Collectible Card Game Headquarters

Tentative target release date: Friday March 7 2014.

In reference to this bug report: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=13834&start=30#p147094 (which was also previously reported in the SVN thread by both Sol and yours truly but did not receive any further discussion/action).

I was trying to look into how it's possible to fix the irritating message box "the AI picked such-and-such color for a multicolor land" and turn it into a game log entry (if you want to know why it is irritating, add 3-4 vivid lands to the AI battlefield and play for a bit ). Anyhow, I came to the following interesting conclusions:

1. For some reason, the notification of the picked color value is routed through PlayerControllerHuman instead of through PlayerControllerAi for the AI opponents (PlayerControllerAi actually has an empty notifyOfValue, but it's not called - instead, the human version with the message box is called).

2. I couldn't figure out how to add a new game log entry yet. I tried both adding an event and firing it from the inside of PlayerControllerHuman's notifyOfValue instead of the messagebox, as well as adding a game log entry directly via game.getLog().add(...) with different entry types and even with a new entry type, but neither actually showed an entry during the game. :\ Admittedly, I haven't dug deeply enough, so I'm still looking for how it's done elsewhere.

Your help here is most welcome. Unless there are any objections, I think this message should be a log entry instead of a message box, at least for the AI opponents - not sure about human opponents (is there a reason we're doing a message box for human opponents?). A log entry is non-intrusive, does not block the screen every time, and does not distract the player with flashing screen overlay. Opinions are welcome.

- Agetian

Agetian wrote:In reference to this bug report: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=13834&start=30#p147094 (which was also previously reported in the SVN thread by both Sol and yours truly but did not receive any further discussion/action).

I was trying to look into how it's possible to fix the irritating message box "the AI picked such-and-such color for a multicolor land" and turn it into a game log entry (if you want to know why it is irritating, add 3-4 vivid lands to the AI battlefield and play for a bit ). Anyhow, I came to the following interesting conclusions:

1. For some reason, the notification of the picked color value is routed through PlayerControllerHuman instead of through PlayerControllerAi for the AI opponents (PlayerControllerAi actually has an empty notifyOfValue, but it's not called - instead, the human version with the message box is called).

2. I couldn't figure out how to add a new game log entry yet. I tried both adding an event and firing it from the inside of PlayerControllerHuman's notifyOfValue instead of the messagebox, as well as adding a game log entry directly via game.getLog().add(...) with different entry types and even with a new entry type, but neither actually showed an entry during the game. :\ Admittedly, I haven't dug deeply enough, so I'm still looking for how it's done elsewhere.

Your help here is most welcome. Unless there are any objections, I think this message should be a log entry instead of a message box, at least for the AI opponents - not sure about human opponents (is there a reason we're doing a message box for human opponents?). A log entry is non-intrusive, does not block the screen every time, and does not distract the player with flashing screen overlay. Opinions are welcome.

- Agetian

1. Human version cannot be called 'instead' of AI one. This method is called to tell certain player (whose controller receives the call) what has happened (in most cases that's other players' choice). AI implementaion is empty because AI currently does not care which color have other players picked.

2. You should not try to change game log from the client's side. Either replace notifyOfValue (for the case of color choice, keeping in mind that log priority filter could make these messages not visible) with insertion of a log entry on "game"-side or make another log for client that will include events from server log (the current GameLog) and any custom messages you might want to add, like those notifications. Third option: display those choices somewhere on screen where they won't be as annoying, something like those icons on the right side of image: http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... th-map.jpg

Ok, thanks for the clarification here, Max! I'll try to tweak notifyOfValue first and see where I get with that.

- Agetian

Ok, committed an experimental tweak to r24966, doesn't affect much but just displays a log message for mana ability choices instead of the message box from notifyOfValue. Two things to possibly change: currently I'm using the existing entry log type LAND to display this, seems to both be visible to the end user *and* logically correlates with the entry display. However, maybe a special entry type should be created here (like CHOICE or something?) that can then be reused for other choice notifications if necessary?

- Agetian

Why do we need to notify the human player what color the AI tapped for via game log message or message box? Wouldn't that be automatically reflected in what color appears in the mana pool for the AI player?

drdev wrote:Why do we need to notify the human player what color the AI tapped for via game log message or message box? Wouldn't that be automatically reflected in what color appears in the mana pool for the AI player?

Not really. If the AI is casting a spell, there's no time between choosing the mana and using that mana to put the spell on the stack before the UI would ever update. It probably only really matters in cases like Sunburst and other things that care about specific mana.

friarsol wrote:

drdev wrote:Why do we need to notify the human player what color the AI tapped for via game log message or message box? Wouldn't that be automatically reflected in what color appears in the mana pool for the AI player?

Not really. If the AI is casting a spell, there's no time between choosing the mana and using that mana to put the spell on the stack before the UI would ever update. It probably only really matters in cases like Sunburst and other things that care about specific mana.

Ok, fair enough. In that case a game log entry should be fine.

Speaking about things that happen too fast -- if top card of someone's library is revealed and he draws multiple cards, the draws happen one after another, so each drawn card should be revealed.

Sphinf of Jwar Isle is similar, but since you usually see cards you draw, it's not a problem there...

Hi Chris. Was just looking through the change log and I wonder if we shouldn't consider rather moving the message about the new set card images taking a while before they'll be available for download to the known issues section. It will help keep things tidy and make actual new features or release notices more visible. Thanks for staying on top of all that admin though. Can't be a fun part of this so I always appreciate it hugely.

I noticed that downloading card prices still does not download the prices for Born of the Gods; is that because the source we're using does not yet list BNG prices (would be surprising, I think...) or because there's a bug somewhere in the content download system?...

- Agetian

Typo in the weekly polling script that runs on cardforge. I somehow had the three-letter code "BRG".

We will delay the beta for 1 week in the hopes that it will include a Mac app version.

Chris, please don't release until I'm able to confirm that reverting the change Swordshine references fixed the Morph issue?

Edit: Just committed

friarsol wrote:Chris, please don't release until I'm able to confirm that reverting the change Swordshine references fixed the Morph issue?

Edit: Just committed

 
Thank you for the heads up notice.

I will not release until I get a verification that this problem is now fixed.