Community Wad

[Splinterverse]

Thanks Xander. I'll try the Metallic Mimic fix today once the new CW is available.

[tmxk2012917]

Card (FOUL_ORCHARD_CW_410043) in wad DATA_DLC_COMMUNITY_CORE has a FILENAME tag that does not match which will cause problems in-game: FOUL_ORCHARD_MM_CW_410043

just downloaded the latest CW.

Besides, I think Metallic Mimic works now. Its type could be Servo.

Bug Report:

Lifecraft Bestiary: When I cast a creature spell, a green mana was paid automatically. Besides, I could draw a card even though I did not have enough mana to pay for it.

Winding Constrictor: When I spent a energy counter via Aether Hub, I got two extra energy counters instead. There were 3 Winding Constrictor on my battleground. WIthout Winding Constrictor, the energy system worked well.

[Splinterverse]

Card (FOUL_ORCHARD_CW_410043) in wad DATA_DLC_COMMUNITY_CORE has a FILENAME tag that does not match which will cause problems in-game: FOUL_ORCHARD_MM_CW_410043

This has been fixed. It will appear in next CW update.

Besides, I think Metallic Mimic works now. Its type could be Servo.

Awesome! Thanks for testing it.

Lifecraft Bestiary: When I cast a creature spell, a green mana was paid automatically. Besides, I could draw a card even though I did not have enough mana to pay for it.

This has been fixed. A note though, if you have "Always use optional abilities" checked in your settings, many of the "may" abilities will automatically happen rather than giving you a choice. That wasn't the problem here, but just wanted to mention it for awareness.

Winding Constrictor: When I spent a energy counter via Aether Hub, I got two extra energy counters instead. There were 3 Winding Constrictor on my battleground. WIthout Winding Constrictor, the energy system worked well.

I think I found the problem. The trigger wasn't checking for an amount greater than 0, so it was reacting whether the amount was negative or positive. I have fixed it and uploaded. If you can, please test when the CW has been updated.

Thanks for your ongoing support.

[tmxk2012917]

Thanks for all the work you do.

[Xander9009]

Thanks for all the work you do.

Keep in mind you can hit the 'thanks' button on a post. It'll show up on the user's info on the right of their posts.

[Splinterverse]

I've been thinking about lands and I have a few thoughts/questions.

I play almost exclusively against AI opponents. The non-MM lands are an improvement in that the AI can use them, but I'm finding a problem, particularly in two-color decks. Since the cards always list the mana in color wheel order, any dual lands in a deck are basically all going to be the first color for the AI player. For example, if a Red-White deck has 4 copies of Plateau and 4 copies of Sacred Foundry, that is really 8 mountains to the AI player since the AI player doesn't ever change the default mana choice on the non-MM cards. (With the MM cards, it does nothing, so it's still an improvement to work with non-MM.)

Xander, I know you are working on some improvements to lands. Will your changes make any improvements in this area?

Out of curiosity, I did try adding two mana ability blocks to a test card to see what it would do. Interestingly, both worked, but it only tapped for the lowest one in the file. The higher one became an infinite source of that color because it would never tap. Unfortunately, I don't believe we can trigger off of mana ability blocks, so I don't know of any way we could force it to tap. If we could, that would be great because essentially the card could be automatically tapped for any color of mana it included. (I doubt there is a way to do this, just mentioning on the 0.001% chance.)

So depending on Xander's answer to the question above, a couple of other thoughts . . .

1.) We could make AI friendly versions of some dual lands that reverse the order of the two mana symbols. When included in a deck, the human player wouldn't notice anything different (other than card text), but the AI player would have 4 plains and 4 mountains in the above cited example. This doesn't work for every deck and would have to be handled carefully. As you may have read, I've been making "AI friendly" versions of many of the decks in the CW. To do that with the current cards we have, I've had to adjust the default basic land counts in some decks. I hate to do this because it could throw off the balance, but as I said, I'm almost exclusively playing against AI, so it is essential. Most of the decks in the CW contain MM lands, so I have to update them any way.

2.) If there aren't any other ways to make the lands better for AI, could we add some code to the non-MM lands that (1) checks to see if the controller is AI (2) if the controller is AI, it checks the chroma count of the hand and then (3) adjusts the default mana type based on chroma count. There are some issues with this approach: (a) it doesn't account for mana needs on the battlefield in terms of activated abilities and (b) it doesn't account for similar cards on the battlefield doing the same thing (in other words, all copies of Sacred Foundry would make themselves default to the same color). An alternative might be to base it on the amount of basic lands in play, but even that wouldn't be perfect.

