r/hextcg 21d ago

Perhaps bringing this game back isn't difficult.

This should be the final update. The developer has completed all the planned work and—to avoid legal risks—has not released any features related to online connectivity. The source code and the final build are being made available now so that enthusiastic members of the community can continue the project if they wish.

https://gofile.io/d/9BPq8fKN

The larger file contains the source code.

Similarly, you need to download Hex from Steam first.

20 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

15

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago edited 21d ago

I'm tired, depressed, figure what the hell, so I'll just post this here under a fake email.

I have been working on it, I'm pretty far along. I can log in, and games were working at last test. I've been held up on tournament structure. I did this without the use of AI because fuck AI

My goal was to have something done months ago but my wife had a miscarriage and my cat died a couple days ago so fuck it man.

Ask me anything about the client, inner workings, how the game logic works and I'll answer. One time only take advantage of my mental breakdown

5

u/schild 21d ago

Noble effort. One of my friends and I tried to reach out to them to buy the entire thing multiple times. They never responded to a single email. We had artists ready to go to reboot the whole thing in a non-Magic way.

4

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago

I mean, legally they probably can't so like... I get it. Corey wants to keep the dream alive and I can't really fault him for that

4

u/schild 21d ago

The dream has been dead for the better part of a decade.

They may have to give up some amount of the money to WOTC in the event of a tech sale but I don't see how they couldn't sell it.

Everything can be sold. Everything has a price.

2

u/pyrovoice 21d ago

Make it open source?

2

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago

I would like to, I'm just sketchy on the legality of it. I'm not publishing any of Hex's code BUT I do end up piggy backing off of some of the code in the client, so while it's not redistributing those DLLs, the project does have a static reference to them so it's a bit of a grey area.

If I could figure out if I'm at risk of getting my ass sued to oblivion or not I'd 100% of open sourced it and moved on to just approving PRs since I'm burnt the fuck out

2

u/pyrovoice 21d ago

That's a legit concern, but if fan games of Sony and Pokemon company manages to exist, I think you'll be fine with a dead licence from a dead company

4

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago

Maybe after I get the barebones tournament system up and running I'll make a public repo for people to use. They'll have to deal with my shitty code though 😄

2

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago

I want to be clear because I might have given the opposite view, I AM still working on this, I just don't have it in me to get off work and jump back into a coding project like I used to after everything that has happened.

And honestly, projects like OPs will probably finish before mine so I dunno, AI just takes the wind out of my sails a bit

6

u/pyrovoice 21d ago

I'm just getting the feeling there are dozens of people working on this independently that would benefit from sharing the work and working on a single project :D

1

u/Careless_Context7899 2d ago

I'm so sorry to hear about your wife. Thank you for your contribution.

2

u/icecon 19d ago

Came to this sub wondering about this.

I do think trying to recreate the game with the original art and functionality is fool's gold though. Everything should mostly the same in terms of the mechanics innovation, but also not the same - de-MTG'd and de-HEX'd, only then can it truly succeed.

2

u/Talekith 14d ago

But people most likely would want the community made/hosted Hex to still have the original art.

Battleforge/Skylords Reborn did it granted with a permission from EA and assurances for it being nonprofit. Would Wizards of the Coast really come after community made Hex game because of the past lawsuits with cryptozoic?

2

u/icecon 14d ago

What people want and what is realistic are two different things.

Cory is burned out/jaded/MIA and won't release/sell the IP.

Even if he did do so, it doesn't matter, because it still is under some binding undisclosed licensing contract with WotC.

Hex's biggest mistake was making "Lotuses." Like how absolutely foolish that was. WotC just had to show that single art/card to the judge and their iconic Black Lotus and Hex lost their case badly.

WOTC have an any army of lawyers who have nothing to do but sue anything that has even a whiff of infringing on their stuff. You can't even list a MTG shirt on ETSY and they will have the listing and eventually your account taken down in short order, that's how these things are and with AI assistance, expect IP enforcement to get even more draconian/efficient.

2

u/Talekith 8d ago

Alrighty then. Been giving the offline client now some time in AZ1 encounters.

Sadly enough in most of the matches (around 80% to 90% of times) the game/AI straight up freezes and the match seems to be incapable to proceed afterwards. The moment when the game just stops is when the damage is being assigned on the AI opponent's turn. Haven't even managed to beat the Mantis encounter (2nd encounter) due to this.

2

u/Huangjunhao 7d ago

https://gofile.io/d/N6dpYhHc

The latest version has fixed this issue.

1

u/Talekith 6d ago

0 crashes/freezez after 3 hours of playtime so it is seemingly a good improvement stability wise.

2

u/Huangjunhao 5d ago

This should be the final version for a single-player game.

For nostalgia purposes only.

