[REL] Riiak's DotP 2014 Deck Builder v1.5.0.3

[RiiakShiNal]

1. Is it possible to add like "stats info" at the bottom right corner of the Deck Builder eg. the number of cards available...

Specifically what stats? For the number of cards available, is that total cards loaded, number of current cards in list, card space left in deck to reach 60 cards, or something else entirely?

2. Stacked sorting of the cards... especially for the casting cost... eg. after filtering the color etc. you can then sort the results according to alphabetical order then by casting cost?

I will look into stacking the sort, though I can just about guarantee that it will not be possible to sort on the image casting cost and the text casting cost may not give the results you expect due to being a text sort. Sorting on CMC would likely give better sorting results.

3. A simple "change log" of the new releases... =)

I already provide change logs for all of my releases both in the readme ("Change History" towards the bottom) and in the online Wiki documentation.

[jacque]

Specifically what stats? For the number of cards available, is that total cards loaded, number of current cards in list, card space left in deck to reach 60 cards, or something else entirely?

Exactly!!! - the total cards loaded (gives a rough idea how many cards you can toy with); if possible refreshed after filters are applied...

I will look into stacking the sort, though I can just about guarantee that it will not be possible to sort on the image casting cost and the text casting cost may not give the results you expect due to being a text sort. Sorting on CMC would likely give better sorting results.

Great!!! I felt "weird" when I posted that earlier cause it'll be absurd to sort according to "image"... great thinking!!!

I already provide change logs for all of my releases both in the readme ("Change History" towards the bottom) and in the online Wiki documentation.

I knew it >.< It's less likely for you to release something without a Change Log... Sorry I've mislooked it... =(

Thanks again Riiak!!! *thumbS up*

[RiiakShiNal]

Version 1.2.0.0 is now up.

Main changes this time around include the ability to sort on multiple columns for the Card list, main deck, and Create from Existing Deck views, added a status strip at the bottom with the total number of loaded cards and the cards currently in the card list (after filtering), and an added "Error" that will now alert users to mismatched actual file names and FILENAME tags. I also added 2 more strings to the localization files to support the new status strip at the bottom of the main window.

[Ratava]

hi
today i updated to v1.2.0.0
but if i create my own deck

instead of one new deck in my ingame deckbrowser
i get two identical copies

[RiiakShiNal]

hi
today i updated to v1.2.0.0
but if i create my own deck

instead of one new deck in my ingame deckbrowser
i get two identical copies

That happens when the Content Pack Enabling XML is present in more than 1 mod. You get a copy of all the decks in the Content Pack for every copy of the Content Pack Enabling XML that is present. If you have put the Content Pack Enabling XML in another wad such as a Card core that you have created or if you are using the same Content Pack as someone else this is quite likely to happen to fix it simply remove one copy of the Content Pack Enabling XML and you will go from 2 copies of the each deck in that content pack to just one copy. An easy one to remove is the automatically created Data_DLC_513_Content_Pack_Enabler.wad (which is visible in your screenshot).

[Ratava]

great

enabler.wad removed
and only one deck in the browser

thx

[drleg3nd]

hey riiak i was wondering if it is possible if is not available now if creating a deck, can custom card xml and art be included in wad so people wont be reliant on have X mod to work ? thx

[RiiakShiNal]

hey riiak i was wondering if it is possible if is not available now if creating a deck, can custom card xml and art be included in wad so people wont be reliant on have X mod to work ? thx

This has come up a few times now, and it is possible, but I'm not going to do it for a few reasons:

• This is very complex to do properly as it would require completely parsing all the cards (including all the Lua code) to find out what each card depends on (including custom functions) and what each dependency depends on (functions can depend on other functions which can then depend on other functions, etc...). This would make the long load times of the builder much longer and adds very little value-wise to the builder.
• This can lead to mods being incompatible with each other. This is a result of copying card xmls and/or custom functions from a mod that later gets updated then the created deck could very well become incompatible with the mod it was originally based on. I remember several threads for DotP 2013 about mod incompatibilities because outdated functions from one mod were included in another which wound up overriding the updated mod (I think the most recognized ones at this point would be about the Transform functions), or having bugged copies of cards being used instead of the fixed versions (I can even tell you how many times this came up, but it was quite often).
• This can lead to bloated file sizes and multiple copies of cards showing up in the Deck Builder. Yes, people have asked questions and even complained about this.
• This would violate one of our Best Practices about keeping a separate core and decks. The best practice is there so that people will can have all cards available for building their own decks without having to have the decks they were originally created for installed.

