Forge Mobile Backport for Linux/Windows v1.6.53.001

[Agetian]

This release of the Mobile Forge Backport corresponds to desktop Forge release 1.6.53 / Forge for Android release 1.6.53.001 and has all the features of that release (please check the full release notes in the Desktop Forge thread).

IMPORTANT: This thread is meant for discussion of the mobile backport itself and for reporting technical issues with it, but NOT for reporting the gameplay issues. If you have a card bug to report, or the AI misplays, or something else like that happens, please report it on our Github issues tracker or in the main Desktop Release thread for version 1.6.53 on this site.

The Christmas season is coming soon, and as an early surprise, I'm happy to announce the first official release of the Forge Mobile Backport for Linux and Windows operating systems. For quite a while, macOS users have been able to enjoy the mobile backport on their Retina screens in very high resolution, and now the same opportunity is available for all of you guys who are playing on Linux or on Windows machines. We even have a basic front-end launcher to set up the screen resolution.

First of all, some important words about this release. Please read the following instructions and information carefully before you try to install this.

The Forge Mobile Backport is a desktop application that runs on Linux and Windows machines and allows you to play Forge with the same mobile interface used for our Android port. It also runs on Mac, but there's a separate release for macOS systems in the relevant thread (where it's packaged as a Mac app). The Mobile Backport also allows you to enjoy all the features of mobile Forge on your desktop computer without having to emulate Android, such as, for example, the Planar Conquest mode and a nice split screen interface for multiplayer battles with 3 or 4 players (which looks really decent on high resolution monitors and TVs and which I honestly like more than the original desktop Forge interface for it, which feels clunky). Also, this interface scales well to very high resolutions (including 2K and hopefully 4K), which makes it a good choice for anyone playing Forge on a monitor or a TV like that.

Note that, with all the features of mobile Forge, this backport also inherits all its limitations. For example, the Quest Draft tournament interface is rather basic and only supports simulated AI vs. AI matches; multiplayer with more than 4 players is not supported, etc. Basically, whatever you may expect from Forge for Android, you may expect in this version as well. Anything that is not in Forge for Android is not in this backport either.

The minimum system requirements for this backport are a little higher than for the ordinary desktop Forge. First of all, you need a video card capable of OpenGL 3.0 support, so certain older Intel integrated video cards may not support it, for example (or significantly older video cards by other manufacturers). Also, you need a computer with at least 2 GB RAM running Java version 8 or newer. Running this version of the game on a 32-bit OS / 32-bit Java was never tested, however, 64-bit installations of both Oracle Java 8+ and OpenJDK 8+ work fine. Reports are welcome about whether it works on 32-bit systems or not.
Additionally, the Mobile Forge Launcher front-end requires JavaFX 8 or newer. It normally ships with the Oracle Java installation, but may be a separate package, for example, on Linux OpenJDK setups (on Ubuntu and Linux Mint, for example, you may need to install the openjfx package separately from openjdk). If you have issues running the front-end launcher, please look into whether you already have JavaFX installed and, if not, what is necessary to install it on your operating system.

The mobile backport was tested on Linux Mint 19, Linux Mint 20 / 20.1, Manjaro Linux (rolling release), Windows 7, and Windows 10, but should also run on any other compatible operating system, such as another modern Linux distro with Java or on Windows 8/8.1.

Installation and usage:
To launch mobile Forge, please use the supplied launcher front-end, MobileForgeLauncher.jar. Depending on your operating system, either double-clicking it or right-clicking it and choosing "Open with Oracle Java Runtime / OpenJDK Runtime" should be enough to start it, provided that you meet the prerequisites outlined above. On Linux, you may need to set up the executable file permissions for MobileForgeLauncher.jar first, or you may not be allowed to launch it.

Mobile Forge Launcher is a simple front-end which allows you to define the desired screen resolution and set up whether you want the game to launch in full-screen mode or not. Resizing the front-end window will scale it, which is handy for those of you running this application on 2K/4K screens. Note that all the settings, including the window scale, are automatically saved when you launch the game or quit the front-end.

While it's possible to launch the game directly via the executable forge-mobile-vX.X.X.jar, bypassing the front-end, doing so is not recommended because it does not pass additional memory-related parameters for Forge, which may cause the game to run slower or eventually crash with an out of memory error.

