Forge for Android v1.6.53.001

[jamincollins]

Installation Instructions
Download and install https://releases.cardforge.org/forge/forge-gui-android/1.6.53.001/forge-android-1.6.53.001-signed-aligned.apk

ANDROID REVISION DEPRECATION: Please note that Android 7 (and all lower versions) is now unsupported and Android 8 is now deprecated and support for it will be dropped in the upcoming releases. For newer versions of Forge, you will need a device that is running at least Android 9 (or newer). It wasn't an easy decision to make, but we have to understand that for Forge to continue on and to be supported on newer devices and platforms running newer versions of Java, we have to upgrade our toolchain and our dependencies, which, unfortunately, also means that we have to drop support for some of the older platforms. Thank you for understanding and sorry for the possible inconvenience caused by this action.

IMPORTANT:If you are experiencing a critical issue with the game (such as hanging, crashing, being unable to update, etc.), please provide the contents of your Forge.log file immediately after the game crashes/hangs. You can find this file in the "data" folder of your Forge installation. Without this file, it is impossible for us to help you.

NOTE: If you haven't already turned on the "Unknown sources" setting on your device under Security, you'll be prompted to turn it on if you want to continue with the install. This is not something you need to worry about, as it's only necessary because you're not installing from Google Play. You can always turn it back off after the install finishes, though you'll need to turn it on again whenever you want to install updates.

NOTE 2: If you've previously installed Forge and you're just installing an update, you can just install as normal. You shouldn't have to uninstall first, though if it fails, an uninstall and reinstall would be the first thing to try. Either way, rest assured that your card images, decks, preferences, and quest data will not be lost.

When running the app after installing an update or for the first time, resource files that are needed for the app to run will automatically be downloaded. This shouldn't take more than a minute or two and the splash screen will report progress while they're downloaded and unzipped.

By default, Forge does not come packaged with card images. There are two ways to pull in card images:

Automatic
Open the Setting screen and click the Files tab. Choose either of the first two options for downloading LQ pics, based on whether you want to conserve disk space and download only one picture per card as opposed to one picture for every set each card appears in. A dialog will appear and after pressing Start, the pictures will be downloaded. This process may take awhile, so please be patient.

Manual
Open the SD card on your device. If possible it's easier to do this with your device connected to a desktop computer, but otherwise you can use a file explorer app and navigate to "/storage/emulated/0", which should just be My Files > All Files on the standard Android explorer. Navigate to Forge/data

Note that you can similarly copy over decks, quest data, and preferences from a desktop version of Forge. The following mappings apply (based on a Windows user with default AppData locations)
- C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Forge\Cache\ > Forge\cache\
- C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Forge\ > Forge\data\

If you either don't have access to your computer or want other decks to play (particularly until deck editing support is added), you can also download and unzip decks from the Forge Decks forum into Forge\data\decks\constructed\.

Running the App
If everything worked properly, you should see a splash screen while resource files, cards, decks, and fonts are loaded, then be taken to the home screen shown in the first screenshot above.

From here, you can tap Settings to adjust your preferences if desired, such as picking a theme (all Forge themes are supported). If you transferred your preferences from a desktop install of Forge, you can probably skip this step. Note that, in addition to the home screen button, you can access the Settings screen from anywhere by pressing the Menu button on your device.

Tap New Game. You'll be taken to a familiar screen where you can configure a name, avatar, deck, and human/ai for each player. Then you can just press Start to play a match. Alternatively, from this screen you can click the drop down menu in the upper right to access other game modes like Draft, Sealed, Quest Mode, Gauntlet, or the new Planar Conquest mode.

Missing Features
The mobile Forge is mostly feature complete, but there are some missing features at this time.

Card animations when changing zones
Combat animations
Spell resolve animations
Scroll indicators for scrollable panes
Syncing data with desktop Forge
Mana symbol buttons appearing above touch keyboard when editing search field
Quest Tournaments are playable but with a few caveats and only with Simulate AI vs. AI Results enabled (so, you will not be able to watch the AI vs. AI matches).

There are currently very few active contributors to the mobile Forge specifically, so if you have technical knowledge required for it and the desire and time to help, you are welcome to join in!