As for keeping track of what wads a deck depends on directly I've tried to keep that easy by including that list in the "Readme" created for the deck on export.

[RiiakShiNal]

New version is up (v1.3.0.0) a couple of visual bug fixes and a couple of new requested features:

• New context menu option to export Card XML.
• New context menu options to export Cropped Card Image (the actual image for the card without the card frame, mana symbols, text, etc...) to either PNG or TDX

[drleg3nd]

hey riiak i was thinking and i dont know if anyone brought this up, but can you builder be integrated with firemind web generator so that if you searching for a card triggered abilites/active abilites and such can be incorporated within xml if said abilites are available within any of the cards that are in the magic directory ?

[RiiakShiNal]

hey riiak i was thinking and i dont know if anyone brought this up, but can you builder be integrated with firemind web generator so that if you searching for a card triggered abilites/active abilites and such can be incorporated within xml if said abilites are available within any of the cards that are in the magic directory ?

I'm not exactly sure which way you are headed here, I see two possibilities as to your train of thought:

1. Integrating such that the web generator talks to the Deck Builder to try and find missing abilities.
   • With the web generator being running on a web server and having no access to the users computer it makes it pretty much impossible to talk to the Deck Builder (unless it is installed on the server, but that adds a lot of restrictions on its own).
2. Integrating such that the Deck Builder talks with the web generator to build cards.
   • This would basically mean putting a card creator into the builder. In that case it might even be better to simply build a new creator into the builder rather than accessing the web generator and then trying to analyze the card's abilities to try and see what is missing.
   • Another big problem is trying to figure out which ability maps to which other ability. Mapping by text is spotty because most cards have text that is slightly different from the text you would be looking for.
   • Also what would you do if you happened to find multiple abilities for the same text that are all coded differently?

Basically, it is extremely difficult to come up with any working logic for this idea. The best possibility at the moment would be to have a template directory that can be updated with ability code templates and using fuzzy logic text pattern matching to try and match the text rules to a high percentage match and let the user then select which would be the closest ability from any multiple matches above the fuzzy logic match threshold.

Though I doubt any of us are going to be coding anything anywhere near that kind of difficulty level in the near future.

If we had a great card database that had all the abilities properly separated out and had some kind of attribute system to describe each ability in a simple to check way then we could build a card generator that could auto-generate more abilities. There would still be a lot of abilities that would have to be manually coded even with a great system like that.

A completely different possibility would be creating a Card Builder with an ability template library with a list of common ability templates (that could be updated) and ability search tool that could search through all current cards for the desired ability and the user could then select and modify it in the builder, though that is more of a manual build tool rather than an automatic tool like the web generator.

[drleg3nd]

Thank you for your insight. I figured it would be a big job to do..but man if this was possible it would be great

[SilverLutra]

Works really great! now I have a deck of my own.

[neonice]

Hi, I used the Deck Builder program to create a few decks. The first decks were to try out if the program really worked. After that I started creating some serious decks. But my question is; How can I remove my testdecks from the game? It really annoys me seeing those terrible decks. :O

[RiiakShiNal]

If the decks were made with the Deck Builder then removal of the decks is quite simple:

1. In the game note the English name of the deck you want to remove.
2. Exit the game.
3. Browse to the game directory using Windows Explorer (for Steam version it will probably be in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Magic 2014" or something similar to it).
4. Remove the wad with the name you noted in step 1 (You can either delete the file, move it somewhere else, or rename it to start with underscore or something else the game won't read). The name of the wad will be Data_Decks_######_<English Name>.wad where ###### is the Uid of the deck and <English Name> is the English name you noted in step 1.

Example:

1. In game the English name of the deck is "My Test Deck".
2. I exit the game.
3. I go to the game directory.
4. I see a wad with name "Data_Decks_100000_MY_TEST_DECK.wad" and I rename it to "_Data_Decks_100000_MY_TEST_DECK.wad". Now the deck no longer shows up in game.