I'd love to find some sort of solution. I hesitate to add two-color decks to the game now because it has been an issue. Three-color is an improvement because the color wheel situation is less of a problem (you usually end up with one dual land with each color as a default). Four-color and five-color are mostly impossible for the AI to play well because they really depend on a player's ability to switch lands' mana color to meet the needs.

[tmxk2012917]

Bug report:

Ugin's Insight: After scyning cards, I could not draw 3 cards.

[Xander9009]

I've been thinking about lands and I have a few thoughts/questions.

I play almost exclusively against AI opponents. The non-MM lands are an improvement in that the AI can use them, but I'm finding a problem, particularly in two-color decks. Since the cards always list the mana in color wheel order, any dual lands in a deck are basically all going to be the first color for the AI player. For example, if a Red-White deck has 4 copies of Plateau and 4 copies of Sacred Foundry, that is really 8 mountains to the AI player since the AI player doesn't ever change the default mana choice on the non-MM cards. (With the MM cards, it does nothing, so it's still an improvement to work with non-MM.)

Xander, I know you are working on some improvements to lands. Will your changes make any improvements in this area?

Out of curiosity, I did try adding two mana ability blocks to a test card to see what it would do. Interestingly, both worked, but it only tapped for the lowest one in the file. The higher one became an infinite source of that color because it would never tap. Unfortunately, I don't believe we can trigger off of mana ability blocks, so I don't know of any way we could force it to tap. If we could, that would be great because essentially the card could be automatically tapped for any color of mana it included. (I doubt there is a way to do this, just mentioning on the 0.001% chance.)

So depending on Xander's answer to the question above, a couple of other thoughts . . .

1.) We could make AI friendly versions of some dual lands that reverse the order of the two mana symbols. When included in a deck, the human player wouldn't notice anything different (other than card text), but the AI player would have 4 plains and 4 mountains in the above cited example. This doesn't work for every deck and would have to be handled carefully. As you may have read, I've been making "AI friendly" versions of many of the decks in the CW. To do that with the current cards we have, I've had to adjust the default basic land counts in some decks. I hate to do this because it could throw off the balance, but as I said, I'm almost exclusively playing against AI, so it is essential. Most of the decks in the CW contain MM lands, so I have to update them any way.

2.) If there aren't any other ways to make the lands better for AI, could we add some code to the non-MM lands that (1) checks to see if the controller is AI (2) if the controller is AI, it checks the chroma count of the hand and then (3) adjusts the default mana type based on chroma count. There are some issues with this approach: (a) it doesn't account for mana needs on the battlefield in terms of activated abilities and (b) it doesn't account for similar cards on the battlefield doing the same thing (in other words, all copies of Sacred Foundry would make themselves default to the same color). An alternative might be to base it on the amount of basic lands in play, but even that wouldn't be perfect.

I'd love to find some sort of solution. I hesitate to add two-color decks to the game now because it has been an issue. Three-color is an improvement because the color wheel situation is less of a problem (you usually end up with one dual land with each color as a default). Four-color and five-color are mostly impossible for the AI to play well because they really depend on a player's ability to switch lands' mana color to meet the needs.

You'r eright that there's no way to trigger off of mana ability blocks. The issues with adding two mana abilities to a card are what prompted Riiak to make the manual mana abilities.

However, yes, my implementation does correct this behavior for the AI. As long as the card is untapped and under an AI's control, it will switch to a random color the land can produce in the event of several triggers. One of those is a phase change, and another is a spell or ability resolving. The 'random' idea came from someone else. I don't remember who off hand, I'd have to check. But they tried it out and it worked rather well, so I included it in my version of lands. It does in fact work really well. It's not perfect, but it allows AIs to play the lands relatively well.

