Engine Updates, New Cards, and iOS, Android & Desktop Apps! - Patch #17

Team Horizon

Sep 26, 2019

As we continue on the road towards Open Beta, we have a ton of exciting updates this month. A huge performance upgrade of the game, new beautiful lighting effects, a massive game balance patch, and the official release of our iPhone and Android apps!

Join us on our SkyWeaver Discord channel to ask more about the game and future updates. :)

Native Desktop & Mobile Apps and New Game Engine!

  • iPhone, iPad and Android mobile apps released!
  • SkyWeaver Desktop clients available for Windows, MacOS and Linux
  • Game logic re-written in Rust, much more performant and reliable -- running as WebAssembly
  • The island was remodelled to improve performance.
  • Device specific optimizations, shader improvements.
  • Rendering engine overhaul to speed up lighting.
  • Improved frame-rates and support for lower-end devices.

New Cards & Updates!

Shroud

Shroud is an exciting new Air Enchant that prevents the unit enchanted with it from being targeted by any spells or card effects for one turn, as the enchant wears off at the start of its controller’s next turn.

The design of Shroud is intended to help offer a countermeasure to removal, and give a new way for players who fall behind on board to present a defensive pivot to help push back onto the board and force their opponent to make trades, and offer players a new form of durable lategame threat that can fight through removal and try to press for damage in the lategame. The fact that it wears off after one turn also makes it less valuable if you’re already winning the board, since your opponent can focus on your other units, and the Shroud can be waited out.

We’re very excited to see how this new keyword develops in actual gameplay, and the strategies players can come up with to take advantage of it.

Conjure(s)

More of a clarification than a new mechanic, Conjure(s) is our new shorthand Keyword for “Gets a Spell”. Now, instead of terms like “get a spell” or “draw a spell onto itself”, you'll see Conjure–like on Arcadeum Mask. Conjure also has its own keyword popup for greater clarity in gameplay. Mostly just a quality of life change, but one that should help reduce confusion for players.

Backstab Those Who are Left!

A fun new form of removal targeting. “Leftmost” is a new function on the card Backstab, which will cause it to strike your opponent's leftmost character, making it an excellent killer of Stealth and Non-Guard units, but unable to strike down Guard units, as they’re always to the right of your hero. The order of characters on the board from left to right is Non-Stealth - Stealth - Hero - Guard. So you’d better watch out that you don’t invest on only guards, or you might find your hero falling prey to a nasty Backstab!

Rigorous Rules Resolution

Our new game logic has let us clean up the order in which effects and cards' triggers resolve in SkyWeaver.

In the old version of SkyWeaver that you all know and love, cards’ triggers run immediately while a card effect is resolving. With our new game logic, triggers are queued and run after all other effects are done.

To demonstrate the difference this change will make, let’s take this interaction between Twist & Turn and Titanic as an example.

Imagine, if you will, the unlikely scenario where I play a Twist & Turn while my opponent and I both have 1 Earth unit on the field, and it summons a Titanic for me and a Titanic for my opponent.

With our old game logic, events would resolve in this order:

  • My opponent and I both dust our units.
  • Since I played Twist & Turn, my Titanic summons first.
  • Its on-summon effect triggers. My enemy has no units, so it does nothing.
  • My opponent’s Titanic summons.
  • Its on-summon effect triggers. Since there’s a Titanic on my side of the field, my Titanic loses Guard.

The end result? My opponent’s Titanic has guard, but mine doesn’t.

With our new logic, events will resolve in this order:

  • My opponent and I both dust our units.
  • Since I played Twist & Turn, my Titanic summons first.
  • Its on-summon effect is queued. The queue now contains [ my Titanic ]
  • My opponent’s Titanic summons.
  • Its on-summon effect is queued. The queue now contains [ my Titanic, opponent’s Titanic ]
  • At this point, Twist & Turn has finished resolving. We take the first item (my Titanic) out of the queue and run it. Since my opponent’s Titanic is on the field, it loses guard.
    The queue now contains [ opponent’s Titanic ]
  • We take the first item (opponent’s Titanic) out of the queue and run it. Since my Titanic is on the field, it loses guard.
    The queue is now empty, so we’re done.

The end result? Neither I nor my opponent’s Titanics has guard.

We hope this system offers more consistent and predictable interactions between cards, letting you build more epic combos than ever before!

Deca-Decimal Demarcation!

Sky's the limit! or at least it used to be. All numbers in the game are now capped at 99. This includes health points, attack damage, cards cost, and maximum mana!

That's all folks!

For a full breakdown of the patch notes, visit our Discord channel and check out #patch-notes to download the 40 page doc from our lead game designer Jon!

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