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Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 15 Mar 2013, 14:03
by BoredCertified
I've been unable to manually switch off of the swarmyard while casting spells with the Rats deck. Using left control doesn't seem to cause the mana selection to cycle. I'm not sure if it's because the game sees the rats pile as basically a mono colored black deck, or if it thinks the swarmyard is also a swamp and as such there's no need to cycle off of it? It's fairly annoying since it basically makes swarmyard's regen ability worthless as the only way you can use it is if you don't main phase any spells.

Has anyone else had this problem, or am I doing something wrong?

Re: Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 15 Mar 2013, 15:30
by RiiakShiNal
You're not doing anything wrong, it's how the game prioritizes mana usage.

It's because Swarmyard produces colourless mana and the game will prioritize using colourless mana to pay for colourless costs before using coloured mana. You would probably want to cast your main phase spells after your attack so you could use the regen ability from Swarmyard during your attack and still cast spells after the attack.

One way to change the behavior would be to change what mana Swarmyard produces to something your deck can't use except as colourless. For example if you are using a mono black deck change Swarmyard to produce a colour you can't use based on the cards in the deck like make it produce white mana if you don't have any cards that can use white mana. Then the game will let you mana cycle off Swarmyard because it won't prioritize its usage because it won't be producing colourless mana anymore. If you have a black/blue deck or a black deck that can use blue mana (using for example Brine Shaman) then you would want to make the colour red, green, or white but not blue or black. This approach is essentially situation specific and should not be used as a general coding of the card because it is not technically rule correct. I just wish we could generate other colours of mana like purple or yellow then we could solve this issue permanently.

Re: Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 15 Mar 2013, 15:54
by thefiremind
I recently invented a "universal workaround" for this issue: a function that:
  • searches for a mana color that no deck is using;
  • if it cannot find such a color, it searches for the least used color among the colors that the controller isn't using;
  • if the controller is using a 5-color deck, it gives up and the card will still produce colorless mana, otherwise it will produce mana of the color found this way.
Starting from the next release of my mod, all of my cards that produce colorless mana will be coded with this function. It shouldn't give problems in most cases (unless for example you use a Steamcore Weird in a deck without red, which would be weirder than the Weird, or you build a sunburst deck that doesn't feature each color at least once, but including colorless mana sources in sunburst decks would be dumb :lol:).

Re: Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 15 Mar 2013, 16:01
by RiiakShiNal
Could also cause problems with decks that use cards as a filler even though they wouldn't be able to use the ability. A black sacrifice deck using Brine Shaman for the +2/+2 ability and ignoring the second ability, your method could also cause problems there. Though I do agree that the likelihood of encountering problems is quite slim and it is a good method.

Re: Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 18 Mar 2013, 16:32
by BoredCertified
RiiakShiNal wrote:It's because Swarmyard produces colourless mana and the game will prioritize using colourless mana to pay for colourless costs before using coloured mana. You would probably want to cast your main phase spells after your attack so you could use the regen ability from Swarmyard during your attack and still cast spells after the attack.
More often than not I'd want to use the regen ability for blocking with my smaller rats during the opponents attack step while using the mono black rats deck. That basically means that I'll never be able to cast spells on any turn that I would anticipate needing to block/regen because it will always tap the Swarmyard first for any spell.

It's no big deal at this point anyway, just thought I'd post about it in hopes of helping you guys discuss a possible solution.

I've actually been having other issues with the mods messing up my normal version of the game lately (cards/decks re-locking and not being able to unlock anymore), so I'm now only using the PC DOTP to play around with the modded decks until 2014 comes out.

Re: Tapping Issue with Swarmyard

PostPosted: 18 Mar 2013, 19:06
by RiiakShiNal
BoredCertified wrote:It's no big deal at this point anyway, just thought I'd post about it in hopes of helping you guys discuss a possible solution.
We already talked about 2 different possible solutions, the first one I mentioned is situation specific (needs to be altered depending on the deck it is to be used in) while the solution thefiremind mentioned is considerably more universal. Neither solution is perfect and until WotC fixes the problem in their code there will be no perfect solution.

BoredCertified wrote:I've actually been having other issues with the mods messing up my normal version of the game lately (cards/decks re-locking and not being able to unlock anymore), so I'm now only using the PC DOTP to play around with the modded decks until 2014 comes out.
This is probably a problem dealing with APPID_LINKING.TXT, some mod you have installed (or removed) probably contains one that is overriding one which would be better to use (less complete file being used instead of a more complete one).

For example:
  • Deck_9999_Unlock1.wad - only contains entries for the official decks and those from the expansions and deck packs (no mods).
  • Data_DLC_8192_AppId_Linking.wad - outdated, but contains entries for Community DLC and my mod (RiiakShiNal's DLC) in addition to those for the original game and RTR decks. Does not contain the 6 decks from the deck packs that were released after the expansion or newer mods.
  • Data_DLC_0999.wad - very outdated, contains entries for the original game and Community DLC. Does not have entries for other mods or the deck packs. This wad also contains cards and decks and not just the APPID_LINKING.TXT file.
  • Data_Core.wad - Official file, only contains entries for the original game. Never delete this file it is overridden by all mods so does not need to be altered either.

If you are wondering why I didn't mention thefiremind's mods it is because his decks no longer require entries in APPID_LINKING.TXT because he only uses the Promo unlock method now.