How does Forge decide which card image to use?

[DirectOrder]

Can anybody explain to me how the image file structure works in Forge? I went into the "cards" folder, and there are, what looks like, images for each card, and then many folders with additional copies of the card images in them.

I understand that the additional folders house alternate art for cards from different sets, but when does Forge use these? I updated the images in the main (/cards/) folder with HQ art, but when I go into the game, many of the images are still pulling from the set folders.

Then I tried deleting all of the set folders so the game would only use the HQ images in the main folder, but when I got back into the game, many of the cards images were missing.

Can somebody explain how the game decides which image to use? And is there a way to force the game to only use the "main" image in the /cards/ folder? I don't care about having multiple images for cards. And I don't want to have to update 50 different subfolders with HQ art. I just want to update the main /cards/ folder with HQ art and have the game pull all images from there. Is this possible? Is there an option that says "Don't use alternate card art"?

Thanks for any help you guys can provide!

[friarsol]

If the set cards are available, they are used. Otherwise, the card default is used. If you added HQ manually and you had some not show up, that means they are probably not named properly.

[DirectOrder]

If the set cards are available, they are used. Otherwise, the card default is used. If you added HQ manually and you had some not show up, that means they are probably not named properly.

What if the set cards are not available? Because when I deleted my set folders, the card images disappeared in-game. And the ones in the main folder are named properly, I'm 100% sure of that. Does the game's internal "understanding" of the image folder structure have to be "refreshed" to see that set folders are now gone?

[friarsol]

If the set cards are available, they are used. Otherwise, the card default is used. If you added HQ manually and you had some not show up, that means they are probably not named properly.

What if the set cards are not available? Because when I deleted my set folders, the card images disappeared in-game. And the ones in the main folder are named properly, I'm 100% sure of that. Does the game's internal "understanding" of the image folder structure have to be "refreshed" to see that set folders are now gone?

Did you restart Forge in between? Can you take a screenshot of a card that doesn't appear in Forge, and it in the main folder location (incluing the path)?

[DirectOrder]

I found the culprit, it's the preconstructed decks.

The art does pull from the main folder when using random decks if the set folders are missing, but since the preconstructed decks were made using specifically selected set cards, they lose their art when the set folders are deleted.

So that brings me back to my original hope. An option that does this:

When looking for card art, I don't care where you think it is or where it should be, look in the main folder first. If you find a card there with the name you are looking for, use that. If you can't find a card with that name in the main folder, *only then* go and look for it in a set folder if they exist. Whatever you do, don't look for the card art in a set folder first, even if the card was selected from a set. If there is art for that card in the main folder, use it first and always.

I take it there is not an option like this in the game? "Don't use alternate art for cards"? Or, "Only use images from main card folder"?

[friarsol]

I take it there is not an option like this in the game? "Don't use alternate art for cards"? Or, "Only use images from main card folder"?

Nope. That feature doesn't exist.

[DirectOrder]

Ok, thank you for the replies and info!!

[RumbleBBU]

As a slight (yet related) aside, there is something peculiar in how the game handles basic land card art for AI decks in the quest mode. I think this changed some time between 2014 and 2017 but can't say when exactly...

Case in point:
I came across this with some of my old custom quest worlds. I had manually created some of the opponent decks with a text editor, without using the import feature. So when I wanted basic lands, I would add a line like "10 Mountain|TMP" or "20 Plains|3ED", and so on. Note that I did not add a "|1" or the like at the end of the line to denote a specific art version - this would be important later on. The older Forge version did not care, it would give the opponent random art based on what was printed in that set.

This changed at some point. (Between 2014 and 2017.)

The newer Forge versions behaved very curiously if you gave your opponent deck, say, "20 Plains|3ED" (rather than "20 Plains|3ED|1").

It might give your opponent one of the 3 Plains cards printed in Revised. Or it might use the Plains art in the main card art folder (and not the 3ED set folder) instead. Or it could give your opponent the fourth Plains art in Revised. But wait, you say, there is no fourth Plains art in Revised! You're right. But Forge didn't care. It was clever. It would use some other "Plains4.full.jpg" instead, possibly the one in your /pics/cards/ directory. And not only that, it would then copy the image file to the 3ED set folder as well, for further use! Never mind that you wouldn't have seen any Plains art like that in the original Revised set...

I must say I was puzzled and amazed the first time I saw this happen. Took me quite a while to figure out it was because of not having specified the art version for the opponent decks. To fix it, I simply had to add "|1" at the end of all basic land lines for all opponent decks I had previously created. (Easier said than done, I have a handful of private custom worlds, each with roughly ~100 opponent decks.)

Of course, it would be a bit more logical if the game simply checked how many different art versions of a card there are available in the set before picking one at random, so it wouldn't ask for the "fourth plains art in Revised" or such. The required information is already there in the /res/editions/ definition files.

(Or maybe this already has been 'fixed' upstream since I last updated my play version.)

[ShivaFang]

Of course, it would be a bit more logical if the game simply checked how many different art versions of a card there are available in the set before picking one at random, so it wouldn't ask for the "fourth plains art in Revised" or such. The required information is already there in the /res/editions/ definition files.

I'm not sure that this is easy to do without building a database table of all the basic lands in a set (ie - going through the entire list of cards in the set.) I don't think this variable exists, at least not that I've seen when I was trying to figure out how to do this for saving and reloading randomly built decks - I wound up pulling the cards from a list of cards I built that included one of each plains.

It also opens the door to some weirdness with Fallen Empires/Homelands (and Ice Age too iirc) where there were multiple arts for some of the non-land cards in the same set. Right now, I think it will just always default to |1 since that is an exception that doesn't occur in very many sets and probably won't again.