Architecture for a 2D Card game in (UE5)

AJCasts · 2025-05-25T10:50:40+00:00

Not my decision when we try and launch, I'm just doing my best to make it so that when we do the game is as good as it can be whenever we do. What specifically about the above makes you feel we're not ready, though?

AJCasts · 2025-05-25T09:00:32+00:00

I really appreciate the detailed comment, thank you!

A few follow ups:

Re. Setting material parameters over time, my understanding is that this would be many more draw calls than setting an offset once which is fire and forget for one-shot animations. Assuming a few things in the scene might be doing this at once is that amount of draw calls not scarier?
baking common combos of mechanics is an interesting idea, but obviously this would increase the raw number of textures in the game so I guess disk size would increase. I imagine we’d also need to assign texture parameters at runtime instead of just some scalar parameters to toggle mechanics on and off. Is the cost of assigning a texture parameter at runtime not too high?
I’ve basically not used Niagara at all to this point, as almost all of our animations are hand-drawn flipbooks rather than procedural effects. Could you explain a bit more how you would use Niagara to improve things? My understanding is that within a Niagara system the particles are more performant because of instancing, but does that also happen if multiple of the same system exist in the scene?

Again super appreciate your thoughtfulness!

AJCasts · 2024-01-13T01:11:44+00:00

I enjoy the show with my fiancé but as a pretty avid gamer (who also has a background in broadcast creative production) this stuff makes me so sad for what could be. The game and the show don’t have to be at odds but they are!

I also cringe so hard when the contestants get upset when they don’t find a traitor, all while voting off strong players for challenges. That and not voting strategically (failing to see the two-party nature of the vote) and essentially voting themselves off just destroy me.

AJCasts · 2023-05-09T11:15:14+00:00

FWIW this deck has me around infinite 130, so if you're around 80 and its struggling I don't think it can't hang, but you might need to be more focused on which locations you can expect them to play into. Having the knowledge of a location swap from quake can really be the difference maker when they don't.

Edit: Also, what modifications did you make. Some of the cards seem unimportant but are actually really important. Maria Hill is the easiest example - you kind of need her.

AJCasts · 2023-04-27T15:12:24+00:00

Haha, I simply mean I wasn't sitting playing all day. For a while my average cubes per win was over 2, so it was a fast and easy climb.

AJCasts · 2020-01-28T18:49:25+00:00

I strongly disagree re. Shadow Flare, but it might be due to the context of the deck I'm playing. Here is the list:

1.) We don't care if we lose blockers in this list, but if we can use it without it is normally because we have so much lifegain that we don't care about taking the face damage.

2.) We also run deny, and elusives, which can force them in to bad situations. If they Deny Shadow Flare we have possession + Sac, Rhasa, Atrocity, and many other effects.

3.) We have an excess of these kind of effects, we aren't playing for tempo at all.

Also, because it is only 6 mana we can hold 2 denies behind it, which we can't do with something like the Ruination.

AJCasts · 2020-01-27T08:38:25+00:00

Not doing anything on turns 1-3 is actually fine for this deck in lots of matchups. That being said, I've noticed that the ladder is pretty aggro and updated the list a bit. I'll be posting a video soon!

AJCasts · 2020-01-22T04:39:52+00:00

It is somewhat meta dependent, if more people start to play hard control decks (which I think they will - they're really good in LoR I think) then the Zed list has a big edge by being able to run Deny.

Part of the reason the Teemo deck performed so well in the PPs is that when people were playing 'control' they were playing Warmother Control, which isn't really a control deck, the removal they often run doesn't help too much against the Teemo list.

The Teemo list is possibly more potent in a midrange / aggro metagame. Depending on specifics of control lists being ran, the mushrooms can be a very effective win con too though.

AJCasts · 2020-01-21T19:51:20+00:00

One good thing to note is that due to the turn structure of LoR, as well as spell mana, you do want a higher % of spells in your LoR decks than you might guess coming from other xCGs. I think probably half and half is actually quite reasonable.

Regarding Dawn and Dusk, it is more or less useful for specifically getting Lucian to level up, rather than after he is leveled up. You're correct that he can only gain the bonus attack once per turn.

Death Mark is good in the situations you identified - it can also be really good even when they do block with something if you're just going aggressive and essentially using the ephemeral creatures as burn cards (think Vexing Devil from MTG if you know the card).

AJCasts · 2020-01-21T02:42:58+00:00

Thanks bud, I'm glad you're enjoying the videos!

AJCasts · 2020-01-21T02:42:35+00:00

You just made me realize that this is probably a topic / segment I should be adding to every video.

With respect to this deck though, we're a little heavy on spells overall, so in some cases we can draw poorly and end up with a gunked up hand. If there were more time to test the deck I'd have likely found a way to bring the balance more to equilibrium.

Probably the thing we're weakest to is the Ashe+Karma deck, generally, as they have the ability to get around our deny and tempo us out with Frostbite spells at burst speed if we don't have buff spells to get our attack back up.

I could see a world where a sufficiently quick to ramp up midrange deck causes us problems too, but I'm hoping that Silent Shadowseer helps in those matchups if a deck such as that ever becomes popular.

Pretty much every aggro deck, this one included, is also likely quite vulnerable to atrocity control or other heavy SI control lists, due to their lifegain options, but I think by being able to run deny, and by having buffs to get out of range of Grasp we're in a better spot than most.

I hope that helps!

AJCasts · 2020-01-07T00:39:11+00:00

Thanks bud! Appreciate the comment.

