Forge version 1.5.31

[Chris H.]

Tentative target release date: Friday November 28 2014.

[drdev]

So I recently did a little observation of some new Forge players. Of everything I observed, the biggest issue I saw was with the default phase stops.

Currently, the default is to stop at every phase. This has the following problems:

• It results in the slowest possible gameplay and requires the most clicks or Enter/Space presses
• It encourages users who may be new to Magic to cast spells at the wrong time (strategically speaking), such as Instants during your opponent's Main phase that should wait for their end of turn
• It makes all the phase buttons the same color and thus does nothing to suggest the ability to configure the stops.

That last bullet is the big one. Nobody I observed seemed to even realize they could make their experience faster and easier by removing stops they didn't need. They just assumed it was a phase indicator that wasn't actionable.

To combat this and improve the out-of-the-box experience for our users, I'd like to propose we change the defaults to the following:

Player - Main Phase 1, Declare Blockers, Main Phase 2 (M1, DB, M2)
Opponent - Declare Attackers, Declare Blockers, End of Turn (DA, DB, ET)

This would cut the number of stops down from 24 to just 6 for each overall turn in a 2 player game. And if no combat occurs on either player's turn, then it's just 3 stops.

Here's my justification for the phases I'm choosing here. Note that these cases only cover when the stack is empty, as you're given the chance to respond to spells/abilities on the stack, declare attackers, and declare blockers regardless of phase stops.

• You can only activate sorcery-speed effects during the M1 or M2 phases of your turn.
• Except in rare circumstances, strategically speaking, you should only activate instant-speed effects during:
  
  • the DB phase on your turn after your opponent declares blockers
    - (e.g. combat trick, regen shield)
  • the DA phase on your opponent's turn after he/she declares attackers
    - (e.g. flash a blocker into play)
  • the DB phase on your opponent's turn after you declare blockers
    - (e.g. sacrifice a creature after they block, combat trick, regen shield)
  • the ET phase on your opponent's turn
    - so your opponent has no chance to respond with anything sorcery-speed before your next turn starts

In addition to improving the out-of-the-box experience for users, this phase setup also makes it much more obvious that you can configure the phases by clicking on them, as they appear in two colors instead of one and you can quickly see the difference between what those colors mean. It also helps teach new users when the proper time to play their spells and activate their abilities is.

Please let me know what you think of this proposal. If everyone's on board, I'll make the change before we cut the next release. Please keep in mind this will only change the defaults, so everyone can still configure the stops as they wish and have them remembered.

Thanks.
-Dan

[elcnesh]

Hi! I've been thinking the same lately, so I definitely support this! I'd just like to propose one change: to change the stop in your opponents turn at DA to BC. Tapping your opponents blockers is much more common than flashing a blocker into play, I think. At least it appears on more cards. (Stopping at both would probably be a bit too much...)

[drdev]

Hi! I've been thinking the same lately, so I definitely support this! I'd just like to propose one change: to change the stop in your opponents turn at DA to BC. Tapping your opponents blockers is much more common than flashing a blocker into play, I think. At least it appears on more cards. (Stopping at both would probably be a bit too much...)

I'd say there are more creature cards with Flash and instants that put tokens into play than there are cards that can tap other permanents, but I admittedly didn't run the numbers. Also, your opponent's DA is skipped if they don't attack, whereas the BC phase is never skipped, so it's one less stop this way if they don't attack. When I play, I just enable the BC phase if I have a tapper and otherwise leave it disabled.

If anything, missing the chance to tap down a creature before it can attack could serve as a newcomer lesson about the need to configure tab stops in certain situations.

I agree have stops at both BC and DA seems excessive, so let me know if you're OK with just DA as I have it now. Remember that people can still add a stop at BC if they choose to.

[friarsol]

Personally the bc phase is more important to me since on top of tapping down attackers you can also bounce / kill attackers with attacking triggers so they won't happen.

[drdev]

Alright, I'll switch it to BC then. So it will be BC, DB, and ET for opponent then. Sound good to everyone?

[Xitax]

This is exactly how mine is set up. It works 99% of the time.

[Zirbert]

Alright, I'll switch it to BC then. So it will be BC, DB, and ET for opponent then. Sound good to everyone?

Another Yes vote from me. Great idea!

[friarsol]

Will this be the default for multiple opponents too? I find it really annoying when playing multiplayer games that only the first opponent uses my chosen phase selection, and after selecting the phase selection for 2+ opponents they aren't saved in between matches.

[elcnesh]

On a sidenote, I just changed the display of effects to have an orange border. If anyone doesn't like this colour, feel free to change it

[drdev]

Will this be the default for multiple opponents too? I find it really annoying when playing multiplayer games that only the first opponent uses my chosen phase selection, and after selecting the phase selection for 2+ opponents they aren't saved in between matches.

