Working Together

[frwololo]

<Topic split from Scry by request>

The more I see the progress on forge, the more I'm unhappy that we are not the same project. Wagic and Forge are clearly going in the same direction, too bad we are not targeting the same platforms. We would go twice as fast .

Rob, congrats on getting the keywords more and more generic

[Huggybaby]

In the future there will be a new project, and all the guys here will be able to work on it. I don't know when, but I'm sure it will happen; it's illogical to think otherwise and there is too much duplication of effort now.

I foresee a DotP replacement. All we need is a graphical frontend for the quest in Forge and we'd be there actually. I wish somebody who does the graphics for Wagic felt inclined to contribute here.

An open source, portable DotP would be the shiz.

Incantus is starting over, and rares is starting over, why can't these folks get together?

[DennisBergkamp]

Incantus starting over?

Didn't they have like 98% of all cards implemented?

[Huggybaby]

Don't know if it was that high, but it was a helluva lot.

Please see viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2113 for the important announcement.

[Rob Cashwalker]

Incantus is starting over, and rares is starting over, why can't these folks get together?

Somehow this reminded me of Jaws -
"You go in the cage? (nod) Cage goes in the water? (nod) Shark's in the water... our shark." {Quint walks off singing to Hooper's supposed demise}

Anyway... I think the biggest reason why we can't work together more is that we're all trying to solve a different problem with different tools. The problem isn't "Play magic". It's "Play magic against X". For us and Wagic, it's against an AI, for Incantus and MagicWars, it's against another player.

It would be more difficult for Rares to just jump onto the Incantus project, because his tool of choice is Java. He tried python, and it wasn't a good fit for him.

Chris has had the time and passion to learn Java, but he could have learned python just as easily, I'm sure.
I'm still abit of a newb in Java, but I can get by in just about any language, I guess.
But in both of our cases, we have little desire to learn another language, because our heart's wouldn't be in it.

As far as starting over... look at Magic Online.... They've had 3 nearly complete false-starts and the next version might just be the right one.

[Marek14]

Incantus is starting over, and rares is starting over, why can't these folks get together?

Somehow this reminded me of Jaws -
"You go in the cage? (nod) Cage goes in the water? (nod) Shark's in the water... our shark." {Quint walks off singing to Hooper's supposed demise}

Anyway... I think the biggest reason why we can't work together more is that we're all trying to solve a different problem with different tools. The problem isn't "Play magic". It's "Play magic against X". For us and Wagic, it's against an AI, for Incantus and MagicWars, it's against another player.

It would be more difficult for Rares to just jump onto the Incantus project, because his tool of choice is Java. He tried python, and it wasn't a good fit for him.

Chris has had the time and passion to learn Java, but he could have learned python just as easily, I'm sure.
I'm still abit of a newb in Java, but I can get by in just about any language, I guess.
But in both of our cases, we have little desire to learn another language, because our heart's wouldn't be in it.

As far as starting over... look at Magic Online.... They've had 3 nearly complete false-starts and the next version might just be the right one.

I think that ideal would be if Incantus worked on UI and rules engine, someone else on the AI, and a third person on an interface that would connect those two If both rules engine and AI are self-contained (the AI just sends to rules engine information of what it wants to do), why couldn't they be written in different languages?

[Chris H.]

Anyway... I think the biggest reason why we can't work together more is that we're all trying to solve a different problem with different tools. The problem isn't "Play magic". It's "Play magic against X". For us and Wagic, it's against an AI, for Incantus and MagicWars, it's against another player.

`
There is is popular phrase in american culture, "Different strokes for different folks."

There was a time in the past when everyone would go to the local gaming store to play the paper version. It was a social experience. The popularity waned somewhat. The internet now provides a chance for people to play PvP if this type of gaming interests them.

I have gotten older and hanging out at the local gaming store with the teenagers has become more difficult for me. I have become accustomed to playing PvAI games. My social needs are met by communicating with our friends here on our forum.

It may be possible to create a program which would allow people to play PvP or PvAI, but I really have not given this much thought. There is also the question of how do we get everyone to agree on which platforms we would support.

[Rob Cashwalker]

I have gotten older and hanging out at the local gaming store with the teenagers has become more difficult for me.

My LGS has a mostly 20+ crowd. Sure there are a few teens, and a number of the young kids I started playing against there have now grown up.... I did find it odd that 50 year olds came to the large pre-releases we had in the area... the same sort of 50 year olds that were at Trek conventions....
And Magic is more popular now than ever....

[Marek14]

Anyway... I think the biggest reason why we can't work together more is that we're all trying to solve a different problem with different tools. The problem isn't "Play magic". It's "Play magic against X". For us and Wagic, it's against an AI, for Incantus and MagicWars, it's against another player.

`
There is is popular phrase in american culture, "Different strokes for different folks."

There was a time in the past when everyone would go to the local gaming store to play the paper version. It was a social experience. The popularity waned somewhat. The internet now provides a chance for people to play PvP if this type of gaming interests them.

I have gotten older and hanging out at the local gaming store with the teenagers has become more difficult for me. I have become accustomed to playing PvAI games. My social needs are met by communicating with our friends here on our forum.

It may be possible to create a program which would allow people to play PvP or PvAI, but I really have not given this much thought. There is also the question of how do we get everyone to agree on which platforms we would support.

