Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Magic 2014 steam players PC.

This is an invitation to all those who wanna join us to play Magic 2014 Mod in multiplayer with your own or ours decks.

All you have to do is make a copy of magic 2014 on steam, and copy all these cores and decks inside using google drive.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

To make your own decks, you have to use RiiakShiNal deck builder
http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10999

Decks needs to follow the Legazy constructed format. The list of cards not allowed are in the same drive.

Once you accepted, I allow you to edit the drive so you can add your own decks so we can download and play with them. Decks must use only the cores that already are in the drive, if you want to add extra cards or mods pack, a compatibility test is needed, if they work fine and dont add a lot of copy cards.. we add them.

In the drive there is a copyright with all the names and links of authors of each CORE that we use. If extra measures are needed, we would be agree to meet them.

These are the cores that we are using:

decks 2012 (2012 decks) by GrovyleXShinyCelebi
decks 2013 (2013 decks) by GrovyleXShinyCelebi
Bug Fixes - manual tapping, etc by RiiakShiNal
Thefiremind's DotP2014 DLC v10 by Thefiremind
Custom DLC v1.80 for Magic 2014 by kevlahnota
TFM&G2K's Planeswalkers Pool v8d by Thefiremind
DotP2014 DLC - Theros v9.1 by sumomole
Persee's Custom DLC for DOTP 2014 Ver 1.2 by Persee
Gorem2k mod (only the core file!) by gorem2k
BloodReyvyn's Mods 2014 by BloodReyvyn
Vintage Project - Antiquities Set by NeoAnderson
BORN OF THE GODS 588- COMPLETE SET by Neoanderson
JOURNEY INTO NYX - by NeoAnderson -testing
Braquio Dotp2014 DLC v1.3 by braquio -testing
THEROS 587- COMPLETE SET by NeoAnderson -testing
Volrathxp's Custom Dotp 2014 DLC by Volrathxp -testing
Arabian Nights SET DXT1 by NeoAnderson -testing
RETURN TO RAVNICA - OVERLOAD PACK by Neo Anderson -Testing

Right now we have only 1 bug, which the host player needs to leave before the match ends, because if it doesnt do it, then a runtime error occurs, so he/she needs to restart the game. (not big deal)

To play each day, only is needed a quick search in the google drive "changelog.txt" to see if there is a new file or change, then play.

My steam account: AngelLestat

We are already 7, but we are waiting for more to join us.
Steam Group: "Magic 2014 Mod Gdrive"

Regards.
AngelLestat.

hey where is mine !!? lol kidding..cool when i get a chance i'll copy another folder to play..how often do you guys play ?

all days, there is a new steam group. We have 12 members already.

We are not always 4 to play, but we are working in that.
But is very common that you always find 1 or 2 willing to play.

About your mod, we never test it, because I dont see what cards it adds.
But we have no trouble to add good cards who may help to build different kind of decks.

The problem, that we are struggling with some random bugs or crash sometimes.
It happens more often when we add the changes (is like the game learn what errors to skip), then after a few tries, all start working better.

The other problem is memory, sometimes if we use many mods, lag or bugs is noted more often.
We just made a several reduction in Theros 587 mod from Neo, from 222 cards to only 35.

But if you want to join us, we would be grateful, is always great to have someone with experience in mods to help us.

Search in steam the group by "Magic 2014 Mod Gdrive"

is there a better way to download then each file one by one ?

Install the Google Drive app in your PC, then drag the main directory to your drive. It would automatic syncro all files which would appear in your physical GD folder at your PC.

If a new file is added later, it would automatic download the file, but mod or deleted files must be remplaced or deleted by hand. For that reason we keep a changelog.txt in the google drive, so anyone knows what to do.

I would inform you i have updated my mods, now you can find the compressed DXT1 Sets, so you should be able to handle them easier inside your google drive.

Thanks NeoAnderson, that is great. You made a huge update from all your mods. I would update them.

But I dont have trouble of how much space they took in the Google Drive, the problem is how much memory they take when the game is open, and how this increase the rate of bugs, lag or crashes in a multiplayer match.

What happens when the game decompresses the DXT1? The image takes less or the same memory space?

I would love to include all extra cards that we still dont have, but with each addictions the bug ratio increase.

So nice we are focusing to reduce those crash or bugs. One way is trying to discover what cards give bugs or lag. Second if some day I found enoght time, is to remove the extra copy version of the same cards coded in different cores. Is not easy, because is difficult to know what is the best version. The steam group is growing fast, maybe I would have help in this matter.

