Hi,
Yes, HearStone is not a 100% PlayMaker project, but I will say that indeed you can achieve a lot, and I'll simply explain the likely process you are going to get involved in.
You'll start with no knowledge of Scripting, and you'll be working your way into building everything with PlayMaker. After a while, you'll gain more and more understanding of the inherent logic of programming, because, as it may not seem, but by using PlayMaker, you are learning some important development principle, which means that after a while, looking at a script will make sense, and you'll be able to actually understand. Then will come a day, where you'll be actually up to write your first custom action, it will be simple, and we'll help you along the way to understand what you are doing, and learn.
Then, you'll likely reach a point of no return where you'll embrace PlayMaker and scripting together and make the most out of both ways of programming.
the key to your journey, is not to want to do your ultimate game first, you'll need to learn, and that means learning via tutorials and samples that may not seem to fit exactly what you want to achieve. PLEASE do them anyway, absorb knowledge and learn as much as you can on as much various topics as possible. You'll be able to cross reference patterns and various technics very quickly and extrapolate on a sample or tutorial you did, and apply it to your specific needs. Then it will be time for you to tackle your ultimate project. Meanwhile, you need to cut it down into smaller pieces and learn them separatly.
As for data management. I would consider using dataMaker, which lets you work with xml, and that could be a good start, and a viable alternative to a proper database.
https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/?W1133Mind you, there may be no scripting involved, DataMaker takes time to get acquainted, so here again, you need to be aware of the learning curve, and not give, ask us questions, over and over until you understand it properly.
Bye,
Jean
