Magarena 1.16b

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Recently, while stress testing the GUI (AI plays both sides) I saw a card on the battlefield where the card image is missing and the pop-up is blank. The overlays still show and everything else works. Still cracking my head over how this could possibly happen

I saw this once too and at some point in the game it actually did load the image and all was well again. I should have made a screenshot I occasionally have missing images in the Card explorer which could be the same bug? See attachment:

[melvin]

Thanks for the tip off about the bug in the card explorer! It is much easier to reproduce the bug in the explorer than in the actual game. I'm fairly certain they are caused by the same underlying problem. Being able to replicate the bug easily is the first step to fixing it.

[mtgrares]

mtgrares: when you said "when the AI kills one of my creatures" you mean during combat or with direct damage spells?

Spells like Shock. One minute my creature is there, then in the graveyard. I never got a chance to see the spell on the stack because I didn't have any instant spells or abilities. Magarena didn't give my priority since I didn't have anything to respond with.

This is only a minor quibble and thanks for for such a great program.

[mtgrares]

Might sound strange, but I had more fun programming this game than playing.

That's the sign of a true programmer.

I didn't start playing Forge until it had 350 cards. With Forge I probably played it 1/3 of the time, it was surprising enjoyable even with an average AI. There were times when I got a "programmer's high" and would code until insane hours of the morning. Usually it was a bug that I was trying to fix.

A recent comment on my blog, "Do step by step tutorials on how to code tcg...pretty please with a cherry on top " When I read it I thought, "Kid, there isn't a book big enough to help you".

[ubeefx]

That's the sign of a true programmer.

Indeed it is.

Game programming requires skill, labour, determination, creativity.
And even then all your efforts might be just in vain.
I wrote my very first serious game when I was 19 years old in Turbo Pascal 7, a fully working Dune 2 clone.
It was a lot of fun but writing a RTS game is a different beast than a TCG game.
I also wrote a software 3D engine for a demo that finished second on a demo party in the Netherlands.
Then there was this rather large gap until Magarena with a couple of tries to write a Magic game.
I read your blog post about TCG programming, as I usually do, and there is a lot of truth in it.

[melvin]

I saw this once too and at some point in the game it actually did load the image and all was well again. I should have made a screenshot I occasionally have missing images in the Card explorer which could be the same bug? See attachment:

I think I've fixed the bug. It is due to a problem with the image caches. The program caches the last 100 viewed card images using two separate caches for different resolutions. At some point the caches are not synchronized and that is why the image is missing. Now both caches are managed separately.

I tested in the card explorer and could not replicate the bug anymore (it could also be because I'm running in a different platform now..) This fix is in today's daily build, do check it out at http://magarena.googlecode.com/files/Magarena_1126.exe There is a mechanism for autoupdate in the works, hopefully in the future it will be easier to update the program.

[Huggybaby]

Excellent, thanks melvin! I'll let you know what happens...

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So far so good.
I've been using the card explorer a lot today and never saw the bug appear again.

[mtgrares]

I used Magarena_1118.exe for two games and didn't have any problems. I was using Windows XP. While this isn't an automated bugtest, it seems that like bug is squished. Good work.

As for card pictures not working, I have one example. The AI played Siege-Gang Commander and it and the tokens didn't have any card pictures until a turn or two after. (I consider this a very minor problem.)

[melvin]

Thanks for all the help in testing the latest builds and reporting the results here

@mtgrares: The missing image bug is fixed in build 1126. Currently there is a short delay (1.5s) before the stack resolves automatically, will be made configurable in the future. Alternatively you can disable the skip single choice option in the preferences.

It seems that there is fine line between too many pauses and too many automatic skips. Getting to the sweet spot seems to require some very hairy logic...

[mtgrares]

It seems that there is fine line between too many pauses and too many automatic skips. Getting to the sweet spot seems to require some very hairy logic...

I wouldn't mind not having automatic skips or having an option of turning it off. Automatic skips is an novel idea but with Forge I got used to clicking through the phases that I don't want. With automatic skips I always have to look at the screen to see which phase or step that I'm at and with Forge I don't have to do that.

[Huggybaby]

I would welcome a No Skips At All option too. I can move very quickly through the game using my arrow keys, and with no skips I might not have to resort to the message screen so frequently to see what I missed.

[melvin]

That would be the "Skip single option choices when appropriate" option in the game preferences. Just uncheck it and the game will never pass for you. I realized the meaning of that option is not clear from its name, perhaps it should be renamed to "Automatically pass when you have no response" ?

[Huggybaby]

I have all those options turned off already, but sometimes I miss things anyway so maybe it's something else catching me off guard. I think it's when the AI takes several actions in a row. Those fly by so I have to go to the messages screen to see what happened.

[melvin]

Hmm, the AI always passes to the user and let the stack resolved before doing another action. Could be a bug if the AI takes multiple actions without pause. Can you recall a specific example where this happens even with the options turned off?