Maybe in a close future we could have a stable version as the original game but with mostly all cards.

AngelLestat wrote:What happens when the game decompresses the DXT1? The image takes less or the same memory space?

In most modern games that use DirectX they can take DDS (which is the graphic format used for compressed TDX files on the PC) and they can directly send them to a DirectX compatible video card (complete with mipmaps), then based on the target display size and some settings from the engine to DirectX the appropriately sized mipmap will be used (even the full image is still considered a mipmap). So because the video card can use the DDS texture directly through hardware rendering DDS textures are more efficient and take up less memory. So technically you can say that the game never really decompresses the images, the video card does through hardware, but it is optimized specifically for this type of operation so it doesn't really slow anything down.

Uncompressed images can be used directly, but considering there is much more data to it, it takes longer for the video card to receive the data and there is actually more processing involved since the image has to be scaled down and adjusted to fit in the display area. Which can take a while and allows for virtually no image enhancement to be done to the new image if you want to maintain speed. The larger image also takes up more space in video memory which allows fewer textures to be cached in video memory.

So uncompressed textures take up more space and memory, require more processing power, and take longer to move between the engine and the video card than an equivalent compressed DDS texture. DDS allows for several compression methods including DXT1 (cards) and DXT5 (other images that have alpha) which we commonly use in compressed TDX files. There really isn't much point in using uncompressed images for most modern games.

Ok, is super clear now.
The original TDX files from the game has DXT1 compression?

So if I unpack all cores (original and mods which are not yet compressed) Then I use the DXT1 in each TDX and I pack them all again (in their respective files names), It would increase the game performance?

Well I would do it when I have time. A good DXT1 compressor?

AngelLestat wrote:Ok, is super clear now.
The original TDX files from the game has DXT1 compression?

Some are, but many others are still uncompressed. Why WotC and Stainless did this is beyond me as there seems to be absolutely no reason in doing so.

AngelLestat wrote:So if I unpack all cores (original and mods which are not yet compressed) Then I use the DXT1 in each TDX and I pack them all again (in their respective files names), It would increase the game performance?

Possibly, but repacking the official WADs tends to break things in the game. Why this happens is unknown but things like the Campaign tend to stop working properly when we repack the official WADs.

AngelLestat wrote:Well I would do it when I have time. A good DXT1 compressor?

The modified Gibbed Tools can do DXT1 and DXT5 compression and I believe that at this point in time that is what most modders are using. Though some modders may still be using Eglin's TDX compression tool and some others may be using a Paint.Net TDX plugin.

Ok I was going to do that, but I was thinking, maybe I can take this opportunity to remove the extra copy cards from all mods.
I had an estimation of 1000 cards which had between 2 to 5 copys.
Of course some of then are from the original cores, so we need to keep them. But is really hard to know what copy to choose for someone who is not an expert in coding.
This problem increase when we have a community where each one can made their own decks.

Some of those cards add a lot of lag, or bugs, or they dont work good with other cards.

I was going to do that, but I am not sure what is the best copy either. I remember that someone drop one time the idea of remove the copy cards from the mods.

Maybe if we found 4 people with some knowledge in coding, they may look up to 250 cards, and make a list of the right ones, so then you all give me the list to me, and I take the work to unpack all mods and remove the extra copies, then pack them again under their respective names. I can take this oportunity to compress all tdx which still have not DXT1.

I know, that is a lot of work and may not be compatible with new update fix from the modify cores :S

If you are going to go that far you may just want to pull the cards (and their associated localization and lol files) you want and make your own wad specifically for online play.

AngelLestat wrote:I can take this oportunity to compress all tdx which still have not DXT1.

Just remember that Deck boxes and several of the Planeswalker images need to be compressed using DXT5 because of the alpha they use, so you may want to stick to compressing just the card images.

I dont pretend to go so far
First, all decks that we already made, They would need to be remade.
Also I think that is important to keep the name files from each Mod.
For those players who do not read the copyrights.

But if we acomplish this, then we all have a place to play between us and very easy to use for new players.
We are already 22 in the steam group, but only 7 already started to play in multiplayer.

What Magic player would not love something like this? A place where we can create any deck we want, and play it in multiplayer with others.

I am trying to organize all this (with tutorials, etc) to make it very easy to use for new players. But I can not tell them what card they should select in each case. Sometimes even I have doubts about what copy to choose.

Just remember that Deck boxes and several of the Planeswalker images need to be compressed using DXT5 because of the alpha they use, so you may want to stick to compressing just the card images.

Yeah, I would only do the card images.