4 ms·

Could you document the rules of the game somewhere? Blizzard doesn't make it clear. I was going to embark on a simulator just like this, except I had a hard ti

by 147 12y ago

Could you document the rules of the game somewhere? Blizzard doesn't make it clear. I was going to embark on a simulator just like this, except I had a hard time figuring out the weird interactions and edge cases. For instance, I just played a game last night where there was an enemy mad scientist on the board. I play a madder bomber and it kills it, playing a secret for the mage, which turned out to be mirror entity, proccing that secret, and the board was left with me and him having a madder bomber. I wanted to make AI for hearthstone to test and simulate things, but these weird interactions was preventing me from making a simulator like this.

rtpg 12y ago
so one thing is that battlecries trigger before the "summon" effect, and it's a stack, so you do one effect, resolve those consequences, and then go to the next effect. In the case of multiple effects being added due to one effect, it goes by seniority (cards that have been on the board longer trigger first). There's a decent amount of noted rules on it, but you get some strange things like Kel'Thuzad ( which was completely borked on release, not sure about it now). I think the general rule is "the code is the spec"
- 147 12y ago
  Right. The problem with Kel'Thuzad is that they changed some interactions to fix bugs and they don't really tell you.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  Battlecries happening before the summon is a popular opinion but I have strong reasons to believe it's wrong. However, I wrote above the series of events that leads to the CARD_PLAYED event to happen after the Mad Scientist is dead, so Mirror Entity indeed summons the copy after the battlecry has happened. So basically, battlecries in this case have precendence over secrets so to say. But the minion is already on the field. This is important because, say you had a Cult Master that ALSO had a "deal 1 damage" battlecry and you played it, killing one of your own minions with it: it would see the death, as it is already on the field. Regarding Kel Thuzad, we're again talking about ordering issues. What could have happened is something such as the aura/internal tag it was setting disappearing a tad too late after its death as during end of turn, if killed by an END_TURN effect, the aura would trigger before it disappears. But all of this is extremely internal. If the designers believe it's a bug, then it's a bug. That's why I'm not touching Warsong Commander yet. :)
Igglyboo 12y ago
If you think hearthstone has difficult rules you should look at MTG. It's actually turning complete, the game is that complex. http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html
scrollaway 12y ago
This is a popular request... :) Fireplace itself has some documentation on the wiki. The thing is, black-box testing gives me room to actually test my own interactions and see how well they match up with the original game. Documenting the rules of the game proves itself very hard because the game's rules are extremely abstract: what you're talking about here is a series of events and I believe it looks something like this: Player 1 plays Madder Bomber Madder Bomber moves to the field MadderBomber.action triggers 1 damage to Mad Scientist 1 damage to Mad Scientist Mad Scientist TO_BE_DESTROYED (4 more damage...) Mad Scientist moved to GRAVEYARD Mad Scientist triggers own deathrattle Secret moves to PLAY Zone CARD_PLAYED (Player1, Madder Bomber) Mirror Entity triggers CARD_PLAYED hook and summons Madder Bomber MINION_SUMMONED (Player1, Madder Bomber) MINION_SUMMONED (Player2, Madder Bomber copy)

by 147 12y ago

rtpg 12y ago

so one thing is that battlecries trigger before the "summon" effect, and it's a stack, so you do one effect, resolve those consequences, and then go to the next effect. In the case of multiple effects being added due to one effect, it goes by seniority (cards that have been on the board longer trigger first). There's a decent amount of noted rules on it, but you get some strange things like Kel'Thuzad ( which was completely borked on release, not sure about it now). I think the general rule is "the code is the spec"

147 12y ago
Right. The problem with Kel'Thuzad is that they changed some interactions to fix bugs and they don't really tell you.
scrollaway 12y ago
Battlecries happening before the summon is a popular opinion but I have strong reasons to believe it's wrong. However, I wrote above the series of events that leads to the CARD_PLAYED event to happen after the Mad Scientist is dead, so Mirror Entity indeed summons the copy after the battlecry has happened. So basically, battlecries in this case have precendence over secrets so to say. But the minion is already on the field. This is important because, say you had a Cult Master that ALSO had a "deal 1 damage" battlecry and you played it, killing one of your own minions with it: it would see the death, as it is already on the field. Regarding Kel Thuzad, we're again talking about ordering issues. What could have happened is something such as the aura/internal tag it was setting disappearing a tad too late after its death as during end of turn, if killed by an END_TURN effect, the aura would trigger before it disappears. But all of this is extremely internal. If the designers believe it's a bug, then it's a bug. That's why I'm not touching Warsong Commander yet. :)

Igglyboo 12y ago

If you think hearthstone has difficult rules you should look at MTG. It's actually turning complete, the game is that complex. http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html http://www.toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html

scrollaway 12y ago

This is a popular request... :) Fireplace itself has some documentation on the wiki. The thing is, black-box testing gives me room to actually test my own interactions and see how well they match up with the original game. Documenting the rules of the game proves itself very hard because the game's rules are extremely abstract: what you're talking about here is a series of events and I believe it looks something like this: Player 1 plays Madder Bomber Madder Bomber moves to the field MadderBomber.action triggers 1 damage to Mad Scientist 1 damage to Mad Scientist Mad Scientist TO_BE_DESTROYED (4 more damage...) Mad Scientist moved to GRAVEYARD Mad Scientist triggers own deathrattle Secret moves to PLAY Zone CARD_PLAYED (Player1, Madder Bomber) Mirror Entity triggers CARD_PLAYED hook and summons Madder Bomber MINION_SUMMONED (Player1, Madder Bomber) MINION_SUMMONED (Player2, Madder Bomber copy)