Forge Android App: 11-13-2016 Alpha 1.5.58.002

[friarsol]

I might have to think on this more. Perhaps it's time to tweak the interface a bit so filters are easier to use and perhaps take up less space.

I was playing some more on my commute home last night and this became very annoying for me, very quickly.

Here's what I'm attemping to do:

Filter out all the colors/types that I don't need in my deck to see what I have available for me.

That color filter typically is:
Two colors I'm playing, colorless and multicolor.

The type filter typically is:
Everything but Lands (since basic lands take up so much space, but I don't want to sell them in case I change colors), I come back to fill in the lands after I add all the spells, and know which color may need more mana support.

For this I need to:
Click color1, color2, colorless, multicolor (as opposed to on desktop where I can click color3-5 to turn those off)

then I need to:
Click all of the types except for land. (In reality, I click land, mutter, click land again, then click all the other types, because it's never doing what I expect it to do).

On desktop, I just click land.

So that means I have 7 additional clicks (not counting double clicking on land) to get the filter the way I want it to be, and since the filter resets each time I go back to the deck editor it's repetitive, obnoxious, and frustrating. Is there a reason you don't want to use short click for toggle and long click for toggle the rest of the row, the same as it is for the desktop of left-click/right-click?

[drdev]

@friarsol - I'll revert it back to the old behavior for now. Ultimately I need to redesign the filters for the mobile game as what works for the desktop game just doesn't work as well for the mobile game.

I'll also try to add support for saving filters between sessions at some point in the near future.

[drdev]

forge.quest.bazaar.QuestItemBasic

I just released 1.5.22.011 which should fix this issue.

friarsol, this release also includes the old filter behavior.

[drdev]

So after playing a bunch of games with the current stack, I was finding that I didn't really like that the top item of the stack always appeared in the same place. It didn't really feel like a stack, and I kept getting confused when items on the stack moved down to make room for a new item being added.

What I'd like to propose instead is the following:

Now, new items will appear on top of the previous items on the stack without those items being repositioned. There will be some overlap so the new item feels like its on top of the old one, while making half the card of the old one still be visible.

What do you think? Anything I could do to improve this?

Thanks.
-Dan

[5enza]

I think it looks great and much better on smaller screens.

One question...will it be possible to tap on items previously in the stack to bring them to the front so we can read them?

[drdev]

I think it looks great and much better on smaller screens.

One question...will it be possible to tap on items previously in the stack to bring them to the front so we can read them?

Yeah, that's the plan. In fact, here's an idea of what it will look like.

As you can see, I've made it so only the active stack item will display targetting arrows, which should prevent a cluttered mess of arrows if the stack has many spells or abilities with varying targets.

Thanks for the input.
-Dan

[drdev]

Another thing I'm working on right now is avoiding dialogs for choosing targets in zones besides the battlefield. Here's an example of how targeting cards in graveyards will now work:

As you can see, as soon as you need to select targets for the spell ability, the applicable zones will temporary be opened so that you can tap on your chosen targets. Additionally, when the spell/ability is active on the stack, that zone will be temporarily opened to show the targetting arrow connected to your target from the active stack display. Then, once the spell/ability resolves, your and your opponent's previously opened zone (such as your hand and nothing for your opponent in the case above) will be restored automatically.

Let me know if you have any thoughts or concerns about this new behavior.

Thanks.
-Dan

[drdev]

I just released 1.5.23.001, which contains updates from the recent Forge Beta release, as well as the updated stack and targeting support described above.

[Agetian]

Exemplary work on the android app for Forge thus far, Dan! Keep it up!
I have a question: one of the issues I'm experiencing with the game is that it tends to slow down to a crawl when an aura enchantment (or an equipment, or some other card like that) is played on a card and thus it's "attached" to another card. The difference in speed is usually severe (e.g. 10 cards on the battlefield with 1 aura enchantment in play is several times slower for me than 10 cards on the battlefield with no auras attached to anything - even the phases where the AI does nothing take a second or two). It seems like it doesn't depend on the hardware (tried it on Asus Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Samsung Galaxy Win - all of them manifest the same issue, although on some of them the game runs faster simply because the CPU is faster, but it still slows down when an aura is played). Do you know why this might be happening?

- Agetian

[friarsol]

Playing an ante match in quest and winning the first game leads to the following crash.

[drdev]

Playing an ante match in quest and winning the first game leads to the following crash.

I just released 1.5.23.002, which fixes this crash. Thanks for reporting it.

[drdev]

Exemplary work on the android app for Forge thus far, Dan! Keep it up!
I have a question: one of the issues I'm experiencing with the game is that it tends to slow down to a crawl when an aura enchantment (or an equipment, or some other card like that) is played on a card and thus it's "attached" to another card. The difference in speed is usually severe (e.g. 10 cards on the battlefield with 1 aura enchantment in play is several times slower for me than 10 cards on the battlefield with no auras attached to anything - even the phases where the AI does nothing take a second or two). It seems like it doesn't depend on the hardware (tried it on Asus Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Samsung Galaxy Win - all of them manifest the same issue, although on some of them the game runs faster simply because the CPU is faster, but it still slows down when an aura is played). Do you know why this might be happening?

- Agetian

The slowness as the game progresses is known, though this is the first time I've heard a correlation with auras. I'll try to look into it. Thanks for the info.

[friarsol]

Another thing: Looks like in Quest mode (although I'd imagine other places too: like Vanguard or Commander once it's working) that start life with things other than 20, it says your life is 20 until something redraws the life (gaining or losing life) at which point it updates to the correct amount.

[drdev]

So I'm currently working on changing up the layout of search and filters for deck and card managers to take up less space and work better on the mobile game. Here's what I have right now:

As you can see, I've merged the caption and ratio into the search field, with the caption only appearing if the search field is empty. I've also eliminated the Filters button that allowed adding filters and hiding the filters panel, instead favoring the use of the view options toggle button to the right of the list and image view toggles to determine the visibility of other filter options.

I've also removed the count labels from the toggle filter buttons. I have a few good reasons for this change. One, there was a large performance cost to updating these count labels, particularly when refreshing or applying filters to the 22000 count catalog for the Constructed editor. Two, eliminating the labels allows shrinking the buttons, which will eventually make room for other filters to appear beside them (not shown above since not yet implemented). Three, the actual counts were confusing at times anyway since you could toggle off a color filter and still get a number greater than 0 due to hybrid cards for example.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or concerns about these changes, or if you think I'm on the right track. Note that these changes will only affect the mobile game. There is currently no plan to apply them to the desktop game.

Thanks.
-Dan

[Agetian]

About the slowdowns: yes, the performance of the game does degrade over time even without auras, but auras (and other attached permanents) cause a very drastic performance drop compared to everything else - say, a turn 2 aura can immediately slow the game down as much as it would otherwise slow down naturally at about turn 15-20 or so...

- Agetian