moomarc wrote:Rumble is slowly expanding the format and hopes to have 'quest worlds' where everything will be limited by your sefined formats. There is still quite a lot of work before that's all set up though and he had some setbacks because of some massive code base overhauls that kept interfering with his work.
Thanks, Marc - I've been busy (RL busy) the past couple of days, ever since the last beta release, to be precise, and you have summarized a lot of it neatly.
Just a few clarifications and explanations related to unlocking and quest worlds:
- The "every 50 wins" limitation was in 1.3.0. The new beta, 1.3.1, gives you an unlocking button that will be displayed right next to the Spell Shop and Bazaar buttons when applicable. "When applicable" means, here, that 1) you are playing a quest where you can unlock new sets, 2) there are unlockable sets available in Forge, 3) you have enough wins to have at least one unlock available, and 4) you have unused "unlock tokens". Every "n" wins, you get an "unlock token" that entitles you to unlock a set. Currently "n" is 20, I believe. You can have more than one, and you can choose when to use them. You still have to pay money, though, and while I changed the formula to make the set prices a bit less exorbitant, they might still be too expensive (your feedback will be appreciated here). And, finally, the number of sets you can choose from depends on how many wins you have overall. Basically it is two options + one more per every 50 wins, to up to 8 different sets to choose from. So if you click the unlock button and don't see anything you like...you don't have to spend your token(s) now, you can win some more duels, and there will be more options to choose from.
- The quest worlds: what I'm working on (or "will be working on again" is more like it - see explanation later on) is the easy part. I'm just building a skeleton structure, or supporting code, that enables the possibility of different quest worlds. The hard part is actually building different "worlds" for the different formats. I have one practically complete one already, my Shandalar conversion, that I will be using for testing, although I'm not sure if we want to/can include it in the actual distribution in its current format (it contains art from the Microprose game - maybe I should drop the icons?). But what we need is decks, with descriptions when/for which blocks and formats they were legal. Once we have enough decks for, say,
Urza's Saga block, we could add an "
Urza's World". This is where we are going to need help from Forge users. Even deck lists would help.
...and what's currently stalling my progress...is, unfortunately, the Concurrent Modification Exception bug that quest challenges with preset cards give you, introduced in 1.3.0. I have been looking into it and banging my head to a wall. I just can't nail it. When I add some tests (for example, test println's), it randomly goes away - or reappears. And so far, my understanding of the relevant display code is still rather limited, so don't expect any results soon...
But I really,
really need that fixed before I can continue on the quest worlds.