Forge Android App: 11-13-2016 Alpha 1.5.58.002

[friarsol]

Just downloaded the latest version. The card generator looks awesome but unfortunately it flipped out on me. Distorting the whole battlefield at one point with the following error.

I was playing in quest mode with two pets very early in in the game. I hadn't even played my third land yet. I believe it was the computer's turn.

Edit: I was on my phone on the bus so I couldn't add as much info as I liked. I believe the AI had just cast a spell (he was playing the RG Rampage Quest deck) and tapped a Forbidden Orchard to cast whatever spell he was in the middle of casting. It's possible that the Orchard was in the middle of resolving when everything went crazy (It reminded me of when playing an old cartridge based video game (NES) and someone bumping into the console.

[krishkrush]

Hm concerning the fallback card image...
I know this is a crazy idea which would certainly require much work and is not that relevant for the android version, BUT:

Wouldn't these fallback cards make it possible to support different language cards? I already asked this some time ago in the main App threads. But it seemed it wasn't possible at that time. However, with those fallback cards, wouldn't it be possible to use crops together with a foreign language database to have improvised foreign language cards? Sorry if I'm talking bullshit, I don't have a clue how this piece of software actually works (I really really love it though!). I'm just daydeaming about finally making it possible for my girlfriend to enjoy this masterpiece that forge is.

Anyway, your doing awesome work drdev, my tablet is busy calculating magic duels all the time since you released this wonderful app

[drdev]

Hm concerning the fallback card image...
I know this is a crazy idea which would certainly require much work and is not that relevant for the android version, BUT:

Wouldn't these fallback cards make it possible to support different language cards? I already asked this some time ago in the main App threads. But it seemed it wasn't possible at that time. However, with those fallback cards, wouldn't it be possible to use crops together with a foreign language database to have improvised foreign language cards? Sorry if I'm talking bullshit, I don't have a clue how this piece of software actually works (I really really love it though!). I'm just daydeaming about finally making it possible for my girlfriend to enjoy this masterpiece that forge is.

Anyway, your doing awesome work drdev, my tablet is busy calculating magic duels all the time since you released this wonderful app

In order to support displaying cards in other languages, I would need access to resource files containing names, types, and oracle text for all cards using each such language. If that was available to me, I could then generate the card image using that instead of the English name, type, and text. Also, if the language uses non-English characters, I would also need a couple special font files defining the characters in that language. Note that translating the rest of the app would require similar resource files for all other text in the game to be created. That would be a very large project, but it's not impossible.

If anyone feels up to the task of generating such files or knows of a resource out there for downloading that information, let me know and I'll see what I can do. The process is called Internationalization (I18N for short) for those interested in reading up on it.

I guess that does bring up another good question. Should we perhaps provide an additional option to download just the clipped card art for each card instead of full card scans? We could then use those in place of the Forge icon but otherwise generate the rest of the card image. This would allow people to do a smaller download and require less disk space on their device. Obviously we'd still continue to support full card scans regardless.

[krishkrush]

Thanks for your reply. I already guessed it would be a huge load of work. I really would like to help and contribute but i sadly don't have any programming skills. http://virtualplaytable.com/ uses a similar method as far as i know. I don't know if this could be of any help to you. (I could translate english text to german though, but i guess that's not enough?)
Concerning the crops: I personally don't care as I prefer the full art if possible. But i guess a lot of people don't have that much memory space on their devices. Maybe it would also speed up the app?

[drdev]

Thanks for your reply. I already guessed it would be a huge load of work. I really would like to help and contribute but i sadly don't have any programming skills. http://virtualplaytable.com/ uses a similar method as far as i know. I don't know if this could be of any help to you. (I could translate english text to german though, but i guess that's not enough?)
Concerning the crops: I personally don't care as I prefer the full art if possible. But i guess a lot of people don't have that much memory space on their devices. Maybe it would also speed up the app?

Programming skills aren't required to help out here. I simply need somebody to create translated copies of all the files in res/cardsfolder for any additional languages we'd want to support. I could then support applying any such files on top of the default English ones to change up the language.

