Writing New Cards

[Chris H.]

I have been busy with research and have found over 50 cards that I believe can be added without any additional coding.

Deck Editor tells me I now have:

Total - 999, Creatures - 764 ...

[Chris H.]

I found a new wall which can block creatures with shadow. The "Wall of Diffusion" is similar to the "AEtherflame Wall."

We give these two walls the shadow ability so they can block creatures with shadow. These walls do not have shadow and can not be currently animated and given the ability to attack. It is something of a hack but it works.

I will add "Wall of Diffusion" and not worry about version 1 of forge. Forge version 2 may want to address this type of situation.

[mtgrares]

New cards are always good. Yes version 1 has a ton of hacks, version 2 will have none. Well none to begin with, ha.

Cards.txt doesn't do any error checking, the file is read when the program starts. To see the errors you will have to run the jar file directly, usually you can just click on it, or send the broken cards.txt file to me and I'll try to fix it. (mtgrares yahoo com)

Just to tell you, Druid of the Anima would look like this. You may already know this by looking at Birds of Paradise, but it looks wierd the first time you see it.

Druid of the Anima
1 G
Creature Elf Druid
tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

[Chris H.]

Just to tell you, Druid of the Anima would look like this. You may already know this by looking at Birds of Paradise, but it looks wierd the first time you see it.

Druid of the Anima
1 G
Creature Elf Druid
tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

Yes, I have spent a lot of time looking at the cards.txt file. The Druid of the Anima card turns out to look like this:


Druid of the Anima
1 G
Creature Elf Druid
no text
1/1
tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W


I currently have 64 new cards added, including 6 artifact lands. The artifact lands work as I expected them to. Awesome. At some point I will be finished and I will send you by email the updated files.


Ancient Den
no cost
Artifact Land
(Ancient Den isn't a spell.)
tap: add W

Great Furnace
no cost
Artifact Land
(Great Furnace isn't a spell.)
tap: add R

Seat of the Synod
no cost
Artifact Land
(Seat of the Synod isn't a spell.)
tap: add U

Tree of Tales
no cost
Artifact Land
(Tree of Tales isn't a spell.)
tap: add G

Vault of Whispers
no cost
Artifact Land
(Vault of Whispers isn't a spell.)
tap: add B

Darksteel Citadel
no cost
Artifact Land
("Destroy" effects and lethal damage don't destroy it.)
tap: add 1
Indestructible

[Incantus]

Druid of the Anima
1 G
Creature Elf Druid
tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

Technically, this is incorrect. Druid of the Anima only has one ability and you choose which mana to generate on resolution. Since mana abilities don't go on the stack, it doesn't matter, but it would matter for Puppeteer, for example (since your decision might change based on your opponent's response).

[GandoTheBard]

Ya know I added all the cards you mentioned including the druid about a month ago...the list is on one of these topics. Its funny to me that this is reccuring.

[frwololo]

Druid of the Anima
1 G
Creature Elf Druid
tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

Technically, this is incorrect. Druid of the Anima only has one ability and you choose which mana to generate on resolution. Since mana abilities don't go on the stack, it doesn't matter, but it would matter for Puppeteer, for example (since your decision might change based on your opponent's response).

As you said, because mana abilities don't go on the stack, I'm pretty sure

tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

is equivalent to

tap: add R,G, or W

unless there are cards that start counting the number of abilities associated to a given card (which I doubt ?)

[Chris H.]

I searched through a data base and found enough material for 76 new cards. I went through the creatures, artifacts and lands data base lists. The 76 new cards were found in these three lists.

I did not look at the enchantments, instants, sorceries, planeswalker or tribal data base lists. I felt that it would be unlikely that I would find cards in these five lists that would make use of the "Words that Cards.txt recognizes."

I'm releasing these 76 cards at this time for you to play-test. You will notice that several of the cards display a note which states that a given ability of that card is not implemented.

If possible, I would like to go through the cards.txt file and add a similar note to the several cards that also have missing abilities. This is not important for the old-timers, but this might help any new-comers to this game.

An Example:

Spectral Searchlight
3
Artifact
(NOTE: "Tap Choose a player. That player adds one mana of any color he or she chooses to his or her mana pool." not implemented.)
tap: add B
tap: add G
tap: add R
tap: add U
tap: add W

Once I am finished, I will email Rares a completed set of files for him to include in the next version of forge version 1. It is not necessary at this time for Rares to include these two files. I need more time to finish editing the cards.txt, common.txt, uncommon.txt and rare.txt files.