That said, I doubt I'm going to get around to doing those anytime soon. I've been busy doing other things with other games (I worked on DotP for almost 3 years straight; I need a break lol). I certainly don't plan to disappear, but if I've seemed a bit less active than normal, that's why. That said, the mechanics are all working. There are working examples for several different dual lands. There aren't any tri-lands, yet, because the functions for those aren't actually finished. But the dual lands are good to go, I think. At this point, it's just a matter of copying the code to other lands. Here's a link to the ones I've done so far. Note that it includes Mardu Banner, but it's probably not working. It also has an availability block that's rather repetitive since it needs to add the currently produced color to the ability's normal cost IF there even is a currently produced color. That should really be handled by a function to avoid the repetition.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Code: Select all

CW_Mana_AddColor = function(sCost, iColor)
    asSymbols = {"{W}", "{U}", "{B}", "{R}", "{G}"}
    asSymbols[0] = "{1}" -- 0 should be colorless, but it can't be put into the initialization because LUA tables' first element is 1, not 0.
    return sCost..asSymbols[iColor]
end

[tmxk2012917]

Bug report:

Dack's Duplicate : When it entered the battleground, it could not attack until my next turn though "Haste" and "Dethrone" could be seen on that card.

[addict insane]

Hello, I'm sorry if these bugs have already been addressed, but I haven't been here in a while.

Toolcraft Exemplar: Doesn't get first strike when 3 or more artifacts are controlled.

Kozilek, the great distortion: Impossible to cast using aetherworks marvel. May be due to the restriction with colorless mana.

Also, I can't cast lands with Aetherworks Marvel, though I'm not sure if this is an Paper MTG mechanic as well or a bug per se.

[Splinterverse]

Hello, I'm sorry if these bugs have already been addressed, but I haven't been here in a while.

Toolcraft Exemplar: Doesn't get first strike when 3 or more artifacts are controlled.

Kozilek, the great distortion: Impossible to cast using aetherworks marvel. May be due to the restriction with colorless mana.

Also, I can't cast lands with Aetherworks Marvel, though I'm not sure if this is an Paper MTG mechanic as well or a bug per se.

I have fixed Toolcraft Exemplar and uploaded it. It should appear in the next CW update (which is usually daily at night).

I'm not sure about Kozilek, Xander9009 or someone more experienced with the colorless mana component will probably need to take a look at that. I don't really know how the mana from Wastes etc. works (unless it works the same as ). I think it probably does have to do with the specific colorless mana.

As for Aetherworks Marvel, lands are not cast, but rather "played," so it won't work for those.

Thanks for reporting these bugs. It helps make the CW the best it can be.

[Splinterverse]

I've begun the process to update dual lands with Xander's code. I'm also creating non-MM versions for mono lands. I am testing, but please let me know if you see anything not working properly with lands.

Also, in general, when making decks that you upload to the CW or want the AI to play, opt for the non-MM versions in the Deck Builder where possible.

[addict insane]

Also

Gavony Township: Even though I have the Manual Mana version, it taps by itself paying for an extra mana cost of everything I play. Say, a stoneforge mystic should need to lands, but Gavony Township taps itself as a third land paying for mana. When you get the choice to choose how to pay for spells, I press control to change how I pay for the spell but Gavony Township is always set to pay for an extra "ghost" mana if you wanna call it that.

It seems not to happen with all spells, but I think you can try Intangible Virtue with it, it's currently giving me the bug of costing three mana with the gavony.

[Xander9009]

Kozilek, the Great Distortion's mana code works like this: You must have access to in order to cast him. That's basically it. Its cost is simply , but it has an availability block which prevents it from being cast unless the player actually has two colorless mana. I hadn't considered the scenario of casting without paying the mana cost, but in order to fix it, we'd need to modify the function it uses to also return true if it's being cast for free, not only true in the case of having colorless mana. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that.

The only solution I can think of would be to make all cards that cast cards for free increment a variable while doing so, and decrement it when they're done. Then cards that have waste mana costs can return true if they have access to the right mana or if the variable is greater than 0.

I'll think on this and see if I can come up with something a bit more robust before implementing it.

[Splinterverse]

Also

Gavony Township: Even though I have the Manual Mana version, it taps by itself paying for an extra mana cost of everything I play. Say, a stoneforge mystic should need to lands, but Gavony Township taps itself as a third land paying for mana. When you get the choice to choose how to pay for spells, I press control to change how I pay for the spell but Gavony Township is always set to pay for an extra "ghost" mana if you wanna call it that.

It seems not to happen with all spells, but I think you can try Intangible Virtue with it, it's currently giving me the bug of costing three mana with the gavony.

I believe I have fixed the MM version of Gavony Township. I haven't tested it, so please do if you have time. I have uploaded it so it should appear in the next CW update.

Thanks for reporting this.