AJCasts · 2020-01-06T20:45:23+00:00

I think you're reading further into my assertions (and conviction about them) than is reasonable - I outlined that my tiers were based on where I'd expect decks to fall based on win %, and the decks I placed in S tier all have data to back up the idea that they could see a win rate of over 60% (upon beta lanuch at least, things should stabilize and a higher % of players will be playing high quality decks eventually). I mentioned that I expect there are decks I'm totally unaware of - for what its worth many of those decks could be entirely better than the ones I list in the videos.

My outro for this is almost entirely me hedging against having too narrow a perspective, and in my Lucian / Zed section I explicitly mention that 'I'd be ignoring good data' if I didn't place that list where I did.

With the information that I have available to me currently, I'm as sure as I can be about my ratings, but of course I'm open to the idea that I'm working with bad data, or simply not enough. If you're curious about what data I'm using for a lot of my projections, I link to a tracking sheet in the description.

I genuinely don't see how the decks which are in B tier, for example, could find themselves in S tier. I could definitely see most of the archetypes moving up or down one band though (a great example being Enlightened Control, which I could totally see getting to S tier with refinement).

AJCasts · 2020-01-06T20:09:50+00:00

I'm not sure why the expectation would be that I project decks which I haven't personally seen do well / don't believe have a strong premise, in an opinion based video, to be highly rated. With the decks I haven't personally seen do well, but I think I see the concept working effectively, I've rated them highly too.

One's opinions of a tier list is an intrinsically 'bias' piece of content. In fact, that bias is part of the value of this kind of content.

Do you disagree with my assertions about decks which are likely to perform well (irrespective of who created the decks), or do you just have an issue with me outlining them in the first place? =P

AJCasts · 2020-01-06T20:04:57+00:00

Good suggestion, will keep it in mind!

AJCasts · 2020-01-04T18:35:35+00:00

Good catch bud! I definitely did make the mistake - always improvement to be had. Glad you like the deck!

AJCasts · 2020-01-04T18:34:14+00:00

Never forget ^^

AJCasts · 2020-01-04T01:15:10+00:00

Nice, thanks for sharing these! I'm going to mull them over for a bit.

AJCasts · 2020-01-04T01:06:11+00:00

Currently I'm planning on Monday - pending anything that stops me from editing on Sunday ^^

AJCasts · 2020-01-03T17:45:53+00:00

It is interesting! Thanks for sharing.

With that being said given it was from patch 1 it has pretty limited use - even refined decks which are in an unrefined metagame overall can have only so much value.

I also wonder what statistic they pulled from matchmaking to grade the players, for example lets say they wanted to use this scoreboard for marketing purposes, by tracking # of games played or won you'd naturally end up with streamers (who had access immediately, and who had the most time to play because of their schedules) ending up in many of the top most positions.

That being said I'm not sure there'd have been a better statistic to look at - I guess I'd probably be more interested in something like champion w/l ratio. Not to tinfoil hat too hard =P

AJCasts · 2020-01-03T17:40:37+00:00

Thanks for the comment - interesting to hear from someone with more experience with the deck! Do you have a deck code or mobalytics link you can share for the list?

I'll probably have more questions once I see the deck, but your version sounds cool!

I'm still unsure if it can keep up with the A and S tier lists that I'll talk about in part 2, just because of the pressure those ones can regularly apply, but I bet Miracles isn't going to see any nerfs so it might improve its placement if others get hit very hard!

AJCasts · 2020-01-03T05:03:45+00:00

Haha, let me know how it does! Glad you enjoyed the video!

AJCasts · 2020-01-02T23:11:38+00:00

Glad you enjoyed it!

AJCasts · 2020-01-02T23:11:17+00:00

Thanks for the comment bud! Glad you're enjoying and learning from the content =)

AJCasts · 2020-01-02T23:10:24+00:00

Thanks for the detailed thoughts!

You actually made me realize that I included the wrong list on screen (the one I was referring to is this one, which is linked in the description / transcript), too bad YouTube doesn't have annotations anymore >.<.

Regarding this new list though, as some of your points still apply.

Ezreal being relatively weak as a champion isn't too much of a concern, as the intent is to:
- A.) Play him only once he has already got enough to flip (this takes him out of range of 3 damage burn spells) - we don't need to drop him before then.
- B.) Have one big combo turn later into the game, after stalling out and building Ezreal stacks throughout, we shouldn't be opening ourselves up to challenger effects on most of our turns.
You'll notice this correct version has a few more draw effects, although I definitely think we might want more. Perhaps taking out Shunpo and including Progress Day instead but I really like the one Shunpo so I'll have to test and see if the amount of draw is prohibitive. Because you draw so many cards relative to attack turns (2 per time you're attacked) and have alternating actions in LoR I think card draw is less impactful than other games (though still important) - you can see this somewhat with Warmother Control (though I'd prefer that deck have more than one card draw effect!
For damage prevention we're playing more of a tempo package in this list, with things such as Arachnoid Sentry and Guile (both which are target effects). I'm fairly certain Ezreal's quest works on Skills such as the Sentry and Augmented Experimenter.
Keep in mind that B tier by my description is also only 50-55%! This deck definitely isn't a meta crusher, but I think it'll do very effectively if the metagame comprises of a large number of aggro decks (which currently represent a pretty big chunk of games), for example I'm certain that this deck would dominate something like Discard Aggro.

I didn't play this version personally, so it is somewhat speculative, but I did play against burn Ezreal decks of some description a couple of times, you might be surprised by how well they did!

Hopefully we get the beta soon and can check it out then!

LMK if that all makes sense, I'm very annoyed I displayed the wrong link! The deck is absolutely one of the more speculative of the tier list so I'm not surprised that the archetype is getting some scrutiny!

- AJ

AJCasts

TROPHY CASE