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masterage

Master of Blitz (maybe)
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masterage

Disgaea Netherwar: 2020 Stuff

2 min read

Its been a while! This has been a very trying year and not just for the obvious reasons. Got a new job, then promptly got stuck mid-move for the last four months due to the pandemic.


And while I'm able to safely work from home, my overall stress level has remained high and that has impacted how much time I have to work on my projects.


Things of note:

- Tabletop Playground is now a thing. Sadly, the game physically cannot work in their engine until support for Zones is implemented, but the devs have assured me they will get to it eventually. So it will be third behind Tabletop Simulator and OCTGN.


- Tabletop Simulator's Feb update (and Tabletop Playground's renderer) revealed a critical error across all of my cards that I have been trying to fix since then. These fixes form the basis for V9 card bases, and unfortunately must be manually done.


- After communication with the people that have gathered on Discord for the game, I have decided to drop the RagnaQuest side of Makai Wars from the game, turning this game into a pure NIS and NIS-related game. This decision was made after Disgaea RPG revealed it would have its own character alts, and due to those alts the game is now well past 200 Leaders. While Disgaea is a game of excess, the RagnaQuest characters just simply don't fit right now.


- No, Mad Rat will not have a presence in the game. - Due to the above changes, some B-series cards are now Main-series and have been changed accordingly. Also, since Makai Wars and DRPG continue to release alts and new units, I cannot sanely number units for A-series until a cutoff point is reached. This is why Lucy is A???. There are about 20 slots left for A-series Leaders as of this writing.



I know this game has taken way too long to come out and many have lost interest. This is basically just a passion project now, and honestly I expect the amount of testers to be low to non-existent.

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Disgaea Netherwar Delay

1 min read
While I am working as quick as possible, I've had a good amount of my available time essentially stripped from me during this last month, which has slowed me down quite a bit. Then, Tabletop Simulator's latest update (which I thought would be better for cards, actually made it *worse* for cards in my situation) has forced me to restructure how I was going to update the game, which also means refactored rulebooks, graphics, and other materials.

As such I will miss my self-inflicted June 28th timeframe. I apologize for the wait. I do not have a currently active timeframe of launching the game, though after the launch there is no reason to change the monthly update timeframe.

Though, so long as I beat Disgaea RPG...
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Disgaea: Netherwar - Release Schedule

3 min read
The game is actually starting to approach a playable state! The game has a few quirks due to TTS limits but their latest patch (as of this post) helps considerably.

The game is going to be released in 69 card "blocks" after this initial release. This is due to TTS texture optimization.

The game will be FREE, but requires owning Tabletop Simulator (TTS) on Steam to play. Matchmaking will occur via Discord Server.

The game will launch in the goal timeframe of late June 2019. Launch is defined as the following:

149 Total Leaders
99 Base Set Leaders (nine of them transforming)
45 Makai Wars Leaders (A-series, None transforming, 18 RangaQuest or Original, remainder Alt Disgaea art)
5 Disgaea RPG Leaders (B-series, two of them transforming)

Due to TTS limitations there is a hard limit of 207 Leaders.

Vassals
207 Base Set Vassals

Future Releases
138 Makai Wars Vassals (two blocks)
138 Disgaea RPG (SD Edition units, two blocks)

This puts the total possible card count at 690 before TTS becomes unusable for lower-end computers.

Additionally, TTS has a feature for state-based objects that, in short, allows someone to "hot swap" between the two. I have used that feature to create a QoL feature in that the Vassal cards can switch between their base forms and a more TTS-friendly Attached form. The feature is not mandatory for the game to work but it helps keeps things clean. This feature will not be required if OCTGN happens. This feature comes at a cost, however: Each vassal card is technically split into two cards as far as TTS is concerned, which raises the user requirements. It is mostly this that will prevent the game from expanding past 690 cards.

Speaking of OCTGN, there are now two major hurdles for it existing: the codebase, and that the playfield is actually pretty vertical.

Also, the game will be technically available earlier to those on my Steam friendslist due to Steam limitations. Insight on how the plugin works at that time will be valuable, but the game will be nowhere near balanced.

Balancing Info
Aside from emergency edits, I plan on doing balance passes once a month on the 27th of each month. As this game will not have the sheer player count as my previous project alongside that TTS is harder to update, updates will be slower.
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Even more Disgaea: Netherwar changes

2 min read
  • Numbering changes include adding Summer Rozalin, Dark Asagi and Pajama Asagi to the Makai Wars expansion which opens up two more spots in the "main" game.
  • Makai War's Summer Event added Summer Valvatorez and Summer Asagi, and thus so do I.
  • The new characters in the "main" game are Cornet from Rhapsody (which will function as a Peon Manipulator), and Lillet from GrimGrimoire (who will function as a Summoner). Turns out Faust (who was removed as she has no connection to NIS in any way) was more of a lynchpin that I expected, so her role will be split into the new characters.
The reason why I'm testing an expansion with the base game is that I am concerned about Leader supportive abilities, and I want to test their availability. Most of the Ragna Quest units have some supportive function, so I figured it would be the perfect test.

Additionally, I need to explain how I'm choosing characters for the game. Characters follow one of three rules:
  1. The character was in a NIS made game.
  2. The character was in a third-party game that NIS assisted in making, not just publishing.
  3. The character was an original character in a third-party game that NIS had multiple characters make official appearances in (Cross Edge, Trinity Universe, Makai Wars, etc.).
Altis, Faust, and Unnamed Hero broke one of these three rules and thus needed to go. I could not gather data on characters that cannot be reasonably expected to co-exist for the game. This also applies to any potential Neptunia characters as Nisa was the only character NIS had any control over at all.
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Further Disgaea: Netherwar changes, new base

1 min read
Disgaea: Netherwar Changes
  • Altis, Faust, and Unnamed Hero have been removed. Leaders will be based off of NIS-made (or assisted) games and games where multiple NIS characters were in.
  • York (from Cross Edge), Dark Asagi (Makai Wars) and Summer Rozalin (Makai Wars) were added to the base game.
  • York, Kanata, and Rizelia will be the only characters from Compile Heart games in the base set due to the nature of their games.
  • Makai Wars characters will be available for testing purposes. For a Living Card Game or Collectable Card Game, they would be in their own expansion.
  • Pajama Asagi functions as a traditional Promo Card, and will be available for testing.
  • Zetta has been made a one-way transform character. His Badass Overlord form was just capable of too much, too quickly. Zetta Book will be his new base form and his Overload will transform him and give him the ability to Overload again.
Disgaea: Netherwar Card Base changes
  • Rank images have been overhauled and are now much, much clearer.
  • New upscaling on the background and sprites
  • Range and Target now have redundant features to allow for easy identification.
  • Numerous text changes.
  • Evility as a word has been removed.
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Disgaea Netherwar: 2020 Stuff by masterage, journal

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