Bug Reports
Please post bug reports and questions to this thread only if they apply to the UI in some way. Cards not working correctly or the AI not behaving properly are issues that would be shared by both the desktop and mobile versions of the game and should thus be posted in the appropriate thread (likely the Bug Reports (snapshot builds) thread since mobile Forge is on a more dynamic update schedule and typically includes changes not yet available in the current desktop release: viewtopic.php?f=52&t=6333 ).

Known Issues

It's been reported that some tablets must be set to run in portrait mode, otherwise the app opens with a black screen.
If the screen is locked and the device goes into standby mode (especially for a prolonged time), or if you switch into another application for a while and then back to Forge, the game assets may become corrupt after you unlock the screen again (all the ingame elements will be shown as black). If that happens, the only way around it is to fully restart the game. It is possible to remedy this in the majority of typical cases by enabling the "Minimize on Screen Lock" option in Forge preferences.
If Forge is freezing after clicking the Constructed screen, apparently switching to the Default theme or manually copying over files from Forge/res/skins/default to the other skins folder that aren't already there, like the image with the avatar tiles, will fix it.

Credits
Special thanks go to:

DrDev for developing Forge for Android (he is the original creator of this port) and maintaining it practically as a sole developer for a very long time.
Max Mtg and everyone who helped out with the large project to breakup the Forge project into modules.
KrazyTheFox for helping set up a Maven build process for the Android app.
moomarc and others who have created all the amazing skins used by both this app and the desktop application.
All the developers and other contributors who have scripted cards or developed card rules, game, and AI logic.
Everyone who has followed this project and offered feedback or ideas.

[jamincollins]

(quoted from DrDev's post in the previous Android thread)
FAQ

Q. Is there a separate version of the app for tablets?
A. No, there's only one version which works on both phones and tablets. The app is designed to scale certain areas as the screen gets larger while keeping others sized relative to the size of you finger, so it should look and play well on both phones and tablets. For example, the prompt will be the same physical size on both phones and tablets, but the field and cards on a tablet will be larger.

Q. I don't have an Android device. Can I get this app for my IPhone or IPad?
A. At the moment, this app only runs on Android devices. That said, it's built using libgdx, a platform built off of OpenGL to be cross-device compatible. The majority of the code is already there to create an IOS app, but I would need somebody with access to a Mac to set up a module and code a few files to get the app working, then figure out a way to publish and install the app without going through the App Store. Volunteers are most welcome for this one.

Q. What are the minimum specs required to run this app?
A. I designed the app using a minimum screen size of 320x480, and in testing the app peaks out at around 200-300MB of memory usage. So any smartphone or tablet made in the last few years should have no trouble. Specifically, this app is currently targeting Android 4.4 KitKat (API level 19) with the minimum requirement being Android 3.0 Honeycomb (API level 11).

Perhaps the most important spec to note is disk space usage, particularly if you want to use HQ pics. For reference, before card pics, the app takes up around 100MB of space including the installation (16MB), the resource files (51MB), and the font cache (32MB). If you've downloaded LQ Set pictures as I have, that adds an additional 612MB. Choosing to download only the most recent LQ picture would lower this disk usage, while opting to use HQ pics will increase it. It's up to you to decide how much disk space to dedicate to Forge on your device, but that's why all files are located on the SD card.

If the app isn't working or performs poorly on your device, please let me know so I can document such devices as potentially problematic, as well as maybe work on a solution.

Q. You've mentioned a "font cache" a few places. What's that for?
A. The libgdx platform that Forge is built upon does not support text rendering using traditional font files. Rather it uses what's called a BitmapFont, which is literally where each character is stored and rendered as an image with a color applied. To render nicely, you need a different set of images for each font size, as using image scaling doesn't always look too good. libgdx includes an extension that supports generating BitmapFonts from a .ttf (True Type Font) file, which every skin in Forge provides one of. However, this extension is slow, and generating fonts on the fly can lead to big performance problems, especially when zooming in on cards. To combat this, I set it up so .fnt and .png files for each available font size are generated and cached the first time you load the app for a given skin. After that, these cached files can be used to generate the BitmapFont much quicker on subsequent startups. The BitmapFonts are also cached in memory while the app is open to make rendering text as quick as possible.

Q. Why has nobody made a full MTG smartphone app like this before?
A. Well, it was a lot of work to create this UI from scratch. And it was definitely quite the design challenge to make the app user friendly given the complexity of Magic and the small screen real estate. But other than that, no idea.

