Card Detail Panel Overhaul

[drdev]

r24942: I noticed a UI issue with the deck viewer: the deck viewer changes its size when you look at different cards, so it becomes bigger and smaller all the time, which is quite irritating. I think this is caused by the card detail box shrinking and enlarging depending on the length of the card name (as far as I could tell). A good way to reproduce: load some Mono-Blue Devotion deck, such as the one by Pierre Dagen from Pro Tour Theros, for viewing in the deck viewer (e.g. double-click it in the Constructed deck list). Look at Master of Waves and then at Thassa, God of the Sea.

- Agetian

I just committed a fix in r24951 that fixes the deck viewer issue by enforcing a max-width on labels in the CardDetailPanel.

I also consolidated the ID, P/T, and Set into a single line to save vertical space and introduced a horizontal line between that line and the card text that matches the outer border color. How's this look?

[Agetian]

@ drdev: Looks very good, I like it! Compact and informative.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

I like the Consolidated CardDetailPanel, but it leads me to two questions:

1) What about Planeswalker loyalty? Related, what about Planeswalkers that are also creatures? (Gideon Jura)
2) Can you think of a simple way to get card color dots into the CDP? It's something that has been a fairly common feature request, and as many people will point out when a card is a single color the card border is good enough, but when a card is multi-colored it's impossible to tell which actually colors they are. This is especially an issue when you already have a multi-colored card but there's also a Painter's Servant in play.

[Marek14]

I like the Consolidated CardDetailPanel, but it leads me to two questions:

1) What about Planeswalker loyalty? Related, what about Planeswalkers that are also creatures? (Gideon Jura)
2) Can you think of a simple way to get card color dots into the CDP? It's something that has been a fairly common feature request, and as many people will point out when a card is a single color the card border is good enough, but when a card is multi-colored it's impossible to tell which actually colors they are. This is especially an issue when you already have a multi-colored card but there's also a Painter's Servant in play.

And once again I'd mention that if you add card color dots, you will also need an option to replace them with color words for the benefit of colorblind players.

[Max mtg]

And once again I'd mention that if you add card color dots, you will also need an option to replace them with color words for the benefit of colorblind players.

Low priority.

Colorblind players will hover their mouse over dot when the card's color is unclear from its manacost... or should not be considered at all since Wizards don't provide such option.

[Marek14]

And once again I'd mention that if you add card color dots, you will also need an option to replace them with color words for the benefit of colorblind players.

Low priority.

Colorblind players will hover their mouse over dot when the card's color is unclear from its manacost... or should not be considered at all since Wizards don't provide such option.

OK, if the dot will provide a popup, then it's fine.

[Max mtg]

...or doubleclick on that dot to see letters / manasymbols instead.

I don't want to be cruel towards people with certain disabilities, I want to make sure that the core feature has to be implemented first and accessibility (or improvements) later.

[drdev]

Considering the color of most cards can be inferred directly from the mana cost, can we just add a line to the top of the card text area indicating the colors as words if the card's color is anything else? There's not really a good place to put color dots or additional mana symbols that won't just be extra duplicate information most of the time. Plus, that way the colors are spelled out and we don't have to implement workarounds for color blind people.

Even on printed magic cards whose colors don't match the mana cost, like Pact of Negation, the text "CARDNAME is COLOR." appears in the card text area. So we'd be consistent with printed cards this way.

And to answer the question about Planeswalkers, the P/T will be replaced by "Loyalty: X", and in the rare case of a Planeswalker that's also a creature, it will display the P/T beside its loyalty. Since I made the ID and set labels take up less horizontal space, there should be room for both a loyalty and P/T on any CardDetailPanel wide enough to not have most name/mc or type lines cut off.

[Sloth]

Even on printed magic cards whose colors don't match the mana cost, like Pact of Negation, the text "CARDNAME is COLOR." appears in the card text area. So we'd be consistent with printed cards this way.

This is outdated: http://magiccards.info/query?q=Pact+of+ ... rd&s=cname

[friarsol]

Considering the color of most cards can be inferred directly from the mana cost, can we just add a line to the top of the card text area indicating the colors as words if the card's color is anything else? There's not really a good place to put color dots or additional mana symbols that won't just be extra duplicate information most of the time. Plus, that way the colors are spelled out and we don't have to implement workarounds for color blind people.

What about times when cards are not the color their mana cost infers? I think the border is fine when the card is a single color, since it's clear what color the card is. Additionally, 5 dots/colored letters takes much less room than 5 lines of text saying the card is each color, which would then force you to scroll the detail panel to read anything else in the dialog?

[drdev]

Even on printed magic cards whose colors don't match the mana cost, like Pact of Negation, the text "CARDNAME is COLOR." appears in the card text area. So we'd be consistent with printed cards this way.

This is outdated: http://magiccards.info/query?q=Pact+of+ ... rd&s=cname

Oh, I didn't know they did that. It looks like Transguild Courier wasn't updated though.

I still say we should just display it at the top of the text area for the sake of space and how rarely it applies. It would also be the easiest implementation.

[drdev]

Considering the color of most cards can be inferred directly from the mana cost, can we just add a line to the top of the card text area indicating the colors as words if the card's color is anything else? There's not really a good place to put color dots or additional mana symbols that won't just be extra duplicate information most of the time. Plus, that way the colors are spelled out and we don't have to implement workarounds for color blind people.

What about times when cards are not the color their mana cost infers? I think the border is fine when the card is a single color, since it's clear what color the card is. Additionally, 5 dots/colored letters takes much less room than 5 lines of text saying the card is each color, which would then force you to scroll the detail panel to read anything else in the dialog?

As I said, we'd only display this text when the color doesn't match the mana cost, which is rare. And I never said we'd display a line for every color. It would be a single line of text with the color words delimited by commas perhaps so it can wrap to a second line worst case scenario. Examples:

• CARDNAME is blue.
• CARDNAME is white, blue.
• CARDNAME is white, blue, black, red.
• CARDNAME is all colors.

[friarsol]

Oh, I didn't know they did that. It looks like Transguild Courier wasn't updated though.

It's oracle text was updated. It no longer has any card text, and just has a color indicator. It just hasn't been reprinted since this change, so the image still has the old stuff.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=107362

Rules info | Open

6/7/2013 Although originally printed with a characteristic-defining ability that defined its color, this card now has a color indicator. This color indicator can't be affected by text-changing effects (such as the one created by Crystal Spray), although color-changing effects can still overwrite it.

There are plenty of Quest decks that use Painter's Servant or other similar effects that change color, so I don't think it's all that rare, especially within Forge.

[drdev]

In the scheme of the 13000+ cards supported by Forge, I doubt more than 1% would require displaying a color that doesn't match the mana cost for itself or other cards. So I'd still say it's rare enough not to dedicate space to displaying color dots.

Also, I'm sure many people are like me and don't know about the introduction of the color dots, so using them instead of words seems like it would go over some people's heads, not to mention the issue of them not being distinguishable if you're color blind.

I still feel one extra line of text 1% of the time is the way to go here.

[Max mtg]

The main purpose of the color indicator is to show the _current_ ingame color of a card.

Painter's Servant and Grand Architect are just a few cards that change colors... there should be more of them.

As for placement - my suggestion is to draw the indicator on every card (next to card's ID)