Hi to the new guys

[mtgrares]

I noticed there were a few "new guys" and I just wanted to say Hi to slapshot5, Jim, and whoever else I missed. Thanks for your effort.

(Since I designed most of Forge, I feel sorry for you guys who wrestle with my code. Hopefully the result is worth the effort though.)

And by the way, Dennis has done a great job leading the development of Forge.

[slapshot5]

mtgrares - Thanks! I've been hacking away at your code since April 08. I had e-mailed you once about that time regarding the game. (I'm another Dennis.)

I'm glad Forge has taken off like it has. Pretty cool!

-slapshot5

[jim]

Thanks for the welcome. I was happy to find Forge and happy to find it as easy to extend as it has been, so I think you did fine.

And I agree that Dennis does a great job of keeping everything running smoothly.

- Jim

[mtgrares]

I'm glad Dennis and everybody has made you feel welcome. Maybe all open source projects are "happy" like ours but who knows, I haven't worked on any other projects.

I read a funny quote, "No one starts up an open source project because they have too much time on their hands".

[jim]

In some ways this is a really good open source project because there are so many different cards that can be added. There's plenty of room for parallel development.

How much of the design was done when you went open-source with it? Or did you start out that way?

[mtgrares]

I designed everything until Forge had 1,800 cards I think. So I designed all of Forge's architecture although DennisBergkamp and Rob Cashwalker have changed/modified much of my code in order to add new cards. I did things very "quick and dirty" because I tried to get the project working quickly. All of Forge's inadequacies are my fault.

I'm still very proud of the Card and SpellAbility class as well as the Input class (which uses the State Pattern) but the user interface code and combat code could be greatly improved.

My misc. background info is that I have a bachelor's degree in computers but I've never worked professionally as a programmer. And I'm 31, yeah.

[DennisBergkamp]

Yeah, we have actually changed very little in terms of design. The biggest changes have come from Rob's keywords and some large changes such as implementing protection, also zerker's mana abilities come to mind and of course silly freak's reworked directory structure, jpb added the beginnings of first strike. Most of the other changes were just a million tiny changes and additions.

Anyway, this really didn't change much of the underlying architecture... even though there's some people that don't seem to like the architecture of Forge very much, I think it has come a long way. We have over 3,000 cards supported now, and there's many more to come
I've started messing around with the code of Forge in late 2008, it had around 940 cards supported then.

[silly freak]

yeah, programming is always a compromise, and although I don't like the architecture that much, too, but as it works, I try to help to make it better. Lately, I only worked on my own project. But hey, it supports five cards! Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain and Forest, that is...

[mtgrares]

Anyway, this really didn't change much of the underlying architecture... even though there's some people that don't seem to like the architecture of Forge very much, I think it has come a long way.

By now you probably understand Forge better than me. I tried to design Forge well but there are plenty of rough spots.

As I see it, the biggest problem that Forge currently has is that the cards need to call methods (in GameAction or someplace) instead of doing the dirt work themself, like bouncing a creature or dealing damage directly to a card or player. Basically Forge needs another layer of indirection.

"Every problem in computer science can be solved by adding another layer of indirection."