Make Magarena better

[tc85123]

I think it would be much better if the card the AI plays would be shown to the user and the user would have to click something to notify that they have seen the card the AI just played. Half the time I don't know what's going on. One of my creatures will disappear I'll be scrambling to figure out why and have to backtrack and read on the log what happened.

[melvin]

Hi tc85123, I think this might be due to one of the settings. You can configure the game to always pause for you to pass your priority manually.

Go to Settings -> Preferences -> Gameplay -> disable "Skip single option choices when appropriate". Please try this change and see if it improves the experience for you.

[hong yie]

a scroll bar in the log is planned, might be available in the next version. here is the link to track the issue http://code.google.com/p/magarena/issues/detail?id=519&sort=-id

[Lodici]

I kind of agree with @tc85123. Disabling "Skip single option..." helps but then I think it feels very stop/start, almost like single-stepping through code when you are debugging and you seem to spend most of the time staring at the log instead of the battlefield. One idea is to emulate DOTP such that when the AI plays a card it zooms to full size, is displayed for, say 5 seconds using a countdown timer, and then zooms down its battlefield location. The user can pause the countdown timer if they want more time to look at the card or can adust the pause interval as required. I think this would improve the gameplay flow, make it easier to see what the AI is doing and alleviate the need to constantly refer back to the log.

[hong yie]

I kind of agree with @tc85123. Disabling "Skip single option..." helps but then I think it feels very stop/start, almost like single-stepping through code when you are debugging and you seem to spend most of the time staring at the log instead of the battlefield. One idea is to emulate DOTP such that when the AI plays a card it zooms to full size, is displayed for, say 5 seconds using a countdown timer, and then zooms down its battlefield location. The user can pause the countdown timer if they want more time to look at the card or can adust the pause interval as required. I think this would improve the gameplay flow, make it easier to see what the AI is doing and alleviate the need to constantly refer back to the log.

Agreed. pretty similar to the real official MTG online game doesn't it?

[Lodici]

a scroll bar in the log is planned, might be available in the next version. here is the link to track the issue http://code.google.com/p/magarena/issues/detail?id=519&sort=-id

I will look into this but it is a bit fiddly and probably won't be available in the next release. In the meantime I have added an option to view the "game.log" file via the game menu (ESC -> Game Log). This is available from build build 1.48.883 onwards.

[Lodici]

The "game.log" file (ie. the full game log) can now also be viewed directly from the game screen by right clicking anywhere on the screen log component. By default and to closer match the UI log, it will filter out the AI diagnostic information for clarity.