MTGForge 02/25 (unofficial BETA) version

[DennisBergkamp]

Not many changes from the last version:

- Added in a checkbox in the main new game menu to enable/disable land stacking for the AI (set to checked on default).
- Had to increase the vertical size of the new game menu a bit to fit on this extra checkbox.
- Set the default of the already existing "Resizable Game Area" checkbox to checked (I assume everyone uses the new resizable GUI?).
- added in the new card-pictures.txt, originalRarities, b_1_1_rat.jpg and w_4_4_elemental.jpg, thanks a lot Chris!

- I also attempted to fix some of the TgtKPump stuff: the AI shouldn't be able to give multiple creatures buffs through cards like Flying Carpet and War Chariot anymore. But I'm not sure, someone test this please

For the next version, I will also include the selection of Small/Medium/Large cards on the New Game menu, this seems to be the easiest option.

[Chris H.]

Not many changes from the last version:

- Added in a checkbox in the main new game menu to enable/disable land stacking for the AI (set to checked on default).
- Had to increase the vertical size of the new game menu a bit to fit on this extra checkbox.
- Set the default of the already existing "Resizable Game Area" checkbox to checked (I assume everyone uses the new resizable GUI?).
- added in the new card-pictures.txt, originalRarities, b_1_1_rat.jpg and w_4_4_elemental.jpg, thanks a lot Chris!

- I also attempted to fix some of the TgtKPump stuff: the AI shouldn't be able to give multiple creatures buffs through cards like Flying Carpet and War Chariot anymore. But I'm not sure, someone test this please

For the next version, I will also include the selection of Small/Medium/Large cards on the New Game menu, this seems to be the easiest option.

I am now downloading and will give this a thorough testing - lots of fun times ahead.

I will take another look at the TgtKPump stuff. I know that this stuff can get tricky. I don't blame Rob for wanting to see how the TgtKPump worked out before releasing the other variants.

Did you add the changes to the cards.txt that I mentioned in the bugs thread in reference to the multi-mana problem. You may not have gotten around to it yet.

[DennisBergkamp]

Did you add the changes to the cards.txt that I mentioned in the bugs thread in reference to the multi-mana problem. You may not have gotten around to it yet.

Ahh, nope I forgot about those... I will do these for the next version.
Hopefully I will have figured out by then what's wrong with the AI not being able to use anything other than the first mana ability.

[Chris H.]

Did you add the changes to the cards.txt that I mentioned in the bugs thread in reference to the multi-mana problem. You may not have gotten around to it yet.

Ahh, nope I forgot about those... I will do these for the next version.
Hopefully I will have figured out by then what's wrong with the AI not being able to use anything other than the first mana ability.

We may want to start a separate thread for mana discussion. There are a number of circumstances to consider and our conversations are now spread out.

[GandoTheBard]

Dennis Im very impressed so far with what you've managed to do with Forge. I look forward to many more improvements.

In that spirit Id like to recommend we stop including Alldecks2 in the download. It is rather annoying to have to remember to delete it each time just so I dont have to wade through xmillion test decks that are poorly named and not the decks Im going to use anyway. I imported all my decks from the prior build (2/8) and then realized Id never find them in the cluttered menu. So now I have to go through the process again. Also Id really like the pics folder to be independant of the forge folder so that we only have to copy the files/move the files/download the files once. I mean isn't that the point of the pics folder?

[DennisBergkamp]

Thanks for the kind words! I'm having fun attempting to improve things on it, so I'm planning on doing this for awhile longer

Yes, I agree with you on the all-decks file. I was just including them just because that's what rares did in his previous releases. But I'll be happy to not include them for the next release, since it is a bit of a hassle for everyone (also for myself).

You have a point with the pics folder... I guess the reason I included it is to add Chris' custom tokens. Even though most people will probably download their own tokens from various sources (this is what I do) I think the custom tokens look much much better than the imageless ones in MTGForge.
Maybe we could find a way of putting them online, so we could add links to them in card-pictures.txt.

[GandoTheBard]

Include the tokens by all means as a zip pack. But please have the program look for pics where the user specifies. I for instance have a folder on my desktop called forge. Inside it are folders for each version since other people started updating the client. I would like to have the Pics folder there instead of under each version folder. That way I get all the pics as needed when needed and don't have to copy more files over (taking up valuable hd space.) why don't I just delete the old copies or use the move command? Well Im lazy. But my point I think is valid. One central pics folder that each version can access is more sensible than a different pics folder for each version

[Chris H.]

You have a point with the pics folder... I guess the reason I included it is to add Chris' custom tokens. Even though most people will probably download their own tokens from various sources (this is what I do) I think the custom tokens look much much better than the imageless ones in MTGForge.

I just visited the google site and found that the 01-15 Forge version has already been downloaded 1507 times. How many of them are long time users and how many of them are newcomers?

Everytime that I download and un-compress a new version I will copy over my jpgs and my deck file. I have gotten used to this and it is now second nature.

There are several tutorial decks included in the all-decks2 file and they may be a good place for new people to learn how to play the game. Are the people downloading from google all long time players or do we have a steady stream of newcomers?

We might want to consider the options before move forward.

