universe. Needed: Fluent English. Duties: Reading, writing, correcting important game documents and announcements. If will is there, also writing new stories and lore that enrich the universe.
Managers and coordinators: Delegate work and organize the project. Needed skills: Experience of community driven projects or other projects where a larger group of people have co-worked. Maturity and good English. Duties: managing game development in various aspects and coordinating other devs efforts. Checking up on people, evaluating the collective efforts, pep-talks, insuring info is spread between parties that need it.
Artists: Skilled fantasy illustrators with good portfolios that can also match our style to some degree.
Everyone: And the rest of you as well! Anyone experienced with card games will not be thwarted in our team. On the contrary.
The community is really small, but healthy. Despite our small count we are making very steady progress in various fields: Developing new cards, discussing rules, translating, pushing forward web app, and many others. We are looking for experienced, creative people that are willing to join the team and build the game.
We can handle much faster development than we're currently dealing with. Since the overall task is a pretty huge one (but also not as complex as coding a traditional computer game) we are looking for patient individuals that are prepared to stay with us for a longer period. Our project was fired up 2009, and we will be here for a long time to come.
If you are interested, please introduce yourself by mailing us a presentation of yourself, your skills and thoughts at: contact at wtactics.org
Questions and other serious stuff will be replied to in here as well.
I've been watching this for some time. Although I never really played MtG (my wife and brother-in-law have played it in the past, my only experience is with "Blue Moon"), I find this quite interesting.
Focus seems to be on developing a web-based game, but I wonder if creating real cards wouldn't be better for project exposure (print a few hundred of them on some durable carton or plastic and leave them at public places (e.g. card/board game conventions)). The only problem for printing is that no card is really finished yet. Also a nice back would be needed (with the address of the website). Selling finished cards could also generate some small profit for creation of new cards (offer through a website where people can pick the cards they want to order).
Thanks for your input Myckel.
(Btw, Blue Moon is a nice game. There is an open source and fully legal AI implementation with all cards of it that I ran on Linux, maybe works in Windows as well if you're interested in playing against the computer...)
Our goal has, from the start, been to create a game that is primarily playable in real life, using real paper cards. We have also set our minds to release it any and all digital forms and support online play in various ways.
There has been many decisions concerning both rule development as well as tool usage for developing that are all connected to our ambitions to get the game on paper, and we also have the luxury of having an expert aboard the team with a long experience from the print industry and typesetting.
When it comes to printing our intentions are to offer the cards to the world in various formats optimised for pro printing (with bleeds etc) as well as home printing and photo lab development. Currently we don't do this simply because we're not quite there yet, but it will be eventually.
You, your wife & brother-in-law are of course all welcome to join our team if you're interested in helping out somehow.
WTactics.org - devs & artists wanted.