card frames

[BlindWillow]

Well, I noticed the other day that the game engine will automatically detect preset names for color/type combinations of card frames that aren't included with the original game when you put them in the art-assets/textures/card_frames directory. Specifically, I was looking at land cards, and when I put a TDX file named "BG_Land" in the card_frames directory and added <colour value="BG" /> to Verdant Catacombs, the black-green dual-land card frame showed up in-game.

Of course, this is not ideal, since Verdant Catacombs does not have a color (much less two). I wanted to get everyone's opinion as to how problematic it would be to have colored lands. I know I have coded very few cards that would need to be redone to avoid falsely detecting the color of lands (mainly stuff for my Eldrazi deck) and it wouldn't be too hard to switch filters that use Permanents() to NonLands() to avoid issues. But if there a lot of cards like Drove of Elves or Parasitic Strix out there, then it may not be worth it to achieve what is essentially just an aesthetic goal.

[thefiremind]

You would also have to consider cards that really add a color to the lands (Awakener Druid for example), in that case the color should matter.
Maybe I'm not the right person to say that, given that even using mana tokens or activated abilities that switch mana production stretch the rules too much for my taste, anyway my opinion is that I wouldn't do it.

[BlindWillow]

I wish I could figure out how the game engine adds the watermark for the Moxes (Moxen?). I can see where it does it in the .exe file, but I don't know how to do it externally, if it's with a config setting or what.

I tend to share your reluctance to break the rules in this regard. I'm willing to cross the line with the usage of colorless mana (having nonbasic lands add/use off-color mana instead), since the way the game handles colorless mana sources is no less broken in my opinion. Here, though, it really seems like it might be going too far.

[thefiremind]

if it's with a config setting or what.

It's not in an XML file because I checked them (and kevlahnota checked them, too, the proof is that he discovered where the colors for the known counters are set). If it's in a LOL file, it's almost the same as it was in the executable: decompiling the LOL files often fails, and when it doesn't fail, the resulting code is a pain to understand and can even have some errors (I tried to override a LOL file with its decompiled version but I got errors in SCRIPT_LOG and it didn't work).

I'm willing to cross the line with the usage of colorless mana (having nonbasic lands add/use off-color mana instead), since the way the game handles colorless mana sources is no less broken in my opinion. Here, though, it really seems like it might be going too far.

That should be transparent to the player in most cases... unless you gain control of a permanent with an activated ability that you can activate thanks to that off-color.

[BlindWillow]

unless you gain control of a permanent with an activated ability that you can activate thanks to that off-color.

Yeah, that's a good reason not to cross this line in decks that have control magic.