Magic Duels tests and results

[Tejahn]

Here is a new Data.bin obtained from DATA_001.ZED. I attached also a lighty modified CreateZip.jar that uses DATA_001 as default source folder and that allows to set it as argument. Remember that now you have to use DATA_001 as name of folder for your content.
Then I created a new jar, ZedToDataBin, following thefiremind suggestion. It creates new Data.bin file from a zed file; you can set name as argument and default is DATA_001 (".ZED" is added by program).
Actually I'm doing tests on new version, but I wanted to upload those files quickly to let others do other tests...

This is great news! I've not been around for a long time and I'm interested in modding again. Now then, what exactly is needed to mod Magic Duels and what are the step by step instructions? I read the information scattered in the threads but I'm a bit confused. Lastly, let me say thank you to everyone involved in making this possible for Magic Duels.

Will a 'How to mod Magic Duels' guide be added to the Wiki?

[thefiremind]

I've not been around for a long time and I'm interested in modding again. Now then, what exactly is needed to mod Magic Duels and what are the step by step instructions? I read the information scattered in the threads but I'm a bit confused.

If you are eager to start, try with the test ZED contents you can find on the first post of this topic. I also wrote there what you can use in order to make it a ZED file.

I'm considering to make a new tool that does everything we need all together (generate card XMLs, make all the necessary conversions, mess with profiles, import lists as spirolone suggested...), but if I do, it will take some time. At least I would drop WAD support since Magic Duels can't use them anymore, and conversions will be a bit simplified.

[Xander9009]

It sounds like you're thinking of making an all-in-one Magic Duels modding tool. If you do, might I suggest a small addition that should theoretically be incredibly simple? Click a button or menu item to popup a small, always-on-top window (preferably very tall and narrow) with buttons that you can click to copy various useful bits of code to the clipboard. It's just a thought that I had just now, but it seems like that could prove very useful (and only using the clipboard means it would work with any text editor we're using). The main idea I thought of was for the new text string references. They'd be almost impossible to add via a generator (no good way to decide if a given card will need some string reference or not except for standard abilities), but adding them would be SO much easier if all you have to do is click a button and then paste where you want it. Other things you could copy would be gain/lose life, damage target creature/player/either, draw/discard, mill, destroy/exile target, and various other things. The idea behind this is that when coding cards, people (me) usually find another card to reference to copy code from rather than typing it manually. The fact that this should be really simple is the only reason I suggest it might be worth doing as a sort of utility-shortcut coding reference type thing.

Aside from that... Since the card structure is the same, you should be able to use your Universal Card Generator, shouldn't you? Meaning that part of the program (probably the most difficult) should be more or less done, and would just need to be imported into your new tool. If so, that would be a nice chunk of workload being lifted.

I'm eager to get a tool which can export a deck to the game that I can immediately play with. That's my main interest. It sounds like to do so requires modifying the profile, which I don't know how to do properly, and it seems it'll be necessary if I try to convert the used cards in the CW. So, I hope you do decide to do this. I'm sure many people would appreciate just as much as I would. (Also, I just woke up a couple of minutes ago, and I didn't proofread this. Sorry if it's a mess...)

[Tejahn]

If you are eager to start, try with the test ZED contents you can find on the first post of this topic. I also wrote there what you can use in order to make it a ZED file.

I'm considering to make a new tool that does everything we need all together (generate card XMLs, make all the necessary conversions, mess with profiles, import lists as spirolone suggested...), but if I do, it will take some time. At least I would drop WAD support since Magic Duels can't use them anymore, and conversions will be a bit simplified.

Okay. I'm using the SmartSteamEmu Launcher to try to conduct test but I suppose I have to be connected to the Internet to complete Gideon's story first. My question is, how do I advance beyond this point while offline? Or can someone provide a file so I can get started. I'm not sure how to obtain the ALI emulator.

[thefiremind]

Okay. I'm using the SmartSteamEmu Launcher to try to conduct test but I suppose I have to be connected to the Internet to complete Gideon's story first. My question is, how do I advance beyond this point while offline?

Just head to Battle Mode, and when a message suggests you to start with the campaign ignore it. The game will let you open the starter box and you'll be able to fight against the AI in Battle Mode. If you added a ZED with my test contents before this step, you'll automatically unlock all the official cards, plus the test cards I added.

