Adding avatars to the client

[klayhamn]

Hey guys,

What's the opinion regarding adding more player-avatars to the game?
I think having a bigger selection of avatars would be a nice addition to the overall experience of the client.

Something like this:
Example for avatars
or this:
Example 2 for avatars


Are we worried about copyright infringement or stuff like that?

[LevelX]

Yes it should be absolutely copyright free stuff if we include it in the xmage download file.

I would like to have the possibility to set an image section from a magic card to set as avatar. So we wouldn't need to include images to the download file and the users would be able to choose from a large amount of magic related avatars.

[klayhamn]

Actually the 2nd link I provided seems to be free-to-use and by the approval of the artists.
At least this is what the site claims.

Using the magic card images is a good idea.
I'm a bit inexperienced with the java graphical API so not sure I can take it upon myself yet, but I'll start to look into it.

Maybe we can just increase the number of avatars in the mean-time? from like ~9 to 100? I don't think it will be very heavy space-wise.

Personally I like the idea of avatars that aren't characters from magic (the same way avatars are used in "Duels of the Planeswalkers", Like this one or this one) because then it gives more of a sense of a unique planeswalker that is "you".

[klayhamn]

I started looking into implementing the cards-as-avatars feature
I created a new branch for that called dynamic_avatars

The issue I'm running into now - so far - is that I'm trying to use the CardRepository for loading the cards (even if just for testing sake) - but it seems like the classes of the various CardImpls aren't loaded into classpath.
I assume they are loaded dynamically, but I'm not sure where and how...

This is what I'm trying to do (again, just for testing sake - for now)

Code: Select all

CardInfo cardInfo = CardRepository.instance.findCard("Shadowborn Apostle");
Card card = cardInfo.getCard();
CardView cardView1 = new CardView(card);
Image image = ImageCache.getImage(cardView1, 80, 80);


The cardInfo is loaded correctly, but when I do cardInfo.getCard() I'm getting null because of a ClassNotFoundException

Any ideas or suggestions?

[klayhamn]

Well, I worked around this for now

Looks pretty nifty I think



The main work here is making some module that would enable to choose a card and then select a 80x80 region of it