Sounds reasonable to me.

[drdev]

I just committed the new defaults in r28277. They now look like this:

Hopefully this should provide a much better experience out-of-the-box for our users. Thanks to everyone who provided input on the idea.

[drdev]

Per feedback in the Feature Requests thread, I just committed the following:

- Zone Window Improvements -

• Popup windows for zones (Hand, Library, Graveyard, Exile, Flashback) will now remember their position and size between sessions. Human and AI zones will each be remembered separately.
• Clicking the zone icon under a player's avatar will now hide the zone window if its currently open.
• After the last card is removed from a zone window, that window will now automatically be hidden. An example of this would be casting the last card in the Flashback zone.
• Default size of zone windows has been slightly reduced.
• Prevent horizontal scrollbar appearing in zone windows.
• Reduce flicker when resizing zone windows.

[drdev]

I just finished committing another set of usability improvements for card stacks:

- Card Stack Activation Improvements -

• Allow tapping multiple lands in a stack by continuing to tap on the top land of that stack
• Allow tapping all lands in a stack using Shift+click on any land in the stack
• Allow attacking with all tokens in a stack using Shift+click on any token in the stack

[Chris H.]

Another FTP error while trying to do the beta build and deploy:

Code: Select all

[INFO] Command sent: STOR StorageNestedFolders.html
[INFO]
[INFO] Reply received: 150 Accepted data connection
[INFO]
[INFO] Reply received: 226-File successfully transferred
[INFO] 226 0.063 seconds (measured here), 292.69 Kbytes per second
[INFO]
[INFO] completed = /Users/me/Workspace_SVN/ForgeSVN/target/checkout/forge-core/target/site/apidocs/forge/util/storage/StorageNestedFolders.html
[INFO] processing = /Users/me/Workspace_SVN/ForgeSVN/target/checkout/forge-core/target/site/apidocs/forge/util/storage/StorageReaderBase.html as StorageReaderBase.html
[INFO] Command sent: PASV
[INFO]
[INFO] Reply received: 227 Entering Passive Mode (174,34,254,123,53,3)
[INFO]
[INFO] Command sent: STOR StorageReaderBase.html
[INFO]
[INFO] ftp://ftp.cardforge.org/site/ - Session: Disconnecting 
[INFO] ftp://ftp.cardforge.org/site/ - Session: Disconnected
[INFO] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [INFO] Reactor Summary:
[INFO] [INFO]
[INFO] [INFO] Forge Parent ...................................... SUCCESS [3:41.579s]
[INFO] [INFO] Forge Core ........................................ FAILURE [3:10.042s]
[INFO] [INFO] Forge Game ........................................ SKIPPED
[INFO] [INFO] Forge AI .......................................... SKIPPED
[INFO] [INFO] Forge Net ......................................... SKIPPED
[INFO] [INFO] Forge Gui ......................................... SKIPPED
[INFO] [INFO] Forge ............................................. SKIPPED
[INFO] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [INFO] Total time: 6:52.739s
[INFO] [INFO] Finished at: Fri Nov 28 10:46:54 EST 2014
[INFO] [INFO] Final Memory: 55M/379M
[INFO] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-site-plugin:3.3:deploy (default-deploy) on project forge-core: Error uploading site: IOException caught while attempting to upload /Users/me/Workspace_SVN/ForgeSVN/target/checkout/forge-core/target/site/apidocs/forge/util/storage/StorageReaderBase.html: Read timed out -> [Help 1]
[INFO] [ERROR]
[INFO] [ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[INFO] [ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[INFO] [ERROR]
[INFO] [ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[INFO] [ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoExecutionException
[INFO] [ERROR]
[INFO] [ERROR] After correcting the problems, you can resume the build with the command
[INFO] [ERROR]   mvn <goals> -rf :forge-core
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Reactor Summary:
[INFO]
[INFO] Forge Parent ...................................... FAILURE [12:09.813s]
[INFO] Forge Core ........................................ SUCCESS [1:39.473s]
[INFO] Forge Game ........................................ SUCCESS [4:27.506s]
[INFO] Forge AI .......................................... SUCCESS [2:19.171s]
[INFO] Forge Net ......................................... SUCCESS [31.286s]
[INFO] Forge Gui ......................................... SUCCESS [2:29.647s]
[INFO] Forge ............................................. SUCCESS [7:55.393s]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 32:39.396s
[INFO] Finished at: Fri Nov 28 10:46:55 EST 2014
[INFO] Final Memory: 61M/573M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-release-plugin:2.5:perform (default-cli) on project forge: Maven execution failed, exit code: '1' -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoExecutionException
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[Process completed]