Magarena 1.16b

[melvin]

Updated on 27th July
Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports. I have uploaded version 1.16b, which resolves a number of serious bugs.

Download Magarena 1.16b for Windows/Linux/Mac

Release 1.16b (July 27, 2011)
=============
This is a bug fix release.
- deck strength viewer is back due to popular demand, moved PLAY button next
to NEW button to make space for it on netbook resolution
- fixed color of normal selection to green and combat selection to red
- fixed a GUI crash bug
- fixed a bug where the game logic thread would get stuck on non-Linux systems
- implmented a better way to increase responsiveness of the GUI by decreasing
the priority of the game logic thread

Original post from 25th July

Time of the month for another release of Magarena

Link to buggy release removed.

Release 1.16 (July 25, 2011)
============
- 918 cards in total
- added ubeefx cube (617 cards)

- added Mutavault
- added Sun Titan

- fixed: unresponsive GUI, especially when playing against monte carlo AI
- fixed: several crash bugs in monte carlo AI (crash free in more than 100,000 self play games)
- fixed issue 31: previous blocking choices are not cleared if player redo the blocking phase
- fixed issue 28: AI getting stuck when there are many creatures on the battlefield, needs more testing
- added variant of minimax that cheats
- popup card info no longer disappears when the phase changes
- do not auto pass priority when AI blocks your attackers
- increased delay when auto passing priority with item on stack to 2s
- selectable cards are now highlighted with a colored border instead of an overlay
- removed GUI deck strength viewer as it could take a long time to run
- added four more custom decks

[Aswan jaguar]

About "selectable cards are now highlighted with a colored border instead of an overlay" with some themes you can't understand which card is highlighted.
See photo.

[melvin]

Thanks for the report. Some of the themes will need some adjustments to the highlight color. The ones hosted on google code will be updated shortly.

I'm thinking that maybe the highlight color should be fixed by the game to be pure green for normal abilities and pure red for combat instead of leaving it up to the theme. Since this has the potential for confusion if different themes use different colors.

[Huggybaby]

removed GUI deck strength viewer as it could take a long time to run

But that's not a bug...I vote to bring it back, even if you put it in a different menu.

Thanks for the new version!

[ubeefx]

That was actually a cool feature and worked quite well. I have it in Dreamwalkers too.
I will however let Melvin determine the new direction of this project.

[melvin]

@ubeefx: which feature?

@Huggybaby: the current viewer has the problem that it could a long time to complete. There has been some improvements on this front getting the AI to run more consistently but more work is needed. For something on the UI, it should either run relatively fast or be decoupled from the main program so that it can take its time to run in the background.

What do folks use the deck strength results for?

It seems to me that one use of the deck strength viewer is to avoid one sided situations which are not fun (unless you enjoy beating up the AI for some reason...). What actually seems to matter more in a particular game is the order of cards in the library and hand. Currently, I'm thinking of using the monte carlo AI to evaluate a particular library/hand order in a game and reject certain games that are too easy for the player or AI.

[Aswan jaguar]

Another crash I cast Day of Judgement tap 2WW and it crashes saying pay one colorless mana.The program doesn't even close.

[melvin]

I finally managed to replicate the bug. It only occurs on Windows and not on Linux (where I do most of my playtesting).

I made a fix and tested it on Windows and it works. Can you download the new version from http://magarena.googlecode.com/files/Magarena_1051.exe (put it in your Magarena directory together with Magarena.exe, but run Magarena_1051.exe instead of Magarena.exe) and let me know if it works for you.

Thanks for your patience, this is really a very annoying bug.

[ubeefx]

@melvin
The deck strength calculator.
The custom shuffler already ensures a mix of lands and other cards.
Bad hands or draws are part of the game, does it need to be removed?

[Huggybaby]

Melvin, I use the deck strength tester for various reasons. I like winning with a deck that is "supposed" to lose. Also, if I keep getting killed, I like to make sure decks are relatively balanced.

The tester is slow, but is one of my favorite features anyway. Besides, with my new Core i9 it will speed up.

[melvin]

Bug fix release posted, see first post.

Deck strength viewer is back by popular demand. I'm probably too used to the command line version of the strength viewer, which was why I didn't miss the GUI one. You guys made me realize its importance and significance.

Regarding the game evaluator, what I was thinking is an enhancement of the custom shuffler. That way I see it is that the custom shuffler helps to avoid games with "mana" issues. This solves one class of problems that makes games less fun. However, it doesn't take care of card utilities, because being able to play cards doesn't mean it will help in your game.

Sometimes I want to play a single game and I find that the AI deck has such a bad card order that I can win easily just by bashing with my monsters and not having to think very hard. Or that I have such a bad card order that the I can't find any counters to the attacks by the AI. These games tend not to feel as satisfying as a tight battle where I need to think carefully about every move.

The game evaluator estimates the probability of winning from the order of the library. The idea is to avoid games where either the AI or human has a very high probability of winning as these tend to be less fun because they typically do not involve interesting plays. This will be an option that advance players can enable to play only more tactical games.

[ubeefx]

Game evaluator sounds like a nice feature if it can be toggled.
Then every game will count. Narrow wins are the sweetest.

[Huggybaby]

The people have spoken! Thanks melvin!

Bring on the game evaluator, it sounds like a perfect new feature for MagArena.

[mtgrares]

Your welcome Btw, I've simplified the logic for the "skip single choice" option, so that the game will auto skip at more places, however it does seem a little too aggressive. Let me know if the games goes too fast with that option on and where I should add some pauses.

The only downside is when the AI kills one of my creatures and it just zips by because I don't have any instants/abilities to play. I have to look at the graveyard or the game log to figure out what happened. Great release though, I've been playing 1.14 and 1.16b just "feels better". Thanks for keeping the memory requirements low, my PC is old with 256 MB of RAM and Magarena takes up less memory that Forge, which has a simple AI.

I've experienced a few crashes on Windows XP but I just downloaded the update, Magarena_1051, and I'll see how it works. Java is supposed to be write once, run anywhere but easier said than done.

I played Magarena from 2 to 4am last night, insane just true, and I had a great time.

[Huggybaby]

selectable cards are now highlighted with a colored border instead of an overlay

Thanks for the report. Some of the themes will need some adjustments to the highlight color. The ones hosted on google code will be updated shortly.

I'm thinking that maybe the highlight color should be fixed by the game to be pure green for normal abilities and pure red for combat instead of leaving it up to the theme. Since this has the potential for confusion if different themes use different colors.

The colored border is OK, but it should be an option because the highlight is also very good. The highlight color should not be fixed by the game. If the theme maker makes an unusable theme, with an unorganized palette and bad color choices, it is his responsibility. I find most of the themes available now pretty to look at---but unusable---because there is so much distracting artwork that I can't see the cards well. (I usually use the Wood theme. My personal theme is very usable, but still locked up on a bad hard drive. I will release it one day, I promise.)