I do not know if it is feasible, but I would like to see the all-decks2 remain only as a collection of tutorial decks. I would like to see a sub-directory with individual deck files for the decks that we create. I think Rares may be considering something similar for Forge version 2.

[GandoTheBard]

The main problem with this Chris is the one I said: Clutter. There are ALOT of decks in the default old Alldecks2. I wouldn't mind that if I didn't have to sort through them to find the ones I import/make. Also if they are supposed to be tutorial decks name them something intuitive so that new players (and old) know their purpose. Currently they just look like a collection of test decks in the menus. Additionally I don't think Forge is really set up well to do tutorials for new players. What I mean is ...shouldn't there be a tutorial mode and the tutorial decks be hard coded for easy of use and clarity?

[Chris H.]

The main problem with this Chris is the one I said: Clutter. There are ALOT of decks in the default old Alldecks2. I wouldn't mind that if I didn't have to sort through them to find the ones I import/make. Also if they are supposed to be tutorial decks name them something intuitive so that new players (and old) know their purpose. Currently they just look like a collection of test decks in the menus. Additionally I don't think Forge is really set up well to do tutorials for new players. What I mean is ...shouldn't there be a tutorial mode and the tutorial decks be hard coded for easy of use and clarity?

There are a number of decks named:

0-learn-level-1-green
0-learn-level-1-red
0-learn-level-2-green
0-learn-level-2-red
0-learn-level-3-green
0-learn-level-3-red
0-learn-level-4-green
0-learn-level-4-red
0-learn-level-5-green
0-learn-level-5-red

and then there are:

tutorial2-computer
tutorial2-human

I think there is something in the documentation that was part of the original distribution referencing the tutorials.

I agree that the current all-decks2 file could use some work.

If someone modified the all-decks2 file and made it a collection of tutorial type decks only, could this file be renamed to say:

tutorial-decks

Could the code then be changed to give an option to play a tutorial game? The code would then access the decks in this tutorial-decks file.

The all-decks2 file would then be used just for our own decks.

It might be nice to have a subdirectory full of individual deck files. We could consider this last idea at a later date.

[Rob Cashwalker]

It's conceivable....

The deck file is some sort of binary dump from the CardList data structure.

[mtgrares]

Just to tell you, I have posted the 02/24 version to the Google project so people can download it. I briefly touched up readme.html and Quick Start.html to make them more user friendly to new users. I converted the rar files to zip since zip is more popular and easier to use.

I also took out the 2 pdf files and placed them in a separate download file, more docs.zip. (I thought pdf files were easier to read that html but who knows.) I probably should remove all of the "learning" decks below and put them into "more docs.zip"

0-learn-level-1-green
0-learn-level-1-red
0-learn-level-2-green
0-learn-level-2-red
0-learn-level-3-green
0-learn-level-3-red
0-learn-level-4-green
0-learn-level-4-red
0-learn-level-5-green
0-learn-level-5-red
tutorial2-computer
tutorial2-human

[mtgrares]

And feel free to redo or totally change all-decks2, basically I just tried to provide some random decks so the user could see that MTG Forge actually worked.

Ideally each deck would be in a separate file so when you downloaded a new version of MTG Forge it could add new decks while not deleting the decks that you have created. If each deck was in a separate file you could make directories like "tutorial", "my decks", etc... Maybe all it would take is modifying "Import Deck" to "Open Deck File", because importing a deck is similar to just opening the deck from a file.

And thanks to DennisBergkamp and others for these great updates. I really enjoyed creating my rat and soldier decks that I posted in the decks forum.

[mtgrares]

I haven't really written any documentation about how MTG Forge saves decks, so here is a short, gunshot introduction. The .deck file that you import is just a Deck object written by ObjectOutputStream, which writes a binary representation of the deck. All of the decks in MTG Forge are stored in the file all-decks2, all operations are handled by DeckIO. And yes originally all of the decks were saved in all-decks but then I upgraded the code. (When I was looking throw the source code listing I saw NewIO.java which probably can be deleted but I'm not sure.)

DeckIO is relatively simple but it has to do some tricks in order to save sealed and draft decks. The Deck object has an option for a sideboard, but the sideboard per se is never used, and the card pool for the sealed decks is crammed into the decks sideboard. For draft decks the DeckIO has to save all 8 of the computer's decks that were created and associates them with the deck that you create.

Basically my advice is this, you can completely change the inner workings of DeckIO as long as all of the public method work the same. Like you would write your own version of DeckIO and put your new code into the DeckIO.java file.

And if you remove this line from AllZone.java "public static final NameChanger NameChanger = new NameChanger();" the file "name-mutator.txt" won't be needed in order to run MTG Forge. You cannot delete the object NameChanger because other parts of the program like CardFactory.java and Gui_DeckEditor.java reference it. The idea was that NameChanger would change all of the card names thus making MTG Forge legal.

I hope that helps.

[mtgrares]

About token pictures and what is legal and what I feel about it. Basically I don't want to include any Wizard's card picture in my download from my Google project page, but I don't mind if my project downloads the pics from the web. Or we could circulate our own "token picture pack" that works with MTG Forge, we could post it somewhere like on mediafire.com. These are just a few of my thoughts, I hope they make sense.