Card Detail Panel Overhaul

[drdev]

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)

Does that mean you're ok with displaying the color dots so long as there is a tooltip indicating what they mean?

Also, instead of displaying it next to the ID, can we just get rid of the ID? It will look better that way and reduce the risk of the loyalty / P/T label overlapping it.

If we really need to display the ID, could we just prepend it (in brackets) before the card name? That's similar to what we do when we displaying lists of cards in message boxes.

On that note, I've honestly never found the ID useful for anything and have wanted to add a preference to hide it everywhere it's currently shown in game. What's the main purpose of the ID and would anyone object to adding a preference to hide it?

[friarsol]

I'm strongly against not showing the ID, how else will you know what a card referenced on the stack is referring too? I find it useful basically every other game I play. "AI is casting an aura on one of his two tokens named Squirrel, which one is it? Because I want to kill that one before the Aura ETB"

[drdev]

I'm strongly against not showing the ID, how else will you know what a card referenced on the stack is referring too? I find it useful basically every other game I play. "AI is casting an aura on one of his two tokens named Squirrel, which one is it? Because I want to kill that one before the Aura ETB"

Ideally we'd handle that case better by, when hovering over the SpellAbility on the stack, displaying an arrow connecting it to the targeted card (as MTGO does) or graying out everything except the targeted card. MTGO doesn't display card IDs, so we shouldn't have to either.

In the meantime, any objection to displaying "[<ID>]" as a prefix before the card name in CardDetailPanel?

[Max mtg]

>> Does that mean you're ok with displaying the color dots so long as there is a tooltip indicating what they mean?
Sure. We might use a single dot as Wizards (like on http://magiccards.info/isd/en/181b.html) or just place as many as needed on the card itself.

ID is needed for developers (according to Sol's arguments and I also find it useful to track Card instances creation or find a certain token or land in their piles of 5), but I don't know where to place the ID best. The very ID and its location have to be unobtrusive - placing the id in front of card name does not seem like a good option.

I wonder if ID can be hidden when devmode is not enabled... or shown only when you hold shift... or something else, maybe?

[friarsol]

In the meantime, any objection to displaying "[<ID>]" as a prefix before the card name in CardDetailPanel?

I'd need to see how it looks. I already have a problem on my screen with long card names forcing wrapping of the mana cost (this didn't used to happen, so I don't know when that changed) So adding 6+ possible characters will just cause larger issues.

Additionally it'll make the start of the names appear in different locations since IDs are different lengths. Maybe we could have a footer in the CardDetailPanel (that is always visible, so the card text scrolls in the middle of the header and the footer) that would contain Loyalty on the left, ID in the middle, and P/T on the right. This would allow us to put the color dot on the left of the type line (where it is for real cards) and the setcode on the right of that row.

So basically:

Code: Select all

<Card Name>                               <Mana Cost>
<Color Indicator Dot><Type Line>                <Set>
-----------------------------------------------------
All
Card
Text
Here
-----------------------------------------------------
Loyalty: ##               [<ID>]                3 / 3


[drdev]

The problem with that idea is that the type line is usually the thing that causes wrapping issues. The minute you have something like a Legendary Creature - <Race> <Class>, it gets really long. So we'd have to make the font smaller, which I guess we could do. Keep in mind though that real cards display set symbols instead of set codes which take up less horizontal space, plus I don't think there's any printed card that displays more than one color dot, and we'd need to be able to display as many as 5.

While I understand your goal to layout the CardDetailPanel similar to an actual card, I'm not sure it would work that well in practice. I feel like having the scrollable region above the P/T would look strange and make that footer feel disconnected, particularly if you made the CardDetailPanel really tall and the card had almost no text in it.

[friarsol]

My goal is to show the color indicator on the card detail panel, but not lose other useful information (like the ID). The printed card color indicators are only a single dot, they just do an equal pie chart thing. Check out http://magiccards.info/dka/en/140b.html

[drdev]

My goal is to show the color indicator on the card detail panel, but not lose other useful information (like the ID). The printed card color indicators are only a single dot, they just do an equal pie chart thing. Check out http://magiccards.info/dka/en/140b.html

Oh, I didn't realize that it would always be just a single dot. In that case I'm much less concerned about space and can maybe get behind this idea.

Would there be anyway to show a set symbol instead of the set code? That would further save space and help make it look more like a card. Can we maybe pull set symbols into Forge somehow when the user downloads card images? It'd be awesome if we could display the set/rarity as the symbol, with the set code just being a backup if the user hasn't downloaded the set yet.

I could also create some texture files to apply in place of the solid-color border, which would particularly look better for black and artifact cards on certain themes.

[moomarc]

I've moved this thread of conversation to an appropriate topic instead of the bugs thread

[squee1968]

I know my opinion wasn't asked for, and probably doesn't count for much here since I'm not a developer, but here it is anyway. From a user's standpoint, the only times you really need to look at the card detail panel for the basic information (card name, mana cost, card text, P/T, etc.) is if you don't have pictures installed, right? So for those users who don't, instead of showing a picture when you use the middle wheel up method, why don't we split the information and have like a mockup of the basic information available (that should look somewhat like a real magic card as Sol suggested), and keep all the added information (color, additional/changed types, top card of library, counters, even current oracle text, if different from the panel/picture, etc.) on the card detail panel? This would save a lot of valuable space taken up by the panel (especially for the mobile version) and still be intuitive. You could even expand on this and make the mock-upped "card" support cropped pictures. I'm thinking sort of like how MWS does this. Or even make all cards have this instead of the black background if the user doesn't have pics. Just my 2 cents.

[friarsol]

I know my opinion wasn't asked for, and probably doesn't count for much here since I'm not a developer, but here it is anyway. From a user's standpoint, the only times you really need to look at the card detail panel for the basic information (card name, mana cost, card text, P/T, etc.) is if you don't have pictures installed, right?

Well not really, I generally have the card detail panel displaying instead of the picture because it shows me the current state of the card. What counters are on it, what abilities it's gained from static effects that sorta thing? If Humility has removed all it's normal abilities. None of this is ever shown for the picture. Additionally, your suggestion doesn't work for flip cards/morph, which use middle clicking to show the back side of the card.

[squee1968]

Well not really, I generally have the card detail panel displaying instead of the picture because it shows me the current state of the card. What counters are on it, what abilities it's gained from static effects that sorta thing? If Humility has removed all it's normal abilities. None of this is ever shown for the picture. Additionally, your suggestion doesn't work for flip cards/morph, which use middle clicking to show the back side of the card.

I specifically mentioned counters in my post. Counters, humility, static effects, auras/equipment attached, and all the other "extra" information that is currently added to the panel would still be added to the panel. The mock-up would just be a way to show the default information and oracle text of the card, saving space that is used by the panel. And for morph/flip cards, a second middle click or wheel up event could be used for them. You could also just make 2 different panels, with the mockup keeping the title "Card Detail", and the added panel could be named "Current Info", or something like that. Anyway, it's merely a humble suggestion.

EDIT: Additionally, for the type line wrap around problem, why don't we use abbreviations (possibly in all caps) for the supertypes? LEG, CRT, ART, INS, SOR, TRB, PLN, LND, etc. Or have the abbreviations only used when the type line becomes too long.