As I was saying, an IDEAL program would have core and the players would interact with that core... and the core itself would care zilch about whether the player it interacts with is human or AI.

I still believe Incantus has the best rules implementation, while in the AI department the clear winner seems to be BotArena. Forge, at this point, is somewhere around the middle on both axes, as it plays around with the rules and supports things like morph and Oblivion Ring which, so far, don't work in the BotArena system. Either of these three programs (and probably those other as well) could be the starting point for gaining something more.

I'd definitely choose Incantus' rules system including the language: I have coded almost whole Alara Reborn in just 1-2 days under that system, and that includes testing! Right now I'm waiting if there will be a simple way to convert all those cards into new format... I DON'T want to redo all of them again.

PvP systems make much easier to test card implementations, and that by itself is a good reason why to have them - even without net support as "solitaire play".

[Huggybaby]

I think that ideal would be if Incantus worked on UI and rules engine, someone else on the AI, and a third person on an interface that would connect those two If both rules engine and AI are self-contained (the AI just sends to rules engine information of what it wants to do), why couldn't they be written in different languages?

Indeed! There's no reason the different functions couldn't remain separate and be tied together under some framework.

If a full function game IS ever done independently, it will happen right here at CCGHQ. By full function I mean all the functionality of Sid Meier's last MTG offering, with the addition of rules enforced PvP.

Regarding rules engines, see Incantus' latest challenge:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2179

[silly freak]

I think that ideal would be if Incantus worked on UI and rules engine, someone else on the AI, and a third person on an interface that would connect those two If both rules engine and AI are self-contained (the AI just sends to rules engine information of what it wants to do), why couldn't they be written in different languages?

Indeed! There's no reason the different functions couldn't remain separate and be tied together under some framework.

I agree! it's maybe a lot of work to really strip out language aspects and develop a framework for "exchanging magic game actions", but it should be doable. A problem might be to (speaking OO) unwrap the Object graphs to present the game state in some text form

If a full function game IS ever done independently, it will happen right here at CCGHQ. By full function I mean all the functionality of Sid Meier's last MTG offering, with the addition of rules enforced PvP.

yeah, you're definitely right! Any programmer looking for magic on the internet will eventually find CCGHQ, and he will be stuck! it was the same with me, and i'm of course working on the perfect game

[frwololo]

As I was saying, an IDEAL program would have core and the players would interact with that core... and the core itself would care zilch about whether the player it interacts with is human or AI.

Definitely

I still believe Incantus has the best rules implementation, while in the AI department the clear winner seems to be BotArena. Forge, at this point, is somewhere around the middle on both axes, as it plays around with the rules and supports things like morph and Oblivion Ring which, so far, don't work in the BotArena system. Either of these three programs (and probably those other as well) could be the starting point for gaining something more.

You're not taking into account the main target audience of my own game: portable devices

Incantus's engine (written in Python) and Deckbot's AI have both the inconvenient that they would never run on low specs devices.

The only "universal" solution would be some kind of very limited core (such as what the linux kernel does). Programmers would then write modules around that API. I think rules enforcement can be efficiently coded in C++ (if only Incantus hadn't chosen Python ). AI is out of the question for the "base" core because an efficient AI requires more processing power than most portable devices can deliver.

I agree with you if we're talking only "PC", but as Rob said, it seems we're not all trying to achieve the same thing. However, I feel (and that was the point of my initial message) that Wagic and forge aim towards the same direction and could have been the same project. (I'm not trying to unite the two projects by the way, that was just a comment thrown in the wind). Had we chosen the same programming language, I would have suggested a merge a long time ago.

Other games are a different story I'm afraid

[Rob Cashwalker]

Java is the dominant language for OS-independent development. Blackberrys and android phones run on java. Sure, the UI stuff would need to be rewritten to not use Swing, but if we're looking for an "ideal language" java seems to be it.

[nantuko84]

it would be really nice to work together. but everyone here has their own goals now.
may be someday...

[Incantus]

I'm not starting over, just trying to figure out a better way to do card definitions. This does mean the old cards won't work, but converting them to the new format won't take too long (and for a lot of the cards, can be done by a conversion program).

I agree with Chris H. People have different motivations for why they are working on their projects. For example, I just love the challenge of trying to implement an engine that works correctly with the craziness of Magic's rules. Some others others are more interested in a version that's fun to play, and doesn't require other people, like Mtgrares and frwololo. And then there are projects, like Deckbot, that are trying to do both.

To answer Marek, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to have an AI engine that didn't require integration with the rules engine. It's easy to say the AI should just tell the rules engine what to do, but that's because you are assuming it would work similar to the way we do. Each of playing magic has our internal rules engine that lets us decide what actions are beneficial, and we play those decisions/scenarios internally before commiting to a real action. In order to get a slightly non-stupid AI, it would be necessary to allow the AI access to the rules engine to perform theoretical calculations (basically doing a search through possible move space). I would one day like to do a version with an AI, and I look at Incantus as a prototype to see what kind of architecture is needed to support the rules of Magic, and whether that architecture is feasible in faster, compiled languages. Currently I believe could use a language like Scheme or Lua to that would be both rules compliant and fast enough to do a search AI. Anyway, I believe a program closest to those goals is Deckbot/Botarena, which has quite a number complicated cards and has a decent AI.