Simple option to bring snow "mana" to DOTP2014
Posted: 21 Jul 2019, 17:11I've seen some complicated ideas to bring snow mana to DOTP2014, but I've been trying to think of a simple approach that would be easy for a modder like me to implement.
I'd like to share what I've thought of and see what others think . . .
- The main "cost" of snow mana is that a mana-producing snow permanent is tapped for each snow symbol in the cost. It's not that mana actually enters the mana pool. And, as far as I can tell, there aren't any cards that interact with the mana pool other than through the "TAPPED_FOR_MANA" trigger, so I'm not sure we have to really add mana to the mana pool, we just have to fire the trigger "TAPPED_FOR_MANA." Even cards that change the color of mana entering the pool wouldn't interfere because snow "mana" is colorless.
- We have tapping as a cost option on cards. For example, "Tap an untapped Ally you control:" on Akoum Flameseeker. As far as I can tell, there aren't any cards that trigger off of or otherwise interact with tapping as a cost. Thus, I think we could use the tapping cost mechanism along with a fire trigger for "TAPPED_FOR_MANA" to approximate the snow "mana" effect.
- Right now, there are only 6 natural snow-mana producers . . . the five basic Snow-Covered lands and Arcum's Astrolabe. We could give each of those cards a fake characteristic such as SNOW_PRODUCER. The tapping cost could check for the presence of the characteristic as a criteria (as well as whether the object is already tapped).
- Cards can become snow-mana producers through Arcum's Weathervane and Thermal Flux. The activation of Arcum's Weathervane's abilities would add or remove the fake characteristic after first checking to see if the card can produce mana (using the existing manual mana functions). If the check showed that the card could not produce mana, the fake characteristic would not be applied. This wouldn't necessarily work if the card was later granted a mana-producing ability, but it would work in most cases. We could also explore having the mana-producing check appear in the same continuous block as the fake characteristic. In that scenario, the card would only retain that characteristic if it could produce mana. (Thermal Flux would work the same way as Arcum's Weathervane just with a single turn duration instead of permanent duration.)
The above is all that would be required (I think) to make snow mana a reality across all cards. The symbol doesn't work in any of the DOTP games, so we'd have to use (snow) or something else to represent it.
Incidentally, I did find where the casting cost symbols are stored in DOTP2014. They are in the following location: DATA_CORE > DATA_ALL_PLATFORMS > ART_ASSETS > FONTS. They appear in two files: SYMBOLS.TDX and SYMBOLS_FE.TDX. I tried altering one of the controller symbols to use the new colorless mana symbol and placed it in my custom folder, but the game crashed. (I didn't modify the Chaos symbol we've been using because that is now required for Planechase.) The only reason I can think of that it crashed is that the original file was much larger than the one that I made. If someone could figure out how to successfully mod this file, we could potentially add both the snow mana and colorless mana symbols to the game.
What are your thoughts on the snow-mana idea? Any issues with it? If no one objects or has any non-starter problems with it, I'll give it a try.
I'd like to share what I've thought of and see what others think . . .
- The main "cost" of snow mana is that a mana-producing snow permanent is tapped for each snow symbol in the cost. It's not that mana actually enters the mana pool. And, as far as I can tell, there aren't any cards that interact with the mana pool other than through the "TAPPED_FOR_MANA" trigger, so I'm not sure we have to really add mana to the mana pool, we just have to fire the trigger "TAPPED_FOR_MANA." Even cards that change the color of mana entering the pool wouldn't interfere because snow "mana" is colorless.
- We have tapping as a cost option on cards. For example, "Tap an untapped Ally you control:" on Akoum Flameseeker. As far as I can tell, there aren't any cards that trigger off of or otherwise interact with tapping as a cost. Thus, I think we could use the tapping cost mechanism along with a fire trigger for "TAPPED_FOR_MANA" to approximate the snow "mana" effect.
- Right now, there are only 6 natural snow-mana producers . . . the five basic Snow-Covered lands and Arcum's Astrolabe. We could give each of those cards a fake characteristic such as SNOW_PRODUCER. The tapping cost could check for the presence of the characteristic as a criteria (as well as whether the object is already tapped).
- Cards can become snow-mana producers through Arcum's Weathervane and Thermal Flux. The activation of Arcum's Weathervane's abilities would add or remove the fake characteristic after first checking to see if the card can produce mana (using the existing manual mana functions). If the check showed that the card could not produce mana, the fake characteristic would not be applied. This wouldn't necessarily work if the card was later granted a mana-producing ability, but it would work in most cases. We could also explore having the mana-producing check appear in the same continuous block as the fake characteristic. In that scenario, the card would only retain that characteristic if it could produce mana. (Thermal Flux would work the same way as Arcum's Weathervane just with a single turn duration instead of permanent duration.)
The above is all that would be required (I think) to make snow mana a reality across all cards. The symbol doesn't work in any of the DOTP games, so we'd have to use (snow) or something else to represent it.
Incidentally, I did find where the casting cost symbols are stored in DOTP2014. They are in the following location: DATA_CORE > DATA_ALL_PLATFORMS > ART_ASSETS > FONTS. They appear in two files: SYMBOLS.TDX and SYMBOLS_FE.TDX. I tried altering one of the controller symbols to use the new colorless mana symbol and placed it in my custom folder, but the game crashed. (I didn't modify the Chaos symbol we've been using because that is now required for Planechase.) The only reason I can think of that it crashed is that the original file was much larger than the one that I made. If someone could figure out how to successfully mod this file, we could potentially add both the snow mana and colorless mana symbols to the game.
What are your thoughts on the snow-mana idea? Any issues with it? If no one objects or has any non-starter problems with it, I'll give it a try.