[HN Gopher] The source code for Duelyst, a digital collectible c...
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       The source code for Duelyst, a digital collectible card game
        
       Author : haunter
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2023-01-10 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | Announcement video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Cuz6d_7x0
       | 
       | They shutdown the game in 2020 [0] and now they made it open
       | source.
       | 
       | 0,
       | https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/291410/view/16882221...
        
         | stryan wrote:
         | FYI Duelyst II is not made by the original company, I believe
         | it's a bunch of fans of the original who came together to buy a
         | license to the IP.
        
           | haunter wrote:
           | Yeah you are right my bad removed that part, just read up on
           | the story about the sequel
        
       | wtf_is_up wrote:
       | Loved this game. Played it a bunch when it came out but it never
       | really took off with Hearthstone and similar really getting the
       | market share. Really cool design and flavorful archetypes and
       | great art.
        
       | trynewideas wrote:
       | CC 0 Universal license, and the assets are in the repo! That's
       | exciting.
        
         | birracerveza wrote:
         | Yeah, that's amazing. Props to the authors!
         | 
         | Thanks op for posting this.
        
       | thrownawaysz wrote:
       | First time I'm seeing a recent-ish game fully released as open
       | source (not talking about abandonwares). Not just the engine but
       | everything from music to all the graphics too.
        
       | clarle wrote:
       | Interesting, the app itself is a web app. From the architecture
       | docs:
       | 
       | > The game client is a Backbone.js + Marionette application which
       | runs in the browser.
       | 
       | And for the main game server and matchmaking:
       | 
       | > The Game server is a Socket.io WebSocket server which handles
       | multiplayer games.
       | 
       | > The worker uses Kue to poll Redis-backed queues for tasks like
       | game creation and matchmaking.
        
         | spoils19 wrote:
         | Very interesting. Like many other forum readers here, I wonder
         | if the game would have seen more success if it was programmed
         | using a commercially available engine, or even manually using C
         | / C++. Despite outcries of the opposite opinion, the technology
         | absolutely influences the effectiveness of the product. (See:
         | Rollercoaster Tycoon and its immense legacy)
        
           | winrid wrote:
           | I played the game years ago, and I suspected it was web based
           | due to the animations etc appearing to be CSS. However, it
           | never stuttered or was slow.
        
       | armchairhacker wrote:
       | note that this isn't the same as Duelyst 2, a game which some
       | team has been working on for a while and has been out for a
       | couple months.
       | 
       | AFAIK the original Duelyst team gave the Duelyst 2 team some code
       | (long before open-sourcing), but they added some new features and
       | a lot of polish, most notably reintroducing 2-card draw. But
       | Duelyst 2 is monetized with lootboxes (free to download), and
       | right now pay-to-win as it otherwise takes a ton of grinding to
       | unbox or craft the right epic and legendary cards.
       | 
       | It's really interesting. They're monetizing a game which is
       | mostly open-source: if you don't agree with it you can play an
       | _almost_ -the same game, and it seems like a separate small could
       | make it even closer to the same with a few months of work. But
       | (reading on the r/Duelyst forms), it seems to be working: some
       | people have already spent thousands on the new game.
       | 
       | As much as I hate IAP, I am kind of glad for the Duelyst 2 devs
       | because they did put a lot of effort into fixing up the game. It
       | would be a shame if this small team worked so hard and still
       | accomplished nothing because everything they worked on is already
       | public. But moreover, it goes to shows why so many companies
       | (even "good" ones) implement IAP that lets people spend absurd
       | amounts of money. Because it's ethically dubious, but it _works_
       | , some people do, and you can argue that the extra $1000 lets you
       | make up for it in more gameplay content. One "compromise" is to
       | put most of the monetization on cosmetics which don't affect
       | gameplay and unnecessary boosts, while keeping the F2P
       | progression system fast and game skill-based. It seems LoR has
       | done this, and Duelyst 2 has originally indicated they were going
       | to do this although they have not, the last patch scaled back
       | some of the F2P grinding and I wouldn't be surprised if they
       | scale it back further after the revenue starts dropping to
       | restore popularity and mitigate criticism (I doubt increasing the
       | monetization after revenue starts dropping will help, so how else
       | to bring it back up...)
       | 
       | And note that open Duelyst has been around for a couple months
       | now (around when Duelyst 2 was released), and Duelyst's community
       | is niche and the openness has been discussed frequently, so I
       | doubt most people didn't realize. There's also https://duelyst.gg
       | which existed much longer than Duelyst 2 and has everything
       | unlocked by default: it's more similar to open Duelyst, an online
       | version re-engineered from the assets and some of the code before
       | the rest was made available.
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-10 23:00 UTC)