Hello! I was just curious if there was anything we could do as a forum to assist the developers in getting Hearthbuddy and it's update ready? Such as compiling new information on all the new cards? Creating a complete decklist while the Devs work on the core framework of the bot, compiling new combos with the new cards etc. Anything that doesn't involve the core workings of the bot that we can assist in compiling as a group? Here's an album of all the new cards: All GvG Cards - Imgur
Thanks for the offer, and the answer will be yes! Hearthbuddy is moving towards a more community driven design (not open source though) as our other bots are. The previous version was one specific bot implementation that wasn't very customizable and user development was pretty limited to just the entire AI (which Silverfish did a good job at for a while, but we need to provide something good too). Exilebuddy was the same way for a while; we had one bot and very limited dev support, but over time, we transitioned into something that the community drive and work around. I only bring EB up specifically, since that's the project I've spent the most time with (and as a result, a lot of stuff done for EB is being done for HSB as well). We want to support all aspects of development when it comes to what we provide with store support to incentivize development. For a game like this though, it doesn't make much sense for people to re-implement a new bot itself (via IBot) as they would in other games (D3, PoE, WoW, etc...), but they'll still be able to if they really want. Ideally though, we'll give and provide people the hooks or API stuff required so they don't even need to think about the actual bot aspect itself. The "bot aspect" is simply everything that isn't in-game AI. So for example, the ability to start arena games, or play constructed, or run though practice. All that stuff we'll have setup in a way that people just need to change some settings to drive the bot to do what they need. While not all those features are in yet, we'll be able to get them worked in once all the dust settles from this large transition. In our other bots, "combat routines" are what drive the bot to do most of the things it does in game. That concept will translate to this game as well, in a slightly broader, but similar scope. "Routines" will contain the actual AI logic and any other game-play specific functionality. This ranges from handling emotes, mulligan, random card hovering for more human-like behavior, and even the arena draft process (which is an exception, since it's not in-game, but it's relevant to whatever AI you want to use). Our aim is to get things setup in a way where people can customize the various aspects of arena draft and gameplay mechanics, without having to do a bunch of coding or using the API itself to perform actions. Devs will still of course have the ability to do things if they want, for total control of their stuff, but most users just want to be able to tweak a few values or use the latest and greatest settings the community provides to make the routine work as best as possible. Lastly, plugin development will be supported for adding or changes things in a way that doesn't require using a specific bot or routine. Plugins are a little more complicated to get right in a game like this, because you don't want plugins doing things that interfere with the current bot actions. E.g., if you tried to implement emote functionality in a plugin, rather than using our system exposed by the bot/routine, you'll most likely cause problems if the bot is trying to play a card or perform a targeting action. As a result, plugin support and functionality will be limited at the start, until we can see what people want/need and if there's a better way to achieve it. Pretty much all the time spent from Dec 4th when the expansion launched early up to now has been spent on core project changes and fixing various things that broke in the API. I can't say yet what type of systems we'll have in place in time for our first beta test of supporting GvG that users will be able to customize, but I will say, they'll get developed and added in as soon as we can. The timing of the expansion and the unfortunate ban waves at the end of October really messed up the original plans for moving forward with what we wanted to do, but that's how it goes sometimes. Exilebuddy had a similar thing happen to it in September and was down roughly a month for a similar reason. I don't expect HSB will be down a month (I'd really like to have a beta testable version within a week), but it'll be pretty "rough" for a while as we try to get things smoothed out for the new HS client. Once we do manage to get relaunched and things start to settle down, hankerspace and I will definitely be opening up more threads for community discussion about what people want and need from what we provide so we can make it happen. The reason why that's not been done yet (at least since Oct when I first joined) was because of how many core changes were actually needed to be done. After this GvG update is done though, we should be in a really good place finally to start working on the "fun" things with the project as opposed to all the behind the scenes stuff users don't get to see. The behind the scenes stuff is critical though, as it drives the project as a whole. We'll have some more information about the way things are setup once we're closer to a beta test for the new version. For now though, I'd just tell people to start brainstorming all the things they want or need from us and enjoy the GvG update itself until we're all caught up.
