First Impressions

[Pilot13]

Hey, I found your project from MTG Forge's blog. I really like it so far, and have been messing around with the Elves and Goblins for a little while now.
The visuals are great, in comparison to Forge's very minimal approach it's amazing. Having the cards right there on a 3d table is great. The vertical bar(s) on the side(s) do a great job of breaking down the turn structure and let you know what's coming up.

Ok, cons, Is the lack (at least as far as I could tell) of a computer or online opponent due to beta testing? Are you going to code some AI and/or online mode. I was also wondering if you were planning on a hot seat mode where perhaps the camera spins around and maybe turns the other player's hands over or hides them another way.

I was wondering if you were going to put in a deck editor too. I know I can change them around now, but I'm not a codey type and wouldn't know where to begin.

Also it crashed for me several times at the 'press"n"...' screen. Once or twice because I alt-tabbed to the download page to double check your posted instructions, and once or twice of it's own volition. Once I got into the game proper it was fine.

Keep up the good work though, it looks like the start of something special.

[MageKing17]

Ok, cons, Is the lack (at least as far as I could tell) of a computer or online opponent due to beta testing? Are you going to code some AI and/or online mode. I was also wondering if you were planning on a hot seat mode where perhaps the camera spins around and maybe turns the other player's hands over or hides them another way.

Adding an AI opponent is troublesome in Python, because of the language's interpreted nature. As for online play... well, why don't you join us on IRC in #incantus on EFnet sometime? We can explain how everything works.

I was wondering if you were going to put in a deck editor too. I know I can change them around now, but I'm not a codey type and wouldn't know where to begin.

A deck is just a text file that lists what cards you have and how many of each. It doesn't need a separate editor.

Also it crashed for me several times at the 'press"n"...' screen. Once or twice because I alt-tabbed to the download page to double check your posted instructions, and once or twice of it's own volition. Once I got into the game proper it was fine.

Did it really crash, or did it just freeze for a minute? Sometimes it will appear as though it has crashed, but it has merely frozen... in fact, I can't think of a single time it has crashed and not immediately closed as a result. Also, alt+tabbing may or may not introduce an instability, since "tab" is a key with a recognized function (it opens the game log), and pressing it outside of a game proper might be causing a problem under certain situations.

Keep up the good work though, it looks like the start of something special.

Wait until we stabilize the latest code and release an Eventide demo.

[Pilot13]

I suspect it may have frozen a couple of times because it seemed like it was going to once or twice and then went straight into the game. It did definitely crash (or something similar) several times. I got some 'not responding' errors and a couple where it just closed completely.

For the deck editor how do I pick cards to write in the text. Can I only type cards that are in any of the decklists?

I'd play online with you guys, but surely I'd be distracting you from working on the Eventide demo

[MageKing17]

I got some 'not responding' errors and a couple where it just closed completely.

If it appears to be not responding, leave it be for, like, 5 minutes. It should unfreeze at some point. I've still no idea what causes it, but it has never completely and totally stopped responding for me.

For the deck editor how do I pick cards to write in the text. Can I only type cards that are in any of the decklists?

You can type any card name, whether it exists or not, and whether it is implemented or not. Unimplemented (and, by extension, nonexistent) cards are 0-cost artifacts with no abilities, and if it can't find the image for a card you'll get a "card image not found" graphic, so it'd be pretty hard to crash the game in the process of creating a deck file. To know what cards are actually implemented, you'll need to look in the .db files in your data folder with the card editor and look for yourself. There may or may not be a link to the card editor lying around somewhere. I'd recommend backing up .db files before using it, though, unless you're sure of what you're doing with it.

I'd play online with you guys, but surely I'd be distracting you from working on the Eventide demo

Nonsense. We could probably release such a demo very shortly, seeing as how the new card architecture is coming along swimmingly. Even if you don't want to distract us, come on EFnet anyway, so we can answer questions in real time.

[doxaios]

If you put AI it will be great.

