Forge New User Guide
Contents |
Welcome to Forge!
Whether you are a brand new Forge user, one that's been here a little time, or maybe one who checked us out a while back and now have returned, Forge has a lot of nuances that we'd like to point out to help ease you into the software. As you probably already know, Forge is an M:tG engine that has an AI to play against. We have a lot of different modes and a ton of supported cards (99% of all cards as of this writing)
Playing Modes
Constructed Mode
Limited Modes
Quest Mode
Network Play
Be advised, this is still very alpha!
That being said, here's a short overview of what to expect and how to proceed:
- For now, it only works with direct connections, 1 player vs 1 player (4 players max), there's no big, dedicated game server to connect you with random players!
- Forge desktop client is more stable than mobile Forge. Keep the kind of Forge release identical, so, Desktop <> Desktop or Android <> Android works best.
- Keep Android OS versions identical as well (e.g. 7 <> 7, NOT 6 <> 9) and stay between Android 5 and Android 9/10. Newer = better.
- Do not try Forge network play using mobile data!! IP addressing and port forwarding will most likely fail and it's NOT traffic optimised. It'll eat your monthly high speed data volume right up!
- Only the host needs to have a working port forward for port 36743.
- On mobile, if you are in the same room, try personal hotspot/WiFi-Direct option first, you don't need a port forward that way.
- Due to the lack of traffic optimisations, playing over network feels choppy/laggy. A single game can transfer hundreds of Mbytes between both clients(!)
- If your ISP uses IPv6 but uses something called Dual Stack lite, network play won't work. It needs IPv4 adressing or IPv6 using (full) Dual Stack!
Simplified example setup for connections by internet/WAN, where you are the host and your friend wants to connect:
You/host/server <- router/NAT <- modem <- WAN <- modem <- router/NAT <- your friend/client
Internal IP <- port forward <- external IP <- IPv4/IPv6 <- external IP <- no forward <- internal IP
Assign the port forward to a "fixed" or static internal IP address, do not use a DHCP address for port forwarding.
Your friend needs to know your external IP address, which you can check here, for example: whatismyip
You need to make sure port 36743 is correctly forwarded (while Forge is active, which can be checked e.g. here: canyouseeme
Rules
One problem that new users who are also new Magic players have is that they aren't wholly familiar with the rules. Forge strives to be as accurate as possible in enforcing the rules, but there are times when things aren't quite 100% correct. This is typically either due to a bug (please report these, look into reporting issues down below) or known problems that have been built into Forge's core and haven't been resolved yet. Now I know whenever I learn a new game, sometimes it feels like the person teaching me is just making up things on the spot.
If a situation comes up that you just aren't sure about, and you can't seem to find it looking through the rules on Wizards site, there's a really good judges chatroom that can answer very quick questions. This chatroom is not related to Forge in any way, so you'll probably be better off just asking questions without any of these reference points. "Can I do X if I have Y in play and my opponent has Z?" "My opponent tried to do A, but I have B. Is that legal?"
Trust me, that chatroom is a great resource just as a Magic player, not just a Forge player.
Media
Images
Communication
Reporting Issues
If you think you've found an issue, we recommend you check out this post about how we request bug reports be made.
Joining the Dev Team
Are you a developer or other person that has something to offer to the Forge team? Please post a new thread in the Developers corner with how you'd like to help. lease give a little introduction about yourself and your skillsets. For developers, we request that you post a few patches of fixes of issues of Forge and what areas you might be interested in working on. We have a bunch of developers on the team, all with different levels of experience, and different areas of Forge expertise. Hopefully we can get a good chat going for how best you can jump in and get rolling.
Keep in mind, even if you aren't a developer you may be able to help script cards into Forge. This often comes up whenever a new set is out, and there are a few hundreds of new cards that need to be created for Forge to recognize them. Forge uses it's own script language for card scripting, and are all available for perusal in the Forge packages of the release. We've had several non-programmers learn the language and script lots and lots of cards. Some of these folks have gone on to learn enough programming to make some small tweaks in the Effects system that computes all of these scripts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course we have our own list of frequently asked questions. Hopefully you're familiar with how these work already, so there won't be any meta-FAQing going on.