Impressed by mage and how to Improve the deck editor

[LevelX]

I recently discovered the mage project. I'm very impressed what you guys already had created.
Especially the multiplayer and tournament support and such cool features as the possibility to watch games or play sealed tournaments.

I also looked through the source code and it looks very straight and good designed to me. So I'm highly motivated to code a bit of java in my free time.

Some questions concerning the deck editor.

If I open the deck editor (without starting a limited match or a tournament), there are two additional buttons "open booster" and "clear" rightmost in the line with the color and set selectors.
I looked in the source code of CardSelector.java and saw, that always the cards for a booster pack are generated, if an expansion is selected.
But the booster cards are never displayed, because the variable "limited" is always false.

Is this an unfinished feature? How is it intended to work?

I also noticed that the color selection is different to type selection. If no color is selected, no cards are selected. If no type is selected, all cards are selected. Is this intended to behave different?

The reason for this questions is, that I've begun to improve the deck editor a little bit (like selection types and colors with modifier key will only select the type or color that was clicked, well automatically deselect the other selected items).
So I would also check if I could standardize the filter behavior if the current behavior isn't intended explicitly.

What's the preferred way to handle contributions to the source code of mage from new contributors? Just to push changes to the default (I didn't check if this is possible) or is there any other way to handle it? I'm not very familiar with Mercurial yet.

[BryanM]

The booster option in the editor worked in the version prior to .8. Dunno why it was disabled; my conjecture would be due to Time Spiral's shifted cards.

(It's also odd that you can select the FNM promotional cards as a set in sealed/draft and no cards are generated by it. Personally I've nothing against making up non-existent boosters, such as with the boxed MP decks with new cards (Commander, Planechase 2012, etc). It'd be fun..)

On the topic of boosters, I've wondered if they're generated correctly; the "mythic rares come in 1-in-8 packs" is a vicious lie. The print sheets merely print all the Rares twice. So the frequency of mythics varies set to set; usually closer to 1 in 7...

[LevelX]

Thank you for the answer.

The booster option in the editor worked in the version prior to .8. Dunno why it was disabled; my conjecture would be due to Time Spiral's shifted cards.

How did it work?

I guess: If you pushed the booster button the first time, the upper card view instead of the sets only showed the content of this booster. Now you could add as many boosters as you like and all where shown in the upper view. Just as you push the clear button, the standard view of the set returns and the view of the boosters disappears.

Is that right?

[BryanM]

That sounds correct. Same interface used in sealed/draft; the pool of opened boosters replaces the selected set view.

[nantuko84]

LevelX> if you want to improve deck editor, we may discuss this in google talk or skype, this way it would be more efficient. PM me here or find the email in mage google group.