Contributing to Forge

[Zuchinni]

Hey All,

What's the process for getting SVN commit/branching access (and do we follow a specific branching structure)? I've made some additions to the cheat menu to allow exiling cards from player's hands and battlefields and am wanting to add these changes to the code base. There are some other things I'd like to improve in Forge as well (various aspects of the AI, UI stuff). I don't know if I'll have a ton of time to work on Forge, but it seems like a fun side project.

[Agetian]

Hi,
The usual process is publishing a patch or two to demonstrate what you can do and what you are willing to do, then, if the patches are deemed to be of acceptable quality and of use for the project, asking one of the moderators to provide you with commit rights for the SVN. I'm not sure who is giving commit rights now (personally I used to ask Rob Cashwalker back in the day), but feel free to ask friarsol about it, he is a moderator and he should be in the know.

Will be glad to see you contributing to Forge! Help is always welcome!

Most of the upstream work at the moment happens in trunk, but it is definitely possible to set up a custom branch to work in, and it is generally good practice to do so for bigger and/or experimental patches and improvements.

- Agetian

[friarsol]

Yea I can grant permissions for people, but I've been pretty busy lately as far as code reviewing goes, so just do a diff/patch on your changes and post them up here. Depending on how indepth they are, we'll either apply them and commit, or just grant permissions. The former usually happens for very small changes, just so we aren't opening access for a single change, and then someone going crazy with their changes that were unexpected. As I mentioned in the PM, we're not very harsh, as more hands are definitely welcome, just good to follow a bit of procedure.

[Zuchinni]

Sounds good. I'll get a patch together and post it later today then. The changes are pretty minor, I'm mainly doing little things right now while getting familiar with the code base. It's pretty big!

[Zuchinni]

Patch attached. You'll need to change the file extension to .patch, as it won't let me upload .patch files (due to low post count I'm guessing).

[Agetian]

Thanks! I'll check it out a little later when I have a bit more time and I'll get back to you with my feedback.

- Agetian

[Agetian]

Ok, I patched my local copy of the game and tested it. Visually the constraints for the new cheat options are a bit odd (both appear on the left side of the dev menu, leaving a gap on the right - this happens because you used halfConstraints for both instead of halfConstraintsLeft). Both options work correctly though and I think they are quite useful for testing cards work with exiled cards, as well as for taking out cards from hands that are not needed for a particular test. I'll commit the changes to trunk, I believe they are safe to commit and are of use for testing purposes.

- Agetian

[Zuchinni]

Thanks for checking it out. I'm not sure I follow on the visual issue though, attached is what my dev menu looks like. Is there another dev menu somewhere that's multiple columns (left vs right side?)? Or does it change based on resolution?

[Agetian]

Thanks for checking it out. I'm not sure I follow on the visual issue though, attached is what my dev menu looks like. Is there another dev menu somewhere that's multiple columns (left vs right side?)? Or does it change based on resolution?

Ah, there's also the dev panel (along with the dock, prompt and stack) where the same commands are lined up in two columns, that's what I typically use.

- Agetian

[Zuchinni]

I see it now, that's much easier to use. Looks like you corrected it in the commit?

[Agetian]

I see it now, that's much easier to use. Looks like you corrected it in the commit?

Yep Oh, and personally I found your modification very useful in my today's experiments where I needed an exact setup in the AI's hand over several turns.
By the way, what other updates are you planning to the Forge codebase?

- Agetian

[Zuchinni]

Haha, that's exactly what I made it for actually. I'm wanting to improve the AI's land drop logic next. I've noticed it'll hold back tapped lands when it needs that mana for the next turn, along with some other oddities. I think there's a lot of potential for improvement in the AI right now, so I may keep on that for a while.

[Agetian]

A really good idea, best of luck to you!

- Agetian

[friarsol]

Hey Zuch,

Can you request to join the user group developers forge? I'm mostly able to check the boards from my phone since my 1 year old thinks it's funny to close my laptop loud when I'm trying to do forge things