FAQ
- When will Guardians be released?
- How is Guardians of Kelthas different from Magic Online?
- What will Guardians look like?
- What are the system requirements for Guardians?
- What software is being used in the development process?
When will Guardians be released?
Development on Guardians of Kelthas ended in mid-2006 with the graduation of our core team. Alpha versions of the game are still available on our Downloads page.
How is Guardians of Kelthas different from Magic Online?
Magic: the Gathering, and its online counterpart, Magic Online, is by far the most popular fantasy collectible card game, so it’s only natural to compare Guardians to it. The major difference between them is that Magic Online is essentially a transcription of the offline game; its goal is to be faithful to the physical card game with innovations in interface rather than gameplay. Our design team has a great deal of respect for this; the interface for Magic Online, though complex, generally does a good job of providing players with most of the options they would have in an analog game.
Guardians of Kelthas has no offline game to adhere to, giving us the flexibility to make innovative use of its digital nature. This allows us to try a variety of cards and rules which would be difficult or impossible for a physical card game, for example, cards with percentile or random effects, or cards that level up as you play with them. We are also able to attempt new kinds of story, technical, and artistic design that would have no analogues in offline play.
For more details on this, you may be interested in our white paper, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital CCGs.
What will Guardians look like?
Interface design is one of the areas that makes Guardians of Kelthas a unique gameplay experience. Essentially, Guardians can look like anything you want—we plan to provide full support and documentation to allow fans to create their own interfaces from the ground up, if they like, or to modify our interfaces as they desire. Because of an innovative programming paradigm, we are able to do this without in any way compromising the security or stability of even the online gameplay experience.
We will, of course, provide interfaces for fans who would prefer to use one of our systems instead of creating their own. Our current plan is to provide both a 2D and possibly a 3D gameplay interface. The 2D view resembles our early prototype (Heroes, Inc.) in many ways, while the 3D view provides a more detailed game world in which the heroes step out of their cards to engage in dynamic battle with their opponents.
What are the system requirements for Guardians?
The system requirements for the release version of Guardians have not yet been finalized, but we expect to support:
Windows XP |
The system requirements for pre-release versions (alpha and beta releases) will generally be somewhat higher as we focus on adding new features over optimization.
What software is being used in the development process?
Software that is being or has been used during our development process includes:
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Beta
Microsoft .NET 2.0 Beta
DirectX 9.0c
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Visio
Adobe Photoshop CE
Paint Shop Pro
Sun Java 5.0
TortoiseCVS
Eclipse