Obviously, with there being over 13,000 such files, this is not a small task, but if you wanted to try translating even just a few sets worth of card files to German, that would certainly be a start. I can always make it so the language packs on installed on top of the English files, so that any cards that haven't yet been translated will just display in English.

Note that the only thing that should be translated is the ability descriptions and oracle text. If you translated anything else it will likely break our card parsing logic.

EDIT: Actually, Gatherer appears to have other languages available for many cards. Could we maybe just enhance the script that updates oracle texts for our script files to also download names, types, and oracle texts in other languages and save them somewhere that we can easily map to them? That would be a lot less work than somebody having to manually translate 13,000+ cards to multiple languages.

See http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?printed=true&multiverseid=373112 for an example of what I'm referring to.

[krishkrush]

I would be really happy if i could help. Yes it would be much work, which would take quite some time for one person alone. But i would certainly start right now if this is the only way. So, should i rather wait some time if someone finds an easier way? I wouldn't be too happy if i spent some weeks on this and that it is all futile...

Anyway just in case, i just opened a file: res/cardsfolder/a/a_display_of_my_dark_power.txt (do i have to unpack everything to edit it?) and it looks like this.

| Open

Name:A Display of My Dark Power
ManaCost:no cost
Types:Scheme
T:Mode$ SetInMotion | ValidCard$ Card.Self | Execute$ DarkEffect | TriggerZones$ Command | TriggerDescription$ When you set this scheme in motion, until your next turn, whenever a player taps a land for mana, that player adds one mana to his or her mana pool of any type that land produced.
SVar:DarkEffect:AB$ Effect | Cost$ 0 | Name$ Dark Power Scheme | Duration$ UntilYourNextTurn | Triggers$ DarkPower | SVars$ DarkMana
SVar:DarkPower:Mode$ TapsForMana | ValidCard$ Land | Execute$ DarkMana | TriggerZones$ Command | Static$ True | TriggerDescription$ Whenever a player taps a land for mana, that player adds one mana to his or her mana pool of any type that land produced.
SVar:DarkMana:AB$ ManaReflected | Cost$ 0 | ColorOrType$ Type | Valid$ Defined.Triggered | ReflectProperty$ Produced | Defined$ TriggeredPlayer
SVar:Picture:http://www.cardforge.org/fpics/lq_schemes/a_display_of_my_dark_power.jpg
Oracle:When you set this scheme in motion, until your next turn, whenever a player taps a land for mana, that player adds one mana to his or her mana pool of any type that land produced.

Could you please somehow mark exactly which parts i would have to translate?

On the other matter, the app virtual playtable which i linked above already seems to have complete foreign language databases which as i recall is taken from gatherer (but i don't know how exactly), i remember the author used some kind of application to extract those files. Virtual Playtable is written in java though, so i can't find those databases (because i am a programming noob )

Thank you again for even considering this, i know you have much more urgent tasks to do.

Edit: Yes most cards on gatherer are already available in many foreign languages, only the really old editions aren't.

[krishkrush]

Another thing: aside from if the cards need to be manually translated or not, Forge itself has to. I would do this but as i said, someone would have to show me exactly where and what parts i have to translate as for me all those files are like the matrix code if you know what i mean. Me doing this by myself would certainly lead to many many bugs in the code. One plain text file with english => german format would of course be easiest for me but creating that alone would be a lot of work i guess.

[friarsol]

Forge used to have someone who was in charge of localization, but after a few months they left and noone else was interested in working on it. The resources that we parse Oracle text from doesn't even have other languages, so it's certainly a fair amount of work, since we'd need to find a new source that has other languages, and then figure out a way to streamline that process. This certainly should be spawned off into it's own topic (can someone do that) for further discussion.

[krishkrush]

A few months? Are you talking of localizing forge or the cards? Maybe i underestimate this but translating forge itself wouldn't be nowhere near the workload of translating all the cards, would it? Which languages were (partially) localized at that time? Do you still have those files? Or are they outdated, so i would have to start all over?