[spirolone]

I'm considering to make a new tool that does everything we need all together (generate card XMLs, make all the necessary conversions, mess with profiles, import lists as spirolone suggested...), but if I do, it will take some time. At least I would drop WAD support since Magic Duels can't use them anymore, and conversions will be a bit simplified.

Nice!
But, do you plan to make a deck builder too, maybe updating Riiak's one?

[spirolone]

I'm eager to get a tool which can export a deck to the game that I can immediately play with. That's my main interest. It sounds like to do so requires modifying the profile, which I don't know how to do properly, and it seems it'll be necessary if I try to convert the used cards in the CW. So, I hope you do decide to do this. I'm sure many people would appreciate just as much as I would.

There is a limitation, I think: actually it seems to me that game loads profile only when started; that is, you can't change a deck using an external editor whitout reopen Magic Duels.
However, if we accept this limit, we can do what you want yet! We need only to decide a deck builder: I tried with Magic Assistant and I think it could be a nice choice...

[Xander9009]

I'm considering to make a new tool that does everything we need all together (generate card XMLs, make all the necessary conversions, mess with profiles, import lists as spirolone suggested...), but if I do, it will take some time. At least I would drop WAD support since Magic Duels can't use them anymore, and conversions will be a bit simplified.

Nice!
But, do you plan to make a deck builder too, maybe updating Riiak's one?

Riiak is actually actively updating his, although I have no idea what kind of timeline he has for it.

I'm eager to get a tool which can export a deck to the game that I can immediately play with. That's my main interest. It sounds like to do so requires modifying the profile, which I don't know how to do properly, and it seems it'll be necessary if I try to convert the used cards in the CW. So, I hope you do decide to do this. I'm sure many people would appreciate just as much as I would.

There is a limitation, I think: actually it seems to me that game loads profile only when started; that is, you can't change a deck using an external editor whitout reopen Magic Duels.
However, if we accept this limit, we can do what you want yet! We need only to decide a deck builder: I tried with Magic Assistant and I think it could be a nice choice...

I'm not 100% certain what you mean, but what I think you mean is that if we modify the profile while the game is open, then we have to close it and open it again before seeing the updates. If that's the case, then that's perfectly acceptable in my opinion. When I said I want to be able to immediately play with it, I wasn't even thinking about having the game open already. I actually just meant that I don't have to do any extra steps between making the deck and starting the game. So, that's exactly what I was thinking already.

I'm not sure which deck editor would be best, because I've only ever used Riiak's. However, given that Riiak's is so popular and works so well, I'd be most interested in using his, personally. It would just a small change to redirect the saving of a deck to skip putting it into a wad and instead call a function to save it to the profile.

But, I have a question: if the card pool changes such that cards are altered rather than ONLY adding new cards, then will the decks using the cards that were changed in the card pool be affected? I suspect they will. If that's the case, then I think any deck-saving feature of any deck builder we use should save the deck as a separate file which the deck builder could then load in addition to modifying the profile. Riiak's already can save the deck as an xml, but it doesn't automatically do so when choosing to save as a wad. So, if we were to go with his, it would need 3 changes that I can think of: the save to wad would need to be changed to save to profile, saving to wad/profile would need to automatically call save as xml in a subfolder, and it would need to have the ability to (by pushing a button) remove all decks from the profile and re-add them from the xmls. This means it will also need to be able to read the card pools and understand them. I'm not sure how open Riiak would be to having the deck builder changed that extensively by others (I know he posted the source code with the intention of others modifying it, but I also know having multiple versions out might cause confusion...). If he doesn't mind, then I may have the time to make the changes necessary, though I would need some help from you or tfm regarding how to properly read/write the profile information.

Last question, has anyone yet played online with added cards? Have there been any issues?

[spirolone]

I'm not 100% certain what you mean, but what I think you mean is that if we modify the profile while the game is open, then we have to close it and open it again before seeing the updates. If that's the case, then that's perfectly acceptable in my opinion.

Yes, it is what I meant! Sorry if sometimes I'm not clear: I do my best, but my english is far from excellence...

I'm not sure which deck editor would be best, because I've only ever used Riiak's. However, given that Riiak's is so popular and works so well, I'd be most interested in using his, personally. It would just a small change to redirect the saving of a deck to skip putting it into a wad and instead call a function to save it to the profile.

