Collectible Card Game Headquarters

i thought i'd point out what the new system of properties files really gives you as the user. i guess many of you have a situation similar to this: every time a new version comes out, you unzip the archive to a new folder, and move your pics folder to the new version, maybe also the decks.

while this is perfectly possible, it somehow misses the point that the properties-system gives you full control over your files' locations (other that forge.properties, which has to stay together with run-forge.jar) by just changing some lines in the files

before i go on, note that it's always a good idea to backup your files before doing any changes

for me, my installation looks like this:

Code: Select all

/forge
/forge/versions
/forge/versions/20091112
/forge/versions/20091101
/forge/versions/20091017
   (and so on)


but instead of copying/moving my pictures directory into the new version, i created the pics directory in forge/res (not an individual version). the same goes for the new decks directory:

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/forge
/forge/versions
/forge/versions/20091112
/forge/versions/20091101
/forge/versions/20091017
   (and so on)
/forge/res/pics
/forge/res/decks


by doing this, all versions of forge can use the same pictures and decks, and if a new version is not stable enough (i heard it happens^^), you don't have to revert anything

now the real magic going on is in the res/main.properties file of every single version. you have to change two lines:

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decks-dir--file=../../../res/decks
image/base--file=../../../res/pics


".." three times steps from /forge/versions/YYYYMMDD/res up to /forge before going back down to /forge/res/decks

you are, of course, not limited to that. say you have multiple users playing forge, and everyone wants his own separate deck directory, you can just put

Code: Select all

decks-dir--file=~/decks
image/base--file=../../../res/pics


instead. the pictures are then shared, and forge looks in every user's home directory (for example "C:\Users\Sample User") for the decks directory



as a note in the end, i don't just point forge.properties to a shared main.properties for a specific reason: the res directory is not fully compatible between versions. besides there being a "program/version" property, the rarities-files, as mentioned with every release are NOT backwards-compatible

hope i helped, and have fun!

Yeahhh, I personally really like the addition of the properties files, thanks again for spending time adding them silly freak

What would be very cool also is to have a separate folder for token pictures (for instance /res/pics/tokens ?).
Now, I don't remember exactly, but this might require some extra coding when trying to fetch the image for the token to display.

the properties files are no problem, basically a line in main.properties and NewConstants.java, but i'm not so into the rest of the code and don't know what it would take

Awesome! Moving files would have been more and more cumbersome as this wonderful project got larger and larger. Now I can keep them all organized in one spot! Way to go with the quality of life improvement here!