/FAQ quoted from Dan (DrDev)/

[Silvent]

I just get a black screen when running the app.

[Deltabeta1997]

Devs,
Found a missing card in the most recent update. GoR should have a card called Divine Visitation but it's missing.

[horseoftroy]

Thanks so much for this Great Forge Application
It's very important to me since , Decks designing needs a lot of time which make it very difficult to do while setting in front of the computer
And using a phone made it a lot Easier

Thanks so much for you
And for All Forge Developers

And For All Other MTG Games developers as well

[jtrowell]

Is this release supposed to have the Guilds of Ravnica set like the desktop version ? I don't see it unlockable in my existing Quest.

Also please note that the change to the selection window for multiple cards from the same effect is a regression compared to the previous version :
- you get no warning when you select less than the maximum number of card, it is *very* easy to accidentally confirm without having selected any card at all. Having at least some form of confirmation windows when selected less than the maximum would be greatly needed
- we have ne filter or search option available on this window in the mobile version, so when selecting cards among a large pool it can be a pain (like selecting 2 creatures cards from a large deck with Defense of the Hearth)

[timmermac]

I just get a black screen when running the app.

Sounds like possibly you didn't get a full resource download. Delete your Res folder and run the app again. Make sure your phone has a strong internet connection, preferably wifi, when you run the app that time.

[jamincollins]

Devs,
Found a missing card in the most recent update. GoR should have a card called Divine Visitation but it's missing.

The card is present:

I had no trouble finding it.

[jamincollins]

Also please note that the change to the selection window for multiple cards from the same effect is a regression compared to the previous version

The multiple select is a feature that was added to try to improve selection of multiple items. Especially during network play. I don't know about mobile, but on desktop the original selection process was one at a time. When network play is brought into the mix, each of those singular selections is handled by the server/host. So, if the client casts something like say Endless Horizons and has 16+ Plains in their deck that they want to remove. The process can take roughly a minute. With the new selection dialog, the process takes 5-10 seconds.

- you get no warning when you select less than the maximum number of card, it is *very* easy to accidentally confirm without having selected any card at all. Having at least some form of confirmation windows when selected less than the maximum would be greatly needed

There are numerous places in Forge that allow mistakes like this to be made. The number of times I've accidentally passed priority or ended my turn. These things happen. However, I'll look into presenting a confirmation dialog on empty selection.

- we have ne filter or search option available on this window in the mobile version, so when selecting cards among a large pool it can be a pain (like selecting 2 creatures cards from a large deck with Defense of the Hearth)

Please provide screenshots of the issue and/or the decklist you're using. I'll see what I can do about replicating the issue and improving the interface.

[Parivir]

Vicious Rumors didn't make my opponent discard a card, see image:

[Deltabeta1997]

Deleted the app and reinstalled twice. Still no divine visitation. All of the rest of GoR is there. I would include a screenshot but the forum continues to say the file size is too large. Also having issues with unsets not appearing.

[jamincollins]

Deleted the app and reinstalled twice. Still no divine visitation. All of the rest of GoR is there. I would include a screenshot but the forum continues to say the file size is too large. Also having issues with unsets not appearing.

The card is definitely included with the release. Not sure why you aren't seeing it. You could use a File Manager on your Android device and check the res folder for the editions file, verify that it references the card. You could also upload your forge.log file, perhaps it contains a clue about why the card appears to be missing on your device.

[Deltabeta1997]

The res folders were missing for sure both divine visitation and Etrata. After combing through my phone and ensuring that every single file relating to forge was deleted, I once again reinstalled and the issue was fixed. Kinda sucks cause I lost all the decks I had built but it's all good, thanks for the help guys!

[jamincollins]

The res folders were missing for sure both divine visitation and Etrata. After combing through my phone and ensuring that every single file relating to forge was deleted, I once again reinstalled and the issue was fixed. Kinda sucks cause I lost all the decks I had built but it's all good, thanks for the help guys!

In the future it is normally sufficient to remove just the res folder. It's also possible to backup the decks, by copying them outside the Forge directory.

[Xirious]

Hi there,

This is fantastic. One of the most impressive Android versions of a MTG game yet.

Can I ask - is there a way to decrease font size? I'd prefer a slightly smaller font if possible.