Obviously I agree, but I don't know when Riiak's deck builder will be usable without WAD files. However I wrote a little program yet, that import a deck from a xml created by Riiak's deck builder into profile; we need only a txt or xml file that contains name of any card in deck and number of its instances, and a CardPool file!

[Xander9009]

I'm not 100% certain what you mean, but what I think you mean is that if we modify the profile while the game is open, then we have to close it and open it again before seeing the updates. If that's the case, then that's perfectly acceptable in my opinion.

Yes, it is what I meant! Sorry if sometimes I'm not clear: I do my best, but my english is far from excellence...

No worries. Obviously it turned out I did understand what you meant. I just wanted to be certain.

I'm not sure which deck editor would be best, because I've only ever used Riiak's. However, given that Riiak's is so popular and works so well, I'd be most interested in using his, personally. It would just a small change to redirect the saving of a deck to skip putting it into a wad and instead call a function to save it to the profile.

Obviously I agree, but I don't know when Riiak's deck builder will be usable without WAD files. However I wrote a little program yet, that import a deck from a xml created by Riiak's deck builder into profile; we need only a txt or xml file that contains name of any card in deck and number of its instances, and a CardPool file!

Unfortunately, that's probably the main thing I'd have trouble doing, making it read zed files instead of wad files... I'll PM him if he doesn't see this and ask his opinion on it.

[RiiakShiNal]

Riiak is actually actively updating his, although I have no idea what kind of timeline he has for it.

Unfortunately, there is no set timeline and even then I'm trying to get out an update for 2014 before I start work on converting to Duels so that the latest updates there go into the new one without needing to write the code twice.

But, I have a question: if the card pool changes such that cards are altered rather than ONLY adding new cards, then will the decks using the cards that were changed in the card pool be affected? I suspect they will. If that's the case, then I think any deck-saving feature of any deck builder we use should save the deck as a separate file which the deck builder could then load in addition to modifying the profile. Riiak's already can save the deck as an xml, but it doesn't automatically do so when choosing to save as a wad. So, if we were to go with his, it would need 3 changes that I can think of: the save to wad would need to be changed to save to profile, saving to wad/profile would need to automatically call save as xml in a subfolder, and it would need to have the ability to (by pushing a button) remove all decks from the profile and re-add them from the xmls. This means it will also need to be able to read the card pools and understand them. I'm not sure how open Riiak would be to having the deck builder changed that extensively by others (I know he posted the source code with the intention of others modifying it, but I also know having multiple versions out might cause confusion...). If he doesn't mind, then I may have the time to make the changes necessary, though I would need some help from you or tfm regarding how to properly read/write the profile information.

Last question, has anyone yet played online with added cards? Have there been any issues?

If card IDs (not multiverse IDs) are altered then the decks stored in the profile would also change as cards are stored using their IDs in the profile (much like how if you edit a deck's XML in 2014 and change the IDs of the cards in the deck then their configuration will also be altered to match).

As for other people modifying the Deck Builder code, it is free game for any and all changes (the beauty of open source) the only thing I ask is that there be some way to uniquely identify each developer's version(s) so that people know who to go to when asking for bug fixes or new features. Something on the about screen and in the file details (in case they don't want to open the program to find out the necessary version information) should be adequate.

Unfortunately, that's probably the main thing I'd have trouble doing, making it read zed files instead of wad files... I'll PM him if he doesn't see this and ask his opinion on it.

Getting it to read the ZED files shouldn't be that difficult as there is plenty of information on the forums on how to do it, plus we can always look at the code in spirolone's zedtozip program.

In some respects saving decks would become easier and probably require less work by the Deck Builder since it wouldn't have to do as much to format out a WAD and write a bunch of XML files (just a single XML and writing IDs out to the profile).

[Xander9009]

Good, that sounds perfectly reasonable. I don't know for sure that I'll have the time to do so, but f I do, then I'll see if I can manage the necessary changes.

