Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Hi, I just downloaded the latest version of Forge, and have two questions:
1) Developer page states "You can download the rest of the LQ card pictures or the high-quality (HQ) card pictures using the menu on the New Game screen", but there is not the appropriate function (just LQ pics and sets). Will it be supported in next releases?
2) In the meantime, how can I have HQ cards in Forge? Since I'm not very proficient, would it be possible to have an easy, step-by-step guide pointing all the right files to download and the folder to unrar them properly?
Thanks in advance for any reply.

BlackLotus82 wrote:Hi, I just downloaded the latest version of Forge, and have two questions:
1) Developer page states "You can download the rest of the LQ card pictures or the high-quality (HQ) card pictures using the menu on the New Game screen", but there is not the appropriate function (just LQ pics and sets). Will it be supported in next releases?
2) In the meantime, how can I have HQ cards in Forge? Since I'm not very proficient, would it be possible to have an easy, step-by-step guide pointing all the right files to download and the folder to unrar them properly?
Thanks in advance for any reply.

`
Due to issue's beyond the control of the current dev team, HQ pics are no longer downloaded by forge. Unfortunately, there are no easy step by step process where you could add over 8000 HQ pics to your local copy of forge.

What a pity!
I really hope you guys will be able to overcome this issue in the near future. Magic cards have some fantastic art, and it would be great to appreciate it in its full splendor...
Anyway, thanks for quick reply and good work programming the next release!

The HQ pics can be manually loaded from the HQ pics archives that are in the Pictures section of the forum. The pics need to be in set-coded folders under your {forge folder}/res/pics/ folder. ie: /res/pics/ICE/ or /res/pics/IA for Ice Age pictures.

Be warned, that users have reported significant errors related to using HQ pics. The LQ Set pics are based on the HQ pics provided in the forum, but resized to slightly better than Gatherer pic quality. They look quite decent actually. The only time you'll see pics in a size large enough to notice the HQ, is in the first few turns of the game, before the battlefield gets crowded.

Rob Cashwalker wrote:The HQ pics can be manually loaded from the HQ pics archives that are in the Pictures section of the forum. The pics need to be in set-coded folders under your {forge folder}/res/pics/ folder. ie: /res/pics/ICE/ or /res/pics/IA for Ice Age pictures.

Be warned, that users have reported significant errors related to using HQ pics. The LQ Set pics are based on the HQ pics provided in the forum, but resized to slightly better than Gatherer pic quality. They look quite decent actually. The only time you'll see pics in a size large enough to notice the HQ, is in the first few turns of the game, before the battlefield gets crowded.

Yup, except when you hover over them and get a fully zoomed in view.
I personally use HQ pics, LQ just doesn't do the trick for me (low res becomes especially apparent because the monitors I use are a 1080p display and a 1920x1200 - I do however notice a bit of a slowdown when using HQ, but it's entirely worth it for me).
We have no easy way of distributing them, the only ways I know of getting them are:

1. Through this link: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=a3f1dd14c814b40b07258ee67c679e4a23a2c466648140f2a543906a5faff527
2. Bittorrent, there should be some torrents floating around with the pictures.

I've downloaded this 2 torrents and it works very well so far:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=445

I'm excited to try forge.

On topic, pictures, can forge ONLY use full images?
I prefer cropped pictures for various reasons.
I don't care if forge can NOT render card frames,
plain text is fine with me as long as I have picture/mana symbols.

Also, can you make it so the image import ONLY takes cards that are actually used in the forge application.
Because only 8,000 or so are being used.

Can you set it up so that we can specify a directory for cards?
(if it is a file naming issue, perhaps make forge recognize multiple naming formats)
I don't like to have two 2gig sized folders, when I could just be using one 2gig sized folder.
(Disk space is at premium for me)

Forge doesn't have the capacity to draw the frames. The naming convention looks for folders similar to the MWS format, which the HQ project on the forum follows. The card names can either be Card Name.full.jpg or card_name.jpg. Forge has a preferences setting which points to a folder where the files already exist.

I'm not sure what it could do with cropped pictures. I could certainly add it to the naming format... but not sure if it would keep the aspect ratio. And if you can live with just the text in the detail panel, then why bother with the images?

I just prefer crops is all, they are after all... like, less then half the cards full image; and I prefer oracle rulings/text.
For mws, I only have fulls for promos, level-up creatures, kamigawa block flip cards, unglued/unhinged, and the few other cards with non-default card frames/picture sizes.

Well, I went a head and deleted the images in forge, and now downloading the built in LQ ones.

I'll also be looking to get into pauper mtgo, only way I can afford to use the mtgo game.
(though visions/mirage/etc common set x 4 are like 50$ each and not the usualy 4-5$ for newer sets)

ps. Darn buggy cat/dog captcha thing! GOSH
And thanks for the super fast reply.