Edit: I just remembered something I did quite some time ago. I tried putting german card scans instead of the english ones into the cards folder. Of course the detail view was still in english but the cards themselfes were in german (obviously). Only problem with that was that many sets aren't scanlated in german, so i gave up on that. This would have been the easier way, so that only forge itself needed to be translated. I'm sure this problem is the same in all the other languages except english. That's the reason why i hoped these fallback cards could be the solution.

[friarsol]

A few months? Are you talking of localizing forge or the cards? Maybe i underestimate this but translating forge itself wouldn't be nowhere near the workload of translating all the cards, would it? Which languages were (partially) localized at that time? Do you still have those files? Or are they outdated, so i would have to start all over?

Localization of Forge itself. This was several years ago. A few months after they left the localizations were quickly outdated, and removed about a year after that. The key thing is that someone needs to be in charge of it, and if noone is, it's just going to be sloppy and half-assed and cause grief from people who want it (since it doesn't work right), and be just another complication to Forge's codebase for developers.

[KrazyTheFox]

Created a topic for localization here: http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=14937

[krishkrush]

I understand that. Well, i'm sure you heard this before but i would really like to do this. But as i said before, i would need help with that at least in the beginning as i don't know anything about all that. Also i cannot work at this at high speed as i have a full time job and three kids. But i would certainly and steadily work at this if someone helps me doing this. I'm using forge for some years now and I don't see me stopping this any time soon And as I already wrote I have a strong personal interest in making this happen!

So, again, i know you all have much to do yourselfes and it doesn't have to happen right now. If anyone remembers this topic in the future and wants to help me get this thing rolling, just pm me.

[Siorghlas]

I have two errors to notify.

- First, in the update process (don't know if all versions, or some versions, if it's still in the last version or not) the paths to the real SD external storage in my Samsung ('extSdCard') were reset and thus all my decks and images weren't found until I filled in the correct paths again.

Related to the user data: I have literally thousands of decks in the PC version. When copying them to the phone, Forge seemed to reprocess all of them at the following start, taking a looooooooooooong time (didn't measure but maybe half an hour), and erasing a couple of thousand decks in the process. Afterwards, the loading process was "shorter" but still several minutes at the least, so I had to just leave a couple hundred decks in the mobile Forge and remove the rest to have the app start reasonably quick. Why is this so? This doesn't happen in the PC version. Any way to speed this up so I can add more decks back?

- Second, playing a constructed match between two devotion decks, the screen got all corrupted when the AI played a Master of Waves. The screen capture is attached. It's strange that the token is shown without image, as the elemental token is there in the 'cache/pics/tokens' folder. The Forge app seemed to still run because music went on and the upper screen, where the menu is, showed changes when touching, although still corrupted.

Anyway, the progress with the app is incredible and congratulations for it.

[drdev]

I just released 1.5.23.007, which should fix the errors (and subsequent screen flipping out) when attempting to generate fallback card images for certain tokens. friarsol, Siorghlas, thank you for reporting the issue so I could get it fixed quickly.

This release also includes updates to the quest pets so their generated images include oracle text if you haven't downloaded the card images.

Siorghlas, as to your other issue with loading decks, I'm guessing that's just a difference in processor speed between your PC and phone, as both use the same code for parsing the decks. I can try to optimize things some, but for now I'd recommend only keeping some of your decks on your phone at one time. As to it erasing your custom paths, let me know if you encounter that again after taking this latest update.

Thanks.
-Dan

[drdev]

I just released 1.5.23.008, which should hopefully prevent the screen ever spazzing out like that again if an error occurs during rendering. Instead, you'll be taken to the new and improved Bug Report screen (as opposed to dialog) with bigger buttons and readable text. I've also fixed it so copying to the clipboard actually works when pressing Report on an Android device.

If that's not enough to get excited about, I should note that getting clipboard support working also means copying decklists using the "Copy to Clipboard" button will now work when viewing decks and "Copy Log" will now work from the WinLose screen after completing games. Now you can share your decks or awesome game logs on the forums right from your phone.

Here's what the new Bug Report screen looks like just so you won't be caught too off guard if you see it. As mentioned before, please only report UI bugs to this thread. Game, card, and ai bugs are shared between the desktop and mobile games and should be reported to the Forge Beta thread instead.

Thanks.
-Dan