@all: Also, TFM's utility idea got me thinking, and I'd written out a request for a feature, but then I decided to use it to get myself into C# a bit. (This doesn't really belong here, but oh well. I'll make a proper thread for it when it's ready for release.) It's a simple, one-form cropping program that should be easy to include with any tool released that's meant to be an all-in-one (or just generally multi-purpose) modding utility (this is my hope). Lots of things can crop, but this is meant to be about as simple as it can while still doing everything needed for DotP and Magic Duels. So, it resizes the images automatically to the selected dimensions (with options for normal, full-art, token, and ability-token, though the latter two need the background added). There is currently no ability to zoom, because I just thought of it, but I wanted to go ahead and post a screenshot of it while it's still fresh in my mind in case anyone has any simple idea's they'd like to suggest.

-Restricts movement of image based on size, so it's always shrunk/cropped as little as possible
-Can handle multiple images in a single folder of types jpg, png, and bmp
-Does not affect original art (appends " -c" to the filename)

Features I'd like to add:
-Drag-n-drop functionality for folders and images
-Batch button (process all images in the view)
-Remove images from the view individually, optionally doing so automatically upon cropping an image
-Zoom the image to cut off more than is necessary (in case it has a border or something similar)
-Zoom the view without affecting the resulting image itself, just to make the tall image a bit easier to use on smaller screens
-Automatically convert to tdx upon cropping, probably without the appended "-c"
-Reduce the minimum window size based on the current image (as small as it can be while still being able to move the image all the way up and down)

C# is not nearly as good with transparency as I'd hoped... The transparent bits are way more complicated than I expected them to be. (I was expecting to make a box, make it transparent, and that was it. That is SO not what happened...) As such, you'll see them move a little as you drag the image around.

The point of this is to make importing HQ art from future sets much easier. Since they're not not the right dimensions, they need cropped. They're also often much larger than needed, and this will eliminate the resizing step altogether. Drop all of the images you've found into a folder, use the Crop+Next button to make short work of cropping any that are close but still getting the ability to line it up however is best, and expending a lot less effort for something that shouldn't take that much. (Obviously, this is something that has annoyed me a lot in the past.)

screenshot | Open

[thefiremind]

It's a simple, one-form cropping program that should be easy to include with any tool released that's meant to be an all-in-one (or just generally multi-purpose) modding utility (this is my hope).

I wouldn't be satisfied with something like that because I'm too much of a perfectionist and I always try to mimic how the image is cropped in the original card, so a default cropping (keep as much as possible from the big image) wouldn't make the cut for me. I also pass the images to Photoshop quite often when I find the contrast/brightness a bit off compared to the original card, so I would still feel the need for a real image editor after all. It's a nice project nonetheless, so definitely go on with it.

[Xander9009]

It can now alter contrast, brightness, and resize as needed while maintaining the correct aspect ratio and cropping dimensions. Currently, no functionality for zooming without affecting the resulting image, but it's still planned. I personally find that unnecessary, but I want to add it anyway because others would find it to be a useful feature (and frankly, while I think it's unnecessary, I know with certainty I'd use it lol). The minimum window size is based on the cropping dimensions, and I've given it the ability to remove the selected image from the view by pressing delete, or to actually delete the selected image from the folder by pressing shift+delete. Also, I'm rather amused at how easy contrast and brightness controls were to add compared to the transparency...

Either way, I'm done working on it for now. I'll give a few days to ponder any more features I can think of which I want to spend the time on before releasing it...

[Tejahn]

Sorin, Solemn Visitor - White Frame

Sorin, Solemn Visitor - Emblem

Sorin, Solemn Visitor - Emblem XML

Okay. Here are some results from my Magic Duels test. And some questions.

I created Sorin, Solemn Visitor and everything works fine in game. However, in the deck builder he uses the white planeswalker frame used by Gideon and in game he uses the standard non-planeswalker multicolor frame. I posted the screenshots above for visual proof. The text is aligned by on the planeswalker frame and this is obviously not the case on the multicolor one.

As you can see in the above picture, I was able to create a working emblem and I noticed that it's placed on the board in a zone called active_zone="ZONE_COMMAND_GENERAL" in the XML and cannot able to be targeted or affected by anything in game. The name of this zone has me thinking they are going to implement the Commander format in the future. Has anyone looked through the .LOL files to see if a Commander Zone is present? Also, I prefer the texture of the emblems that came with the game. If anyone can create emblems using those as the image I would be grateful.

Lastly, I didn't have to create Sorin as a subtype but I did notice that other Planeswalker names are missing such as Ugin. I have a question for thefiremind, can you provide the files for the Planeswalker subtypes in the same way you did for creature types in DOTP 2015?