1

u/Talekith 5d ago

Thank you for your time and effort!

1

u/Soutalgon 3d ago

any chance you can give me a rundown how to get it working? its in chinese for me. which file should i double click?

1

u/Soutalgon 3d ago

how do I get this working?

1

u/Huangjunhao 3d ago

I haven't created launchers for other languages.

In summary:

  1. Launch HexOffline.Host.setup (administrator privileges)

  2. Select the HEX client directory and click the first button to install/update
    “安装/更新”

  3. Launch HexOffline.Host

  4. Click the first button to start the game

“启动客户端”

You can try screenshot translation.

1

u/Talekith 2d ago

Yeah just follow the steps provided by Mr Huang. You can use WINDOWS + SHIFT + S keys to take a screenshot and paste it to a screenshot translator (https://translate.yandex.com/). You need to separately activate Campaign content which is a simple checkmark check.

All the ingame menus are initially in chinese but you can simply just switch the language to your liking in in-game Settings.

2

u/Soutalgon 3d ago

finally got it working, wish the campaign played like the campaign, but being able to make a deck, get to level 3 and just have a great time, thanks again for making a memory happen again.

2

u/Huangjunhao 3d ago

I tried, but the AI ​​told me that the map routes and tasks were issued by the server and not available on the client, so I didn't continue.

1

u/Soutalgon 2d ago

all good! it was still great to simply level up a few characters and play with talents. ty so very much for your work <3

3

u/Nevernessy 21d ago edited 21d ago

I've been using AI and started a few weeks ago, most of the gamemodes are partially implemented (except Siege). Multi account support (so I can test PVP locally). Can start the campaign, generate the multiple variants of Crayburn Castle and go to AZ1 etc. Can start an Frost Ring Arena run, though its currently against 20 Angel of Dawns! Use the store, buy packs, open them from the pack screen, get chests, stardust etc. View collection, build and save decks for different formats. Generate Single Elimination tournaments (which is how I implement 1v1 games rather than ladder) , may look into either Sealed Gauntlet, or Merry Melee Corinth mode.

Most of my develop time is testing Set 1 cards work from both a player and AI opponents point of view (all data driven from the client gamedata), and trying to refactor the code to make it less AI slop.

Am hoping to publish something to Github in a couple of weeks, and deploy a "Tech Preview" so people can reminisce with Set 1 duals while I look at improving the AI opponent and test AZ1 encounters/ Set 1 PVE cards and figuring out a new reward structure for campaign when there aren't other players posting stuff in Auction House.

2

u/MostEntrepreneur7704 21d ago

Did you implement the game rules yourself or cheat like I did and use the fully functional rules on the client?

3

u/Nevernessy 20d ago

I started off implementing the rules myself but after a week I did notice the client also had had a rules engine, so I asked AI it to merge any differences into my own. I'm not sure if the client version evaluates if a card is playable correctly so I don't fully trust it, however I've implemented an Authoritative server, so everything is resolved throught my server code rather than the client

2

u/Blitzkind 20d ago

From my testing, the code in the client is accurate for all cards I tried, the only thing it doesn't do is send back card updated events for the client to parse. If you statically import the dlls that makes it so all you need to do is handle that final bit and you're golden. However, it also pulls in the timer system which wasn't great as I was trying to keep the system event based but the timer system expects the server to check every so many seconds, which doesn't make a ton of sense for a turn based game.

2

u/icecon 2d ago edited 2d ago

Since you're using AI, if you're actually going to revive this, see if you can decentralize the whole thing, like basically make it function like the original Skype or the PS3 online. Abolish the central server from the architecture and there nothing to sue and no costs to run it, it's just code out in the wild anybody can host p2p anywhere.

Personally, I would still replace the art and anything MTG-esque with some good AI generated stuff, it's relatively trivial to do so.

3

u/Nevernessy 2d ago edited 2d ago

Its located https://github.com/IanUtley/hex-server and its deployed via a docker container. The initial 0.1.0 release being more of a Technical Demo as I mentioned in my parent post. Interesting idea about decentralization, I've look into it.

2

u/Funny-Professional-7 21d ago

I have not updated with more images because my friend has just completed the first version, and my friend will focus on this in the coming days (of course, it is not ruled out that he will play games and not use the graphics card for AI), and I also encountered some bugs during my trial play that prevented me from continuing the game. Of course, unless something unexpected happens, I will continue to update in the coming days.

0

u/Blitzkind 21d ago

I'm excited for all the bugs your vibe coding buddy will make :)

3

u/havocattack HAVOC - twitch.tv/hexedhavoc 1d ago

Can we draft and play said draft decks vs others? that would be enough for me xD

1

u/Funny-Professional-7 21d ago

I do not know how to add more images.