[heavensblade23]

Tried it out for a few turns. Ditch the heart icon, it looks cheap/cheesy. "Life: 20" is fine. Same thing with the glowing orbs that spin away when a card goes into the graveyard. Either make it look much better or do away with it. Making the card spin away into the graveyard would be better if it's doable.

The graveyard/library should be physical card stacks and not just icons.

The user interface seems nice...no need to memorize a bunch of keys. I would make it even simpler, put a button like MTGO that you can just repeatedly click to pass through phases. Just hitting spacebar would be fine, but an 'Okay' button would probably be a good addition as well. Multiple easy ways to do the same thing is the way to go. It seems like you understand this.

Cards are too small by default. I have a widescreen monitor that runs at 1680x1050 and I can't recognize cards by sight except for lands. This may just be an issue with poor resolution scaling. Cards should be readable on the board without right-clicking on them...the text is illegible for me unless I right click. (I think maybe this is a jpg scaling issue...using crops and regular text would probably fix it)

Zooming in on cards should be changed to left-click or simply mouseover, preferably mouseover.

The user-controlled zooming of the playfield seems extraneous...why not just have it zoom in and out automatically when there are too many cards to display? Is there any situation in which someone would want to zoom out so that the entire playfield on both sides is visible? There are never going to be that many cards out at once. There's room enough for 100 cards.

Eye candy seems like a bit much...that's not really what people want from a MTG program, I think. If you look at the other contenders, the things that people complain about are lack of rules enforcement, shitty community, shufflers with poor randomization, unstable servers, crash bugs in the client, poor support for drafting or variant formats, too easy to cheat, lack of updates. I think shitty community is more of an effect of the other problems...fix everything else and you'll have a bigger/better community. The only time I've ever heard people complain about the program being ugly is Apprentice which is ancient.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be careful exactly what components of MTG you include with the game. They did shut down one program with a C&D a few years back. External modules and card pics are the way to go, I'd think.

Here's what I found as far as US copyrights and games:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Seems fairly loose, but that's up to you and/or your lawyer to evaluate.

[The Scientist]

I think incantus is going to be very happy with all of your feedback. It's ok that you don't like everything, you shouldnt. Your comments will be taken into consideration, although I would like to take a moment to answer some of them myself.

incantus actually has two big parts, the engine and the GUI. These are almost seperate. With little work, you could play incantus just from a console typing "play forest", "pass" and other commands. This mean the GUI can be customized at will.
Personally, I like the heart and the glowing orb but that merely an opinion.
An Okay button : I think it's on "the list".
you can zoom in on the table, and irl your cards are also far away from each other. Although you have a point. One Pro Tip here : play more magic and you won't need to zoom in
Well, you can do some crazy stuff with cards, I mean it's not that hard to make a whole bunch of tokens.

As I said before, the interface is seperate from the rules engine. The interface has to be acceptable but it hasn't changed a lot since I discovered incantus. Eye-candy isn't at all our biggest priority. In fact, for 2 months they've been working on a workover of the rules engine to allow the implementation of almost every card. Btw, have you found any rules bugs, because you didn't say a lot about that. While I immediately add Incantus isn't perfect yet, I can say incantus is a form of rules-enforcement I haven't seen before except on MTGO.

About community : we don't have a community, there's just incantus and a couple of regulars programming and testing the program. However we do accept any help
copyrights : yes that still is a problem. If incantus will really be competitive with other programs like MTGO, wizards might shut it down, yes we know that. Incantus looked into some solutions and so far we haven't got one. Perhaps with the release of Duels of the Planeswalkers (xbox) they'll ignore incantus, although I doubt it. We'll see how it plays out...

btw, did you do both the Elves vs Goblin demo and the Eventide theme decks ?

[heavensblade23]

I think incantus is going to be very happy with all of your feedback. It's ok that you don't like everything, you shouldnt. Your comments will be taken into consideration, although I would like to take a moment to answer some of them myself.

Well of course it's okay if I don't like everything.

incantus actually has two big parts, the engine and the GUI. These are almost seperate. With little work, you could play incantus just from a console typing "play forest", "pass" and other commands.

