Just published...
Mulligan Screen- displayed on game start.
- displays cards in hand alphabetically using all screen space available so is much easier to read.
- cards are sized based on space available up to a maximum of 480 x 680 which generally is the standard size of card images downloaded from http://mtgimage.com.
- the screen is enabled by default but I have temporarily added an option to disable it via a new setting in the preferences dialog under the Experimental tab. This can be used should you experience any problems but ultimately once any unforseen issues have been ironed out I would expect the Mulligan screen to become a permanent fixture and the experimental option will be removed.
Cards Viewer (
got to come up with a better name!)
- the Mulligan screen uses the same library as is used for -
- generating sample Hands from the Deck Editor
- displaying the cards in hand, graveyard and exile zones by clicking twice on the appropriate zone icon.
- it enhances existing functionality but does not replace it. In the case of the Mulligan screen, clicking the Close action or Escape key will return to the main game screen where you can step through the mulligan process as before if you wish.
- I think it has the potential to be useful whenever the user is prompted to do something or make a choice.
Loading Transition ScreenAs part of this update, I have also added a kind of "loading screen" mechanism for actions that may take a while to complete - this tends to be quite common in games, usually displaying some (random) artwork with a progress indicator and sometimes hints and tips if the wait is relatively long. The point is that it provides immediate feedback to the user that something is happening which is very useful on lower spec machines.
Currently this occurs in Magarena when you click on the Start game action. In this case, I simply display the default background with the default busy indicator but this is open for improvement. For example, the busy indicator is just an animated gif and I am sure someone more creative than myself could come up with a bigger and better Magarena-specific gif. One idea I had was a gif which shows the 5 colored circles that appear on the back of an MTG card spinning but I've no idea how to do that.