Design concepts for building a divination card game in AC?

jerryisdale

I have inherited a project that has basics of a divination card play using Unity and AC.  

Definitely not the usual adventure fair AC was designed for but perhaps some elements of a divination series would be useful in some fantasy world.

The system offers several different card 'layouts' with different numbers of cards chosen for each.  Upon selecting, the card art material is swapped into the proper mesh object and a dialog displays the meaning.  So far that all works nicely.

Next up is to provide a way to remember a particular deal/layout (which cards go in which place) and let the user go back and review a particular 'reading'.

Normally, I'd define a class to hold readings - layout type + id for each card in its appropriate slot - and give it some text name (date/time, 'divination question' or title.)  These could be serialized and saved/reloaded.  A menu or 'diary' of previous readings would allow the player to review the readings.

I'm not sure the best tools/approach to this in AC.  I've been investigating Containers - which might work for holding a series of Inventory Items, perhaps with properties that identify their Name and Slot (position in layout).   These containers could then be serialized with a SaveGame.

AC doesnt provide any real string manipulation tools, so creating a text display of the cards in a layout seems to require extensions.

I'm looking to use existing stuff as much as possible. I believe in standing on shoulders of my fellow midgets.  However, if we need to break into C# melodies, then so be it.

Any suggestions or comments?

ChrisIceBox

I should think some small amount of C# would be necessary, but exactly how much would depend on your approach.

Containers could be a viable method, so long as you only have one "open" at a time.  Each card would need to be an inventory item, but inventory items can be categorised and assigned properties - which you can read through custom scripting.

AC makes it simple to extend the save system, however, to save scene data in the form of custom "Remember" scripts, which tell AC about what data about a particular GameObject needs saving.  You can find a tutorial on writing such a script here, and a tutorial on saving global data can be found here.

jerryisdale

Again good leads... thank you... diving into scripting.