You will find a zip file attached to the end of this message which contains updated cards.txt and card-pictures.txt files.

A list of the new cards that were added:

Ancient Den
Ardent Militia
Armored Griffin
Belbe's Percher
Blistering Barrier
Bloodstone Cameo
Border Patrol
Bull Cerodon
Cloud Djinn
Cloud Dragon
Cloud Elemental
Cloud Pirates
Cloud Spirit
Cloud Sprite
Copper Myr
Crimson Kobolds
Crookshank Kobolds
Cylian Elf
Dakmor Bat
Darksteel Citadel
Darksteel Ingot
Drake-Skull Cameo
Dreg Reaver
Druid of the Anima
Goblin Deathraiders
Gold Myr
Great Furnace
Hand of Honor
Hellkite Overlord
Hoverguard Observer
Incurable Ogre
Iron Myr
Jhessian Infiltrator
Jhessian Lookout
Jhovall Queen
Jungle Weaver
Keen-Eyed Archers
Kobolds of Kher Keep
Leaden Myr
Manakin
Mountain Bandit
Obelisk of Bant
Obelisk of Esper
Obelisk of Grixis
Obelisk of Jund
Obelisk of Naya
Ogre Berserker
Raging Cougar
Renegade Troops
Ridge Rannet
Rip-Clan Crasher
Rishadan Airship
Royal Falcon
Sea Eagle
Seashell Cameo
Seat of the Synod
Silver Myr
Spectral Searchlight
Standing Troops
Steward of Valeron
Stratozeppelid
Stronghold Zeppelin
Tigereye Cameo
Tower Gargoyle
Tree of Tales
Troll-Horn Cameo
Vault of Whispers
Viashivan Dragon
Wall of Diffusion
Wall of Earth
Wall of Granite
Wall of Heat
Wall of Stone
Windseeker Centaur
Woolly Thoctar
Yoked Plowbeast

[Incantus]

As you said, because mana abilities don't go on the stack, I'm pretty sure

tap: add R
tap: add G
tap: add W

is equivalent to

tap: add R,G, or W

unless there are cards that start counting the number of abilities associated to a given card (which I doubt ?)

For mana abilities, that's true (I can only think of one card that cares if other cards have abilities - Muraganda Petroglyphs, but in this case it only cares if the card has any abilities.). But you might be tempted to implement the puppeteer as:

tap: tap target creature
tap: untap target creature

which would clearly be wrong.

[GandoTheBard]

Chris while you did find some cards we haven't listed before you also repeated alot of what we did already...for instance the darksteels and obelisks plus all the shards of alara vanilla cards.

[Chris H.]

Chris while you did find some cards we haven't listed before you also repeated alot of what we did already...for instance the darksteels and obelisks plus all the shards of alara vanilla cards.

I think that when I recently signed up for my account that a cookie was created that marked all of the older messages as read. I must have missed the earlier work to which you are referring.

None the less, the cards in question were not included in the recent builds of this game. At some point in the near future my work will end. I hope to see Rares including this work in a future version.

New comers will then have all of the cards (I hope) and will not have to find the older messages which cover this material.

[mtgrares]

Yes I'll try to add these new cards, thanks.

All mana abilities in MTG Forge version 1 are just Strings. The PayManaCost class reads Card.getKeywords() which holds the mana Strings and intereprets "tap: add G" as a mana ability.

In version 2 mana ability will be "upgraded" to full fledged abilities, I'll use SpellAbility, and the resolve() will just add mana to the mana pool.

[mtgrares]

About the new cards, can someone update the file "card-pictures.txt" with the new card pictures? I hate having to cut-and-paste 70 times from Gatherer.

[Chris H.]

About the new cards, can someone update the file "card-pictures.txt" with the new card pictures? I hate having to cut-and-paste 70 times from Gatherer.

The "New_Cards.zip" file contains a complete "card-pictures.txt" and "cards.txt" files. Just move these two files to your forge folder and you will have all 1000+ cards. There is no need to cut-and-paste anything.

Trust me.

Download, unzip, move both files to your forge folder, tell forge to download the new pics and enjoy.

I wanted to make this as simple as I could for the new comers.



I found several new lands that I'm testing that has not yet been added to the files mentioned above. Once I am finished I will email you full, complete replacement files for:

cards.txt
card-pictures.txt
common.txt
uncommon.txt
rare.txt


I'm moving forward with this as quickly as I can. My desire to design decks, post messages and play mtg-forge is keeping me happy and busy.

[mtgrares]

Oops, I forgot to check the zip, thanks for updating card-pictures.txt