Magarena Release 2.0

[ubeefx]

The last release of Magarena was in December 2019. It is now almost 3 years later.
I have been thinking for some time how a new Magarena release could be made.
An idea I came up with is to customize Mad Wizard into Magarena 2.0.
As it is not based on the Magarena github code but rather on Mad Wizard I post it here.

Download Magarena 2.0

These are the ingredients to make it ressemble Magarena of 10 years ago :

• The starting point is Mad Wizard 3.8
• The game is renamed to Magarena 2.0
• The game uses a home folder called Magarena
• The Magarena logos are used
• Player avatars are the combined epiko and pedro avatars
• Opponent avatars are the legend avatars from Dreamwalkers 7.x
• There are 5 scrolling backgrounds, one for each color, as in the original color themes
• There are 25 random deck themes : 5 mono color, 10 two colors and 10 three colors
• The decks have 40 cards
• From all available 4292 cards in Mad Wizard a cube of 1218 cards is constructed
• There are around 4700 card images needed (830 MB)
• Downloading of the card images is made faster by using 4 threads
• Token cards images are also downloaded

The cube :

cube.txt

(19.96 KiB) Downloaded 89 times

Enjoy!

[Cyril]

Cool! I never played your original Magarena sadly. Does version 2.0 replicate the original Magarena gameplay gauntlet / card pool but with the improved Mad Wizard UI and AI? If so that's a neat way to keep the project going!

[ubeefx]

Actually this release has several improvements over the original Magarena.
The last release I did of original Magarena was version 1.13 in April 2011.

The key similarity is the 40 card color themed randomly generated decks from a cube.

Magarena just had duels between two generated decks, not the gauntlet campaign.
There was no support for a mana pool, this was added later on in Mad Wizard 3.x.
The original cube was 617 cards, so half the size, with cards from sets at that time.

The new cube is actually generated by code. It also contains cards from later sets.
It is a mix of 14 cubes from Cube Cobra and the original ubeefx cube. Also added are cards with several reprints.
The cards are finally selected on some characteristics. This gives the cube of 1218 cards.
Not every card of the original cube is present, only the ones available in Mad Wizard 3.8.

This is a screenshot of the legacy Magarena I could find back.

This is the updated version.

[Cyril]

Thanks. The code-based cube element is interesting and the 40 card decks gives it a unique feel. It also makes me wonder whether it's technically possible to do a Jumpstart-style experience: i.e. giving the player and opponents semi-random decks based on different combinations of that set's themes. As you know, I love the randomised deck element in your games - but I imagine there are significant challenges, so I'm asking out of curiosity really.

Also out of curiosity, what are your plans for Magarena 2.0? Will you continue to develop it alongside Mad Wizard, or is this a one-off release so that people who missed Magarena the first-time round can continue to enjoy the improved original experience?

[ubeefx]

Jumpstart seems indeed like a good fit for this game, something to keep in mind.
There is a lot of info on https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Jumpstart.

Magarena 2.0 is mainly a one-off to experience once again the core Magarena gameplay.
Mad Wizard will be the main game to continue improving.