I don't think too many people are interested in playing a command-line version of MTG. Interest in deckbot dried up when he discontinued BotArena.

you can zoom in on the table, and irl your cards are also far away from each other. Although you have a point. One Pro Tip here : play more magic and you won't need to zoom in

I realize you're just joking around, but expecting people to sight-recognize a 500+ cards by sight is unreasonable. You want to appeal to more than just the hardcore players.

Well, you can do some crazy stuff with cards, I mean it's not that hard to make a whole bunch of tokens.

I play a deck on MTGO that's partially based around creating tokens and I've rarely gotten more than 10 out at a time. There's a green card that lets you win on your next turn if you have more than 20 creatures out...if it were that easy that card would be awesome.

As I said before, the interface is seperate from the rules engine. The interface has to be acceptable but it hasn't changed a lot since I discovered incantus. Eye-candy isn't at all our biggest priority. In fact, for 2 months they've been working on a workover of the rules engine to allow the implementation of almost every card. Btw, have you found any rules bugs, because you didn't say a lot about that. While I immediately add Incantus isn't perfect yet, I can say incantus is a form of rules-enforcement I haven't seen before except on MTGO.

I haven't played enough to say. Playing solitaire is boring to me so I just commented on what was on the surface.

copyrights : yes that still is a problem. If incantus will really be competitive with other programs like MTGO, wizards might shut it down, yes we know that. Incantus looked into some solutions and so far we haven't got one. Perhaps with the release of Duels of the Planeswalkers (xbox) they'll ignore incantus, although I doubt it. We'll see how it plays out...

I can't really offer any legal advice, but my intuition says to separate out anything that might get you into trouble into modules and have them released separately, like MWS does.

btw, did you do both the Elves vs Goblin demo and the Eventide theme decks ?

Just what was in the sticky.

[Huggybaby]

Your post has good info, but the tone is critical rather than helpful. Try playing for more than a few turns next time.

We're aware of WOTC and lawyers. We don't talk about them because it's been done before and is a waste of time, so save that subject for any other forum but this one.

You can pass through phases by hitting the Enter key. You can also customize phase stops. After you remove a couple the game progresses quickly.

I'd like to see F1 bring up a shortcuts dialogue. Here are the ones of which I'm aware.

'q' - Quit '
'Enter' - usually to pass priority
'Esc' - cancel action
F2/F3 to set priority stops
F1 full screen
'f' passes priority for your turn as long as the stack is empty
right click on card to magnify card
right click and drag playfield to move playfield
middle click and drag playfield to quickly resize playfield
scroll wheel on playfield to slowly resize playfield

These should be included in a text file with incantus, I don't know why they aren't.

The incantus team has its priorities in the proper order, fixing the rules is more important than graphics. Besides, incantus asked for help with graphics and didn't get any.

[heavensblade23]

Your post has good info, but the tone is critical rather than helpful. Try playing for more than a few turns next time.

I considered it constructive criticism...there's a lot it does right, as well.

We're aware of WOTC and lawyers. We don't talk about them because it's been done before and is a waste of time, so save that subject for any other forum but this one.

That's fine.

Come and hang out with us on IRC if you're interested, people...the channel sees a fair amount of chat.

[Tynion]

I may be able to assist with graphics if you are still looking. I frequent Magicdeckvortex.com and MDV has a good number of great graphics guys. Let me know if you'd like me to ask around for you.

[Incantus]

Help is always welcome. Although at the moment I can't think of any new art that I need (maybe a better table background? I'm using the one from Firemox).

[Tynion]

Alternate schemes possibly? New backgrounds, different icon logos?

If you would like me to, I will ask around on our forums.

[MageKing17]

Any graphics work would be appreciated, especially that which leads us away from the dangerous territory of having "borrowed" from other sources. Even things we can't yet use we might be able to find a purpose for, and we still don't have a set of "keyword icons", which I'd love to have (e.g. a symbol of a wing when a creature has flying).

[Tynion]

I was brainstorming a bit here... I can tell you the first question that will be asking.

"What size should the images me? What format should they be?

Soooo, I will just get those paramaters from you fellas before I get it from them