Q: Could you introduce Ederon to our readers?
Ederon is a free online card battle game that you can play from any computer with an internet connection.

Q: How much time did it take to develop the game and how many people worked on it?
I have been developing the game for almost 2 years. Later this year I got help from third-party artists to draw some of the cards.

Q: Is Ederon free to play?
Yes. Ederon is completly free to play. But you can, like any other card game, buy booster cards at any time to add to your collection. That does not require you to pay a monthly fee.

Q: Let's say I am completely new to Ederon. What are the steps I should follow to start playing?
I tried to make the game as intuitive as possible. I advice the new players to read the easy step-by-step instructions. Even if you don't read it, you will still learn how to play by simply starting a beginner account and play with any one that is online. The game will not allow you to play cards in the wrong phases.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the background story?
Ederon is a world that has been 'killed' by it's own people. Only the strongest races and clans that seek destruction could walk on the land, while the remaining weak hide themselves. That was about to change when a mad sorcerer found a way to drain the life force of dead heroes into essences that could be held by any average person. That opened a huge possibility for all the races to once again claim what they believe is peace.

Q: Let's talk about the gameplay. What are the main characteristics of Ederon?
Basically, Ederon is a battle between 2 warriors. With this said, it is easier to understand the purpose and names of the cards. During the game you can shift between classes to use their specific items, spells and abilities that you might have in your deck. The strategy is pretty simple: find the best combination of cards and classes to build your deck and defeat your opponent.

Q: The game has a huge number of different cards. Can you tell us more about them and how players will be able obtain new cards?
Ederon has 8 different classes. Each class has their speciallity and weakness found in their cards. When you first make an 'advanced' account on Ederon, you receive 60 random common cards to buid your own deck. During gameplay, when you advance a level, you receive 2 free cards (depending on your level the cards can be rare or not), but mostly, the best way to get the rare cards and build a perfect deck is by acquiring booster packs.

Q: What is the "Card Manager"?
Card Manager is where you can manage all your collection of cards. See the cards you have and build your decks. Later in the game it will also offer the trade card system where you can pick the cards you want to offer for trading.

Q: There's a "Trade Card" section on your website. What is it about?
This is going to be the feature many of the players will be waiting for. Besides playing the game and buying boosters, you will also be able to trade cards you don't use with other players, making it a complete card game experience.

Q: How many different classes can you impersonate?
There are 8 classes on Ederon:
Hunter - The bowfighter class
Assassin - The stealth abilities class
Sorcerer - The counter spell class
Wizard - The damage spell class
Paladin - The healer class
Monk - The fast abilities class
Knight - The item class
Gladiator - The weaponry class
Of course, this is just a brief description of the classes. Each class has much more to offer than just this. To take a look on a more in depth view, Go to the 'Class' link on the website.

Q: What are the games that influenced you the most for this project?
Definally card games in general. I've played from pokemon to yu-gi-ho, but mostly during my childhood, Magic the gathering was my biggest influence. I played that game for over 5 years.

Q: What are the basic requirements for playing the game? (cpu, player version etc...)
Any computer connected to the internet can play the game mostly because it does not require a fast internet connection. The game requires you to have flash player 8+, and most importantly, IE 6+ or Firefox. The Card Manager does not work with older versions of IE, specially IE 5.5 on Mac. If you have a Mac, I strongly recommend you download Firefox.

Q: Did you use Actionscript 2 for this project? If so what advantages did you find over AS 1?
Yes. AS2 have less errors, less debugging time and promotes best practices and commonly used design patterns. I found it much easier to organize my code with AS2.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit more about the server side technology you're using?
Right now I am using SQL Database, ASP, some ASP components and SmartFoxServer Basic.

Q: Do you use an external editor for Actionscript? Which one would you recommend?
No. I think the Actionscript editor inside Flash is already a great editor. Things like click on a command and click on help to have a quick look on the usage and samples, be able to quick review your code for errors and organize your code and divide them by frames work great on Flash since MX version.

Q: What were the main difficulties you had to overcome in developing Ederon?
I think my main difficulty was "When is the time to invest money?" Because by the time you start spending money on something like this, you have to have a well formulated business plan. Things like hiring artists or get a dedicated server may be not much for a business, but when you work on a solo project, any quarter that come out of your pocket is something to be concerned for.

Q: How do you setup your timeline? Do you put your code all in one frame? Any advices?
Like Macromedia itself say so to all AS programmers: 'Do as much as you can to incorporate all your code in a single frame'. In my case I separeted my code in 5 main frames: load,game funcs,conn funcs,lobby and core. The reason I separated is that after I got in a certain point in my code that had more then 10.000 lines, it was time to split the code in categories mostly for debugging. When you find what I call 'designers with actionscript' tutorials, skip it at all cost. They love adding functions directly into the objects, and objects inside objects, and belive me: if you are intending to have 1000 lines of code or more, don't turn your life into nightmares with these tutorials.

Q: How did you manage game assets? Did you externalize them? If so, how?
Besides the external pictures that load dynamically when you click on a card, there are no assets on the application. I tried to make the game as compact as I could.

Q: Developing a multiplayer game is quite a long work. What would you suggest to developers willing to create their first mp game?
Use external pre-made platforms. Don't hit yourself in the head trying to figure out how to work with XML and Java. I have spent almost 2 years programming this game. I don't want to spend another year programming a multiplayer platform. And of all the platforms I found online, SmartfoxServer and gotoandplay.it were the most comprehensive step-by-step way of doing this.

Q: It seems that web-based multiplayer games are becoming more popular. What do you foresee in the next future?
I get worried with banalization. I have a game website in Brazil where I teach people how to make games with really easy tools that dont require them to know any kind of programming language. Result? 9 out of 10 games that come to the website are a complete waste. I think that if we keep making easy to use applications, soon we are going to have as much multiplayer garbage as we do with regular flash games.

Q: What are the future plans for Ederon?
More cards, more options. Ederon is a game that is always in constant development. Still to come to the game is the 'buddy list' system, customizable game setup, tournaments, clans and of course, trading cards.

Q: Macromedia has recently announced some great news about the future of Flash, namely the flash player 8.5 and Actionscript 3.0 What do you expect from these new updates? Do you find them interesting for game development?
Im never a big fan of changes from Macromedia. Working all these time with all their tools, we get tired of having to migrate and adaptate our knowladge to the new releases every 6 months with not much upgrates. But I think this time Macromedia is finally taking a huge step foward with the new AS3. ECMAScript for XML, Delegation and the Display List API definally is going to make our lifes easier.