An interesting result I thought I'd share with you.

[MageKing17]

Here's something you may see in a future version of Incantus:

As you can obviously see, it's far from complete... but it is interesting, no?

Coded by Incantus, who apparently had some free time.

[drekonja]

Huh? Sorry, but I don't get it. It's a big card in the front without showing mana cost.

[Incantus]

So MageKing's teaser doesn't seem too exciting without a little context. As a hint, check out the font used in the large card. You can see it's not the traditional Magic font. Using the images aurelain generated from DotP for the HQ Card Generator (see viewtopic.php?p=52305#p52305) and the info provided by Snacko on the sizes for text boxes, I have implemented real-time card compositing/rendering in Incantus (MageKing's snap above shows an early demo - I didn't have mana symbols done yet.) The pic above doesn't look too fancy, but that's because he only showed a simple card. The compositing renders correctly for almost all types of cards supported in Incantus, such as multicolor artifact creatures, etc. The nice thing about being dynamic is that when the game changes the characteristics of a card they will be reflected in the rendering (for example changing the color, animating a land).

By the way, it's not really free time. I really shouldn't stay up till 3 am on a workday playing around with this stuff. But it's too much fun

[Huggybaby]

Thanks Incantus and MK17, I knew what you were doing there.

One plus is that you can get by with a much smaller download. Another big plus for generating your own card pics is that the text will always be correct. That text has changed quite a bit since the old days!

[MageKing17]

One plus is that you can get by with a much smaller download.

I fail to see how. :/

[Huggybaby]

Comparing the HQ Crops to the HQ fulls, there's a big difference.

[Incantus]

Here's a slightly newer snapshot (note you can't tell, but the color blending in the frame is done dynamically):

[MageKing17]

Comparing the HQ Crops to the HQ fulls, there's a big difference.

Yes, but the current version uses neither, so the impact on our download size is...?

[Huggybaby]

I don't know. I assume one would have to get pics from somewhere, since the last time I downloaded Incantus it included none.

[MageKing17]

I don't know. I assume one would have to get pics from somewhere, since the last time I downloaded Incantus it included none.

It's always auto-downloaded images from WotC's website. Which, granted, could easily be improved.

[Huggybaby]

OK, now I understand.

[Incantus]

Huggy - I think you're missing the point. The renderer wasn't built to reduce the size of the download, since as MageKing17 mentioned, we use the 200x285 card images from wizards site (which aren't the best source, but magiccards doesn't have a simple url with just the name), and the cards are downloaded on demand. The main reason was so that the cards can accurately reflect the state they are in during the course of the game (plus it looks nice). Now we can do some fancier things - I was inspired by the 2009 demo of a possibly new web-based MODO client (although who knows what happened to that). For example - see http://www.mananation.com/magic-online-prototype/

[drekonja]

Does that mean also we could choose card format? For example some of us think that cards looked better before 2003.

[Incantus]

drekonja - theoretically, yes, but practically probably not, unless someone wants to do the work of converting the HQ frames to the right sizes (not hard) and determining the font sizes and placement in the old card layout.

[MageKing17]

Does that mean also we could choose card format? For example some of us think that cards looked better before 2003.

Hmm... sudden thought.

Incantus and I were discussing adding set and rarity info to the card code (so that set symbols could be rendered accurately). If so, it could theoretically be possible to render cards with the old border properly. Hmm, maybe we could even allow custom templates, like MSE...