Once the game is running, you can set it to use the same card pictures as your desktop Forge uses (or use its own card picture cache folder) by using the options on the Settings->Files tab on the main screen. If that fails for any reason, you can also hand-edit forge.profile.preferences in the game folder and set the cacheDir parameter manually.

Please check the other options available in the Settings menu for some additional mobile interface-specific features that you may want to either enable or disable (for example, you'll most likely want to ensure that Battlefield Texture Filtering is enabled under Graphic Options and also enable the "Rotate Zoom Image" options for split cards and for plane cards).

Please note the following important caveats:
- The game will most likely work well with any 16:9 or 16:10 resolution, hopefully including 4K and maybe even higher than that, but it may fail to work on some of the less common resolutions and it's especially picky about some other aspect ratios. For example, when it comes to the 4:3 screen ratio, the 800x600 resolution is known to work well, but various other resolutions were reported to have visual glitches or layout issues which made the game unplayable. At this point, there is little that can be done about it, the game is designed with cellphone/tablet screens in mind and is rather picky about how things are placed according to the aspect ratio that is used, so if the game screen is garbled for you, probably the game does not like your display resolution for one reason or another. Please switch to another resolution (preferably with the 16:9 or 16:10 ratio) if at all possible.If that's not possible for any reason, you may want to run the game in windowed mode using one of the common 16:9/16:10 resolutions. In case, for any reason, the front-end (Mobile Forge Launcher) doesn't work for you, you can create the file "screen_resolution.ini" in your game folder (the same where the .jar file resides) and specify the desired resolution manually in the WxHxFS format, where FS is either "1" for fullscreen or 0 for windowed (e.g. 1920x1080x1 will run the game in 1920x1080 full screen, and 1280x800x0 will run the game in 1280x800 windowed). Then the game will try to switch the monitor to that resolution when launched. The following resolutions were tested both in windowed and in fullscreen mode and are known to be fully supported: 800x600, 1280x720, 1280x800, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, 2560x1440.

- If the game is running in full-screen mode, depending on your operating system and desktop environment you may run into issues with minimizing the game or switching to another window with Alt+Tab, which may keep the mouse input grabbed for the Forge application. If that happens to you and if it's a problem, you may consider running the game in windowed mode to avoid this issue.

- The Mobile Backport is basically a straightforward launcher/wrapper for Mobile Forge for Android. Nothing has been changed in the original mobile Forge, so the interface has a few caveats when used on a standard PC with a keyboard and a mouse:
* The following keyboard buttons work in this game: Space (or Enter) is used for the action that is on the bottom left side on the battlefield (keep hand, OK to move to the next phase, auto mana payment etc.), and Esc is used for the action that is on the bottom right side of the battlefield (skip turn if the relevant option is enabled, alpha strike/call back, mulligan etc.). E can be used for an explicit end of turn, and A is also a shortcut for alpha strike. Ctrl+Z attempts to undo the mana payment action. Ctrl+Q concedes the match.
* To quit the game, either press Alt+F4 (which quits without confirmation) or use Esc in the main menu (which quits with confirmation).
* Left-clicking a mouse is the same as touching the tablet screen with a finger, so it's used for pretty much all actions (tapping cards, selecting things in menus, confirming actions etc.).
* To zoom in on the cards, either right click the card or hold LMB over the card for approximately a second (the latter is essentially the same as tap-holding it with a finger on a tablet or a cellphone).
* Changing the size of the cards in deck editors can be achieved via the mouse scroll wheel while holding Ctrl.
* Whenever the game asks you to "swipe" things, you can LMB-drag in the given direction (hold the left mouse button and drag) to swipe. Also, to scroll the battlefield horizontally, hold the left mouse button and drag left or right. Not very convenient at first, but it works once you get used to it.

- If you have a touch-enabled device with either Linux or Windows operating system installed which can run this backport, hopefully the touch functionality should work out of the box, though it hasn't been tested by me personally because I don't have access to a device like that. Reports are welcome on how well (or how poorly ) this works, if it works.

- Online play is untested in this build and may not work as expected or at all. It is unknown whether this release will be able to connect to other desktop or mobile Forge clients. Moreover, online play support in Forge in general is not completely finished, so issues are to be expected even in the best case scenario.

- Some people reported problems running the game through the launcher on Windows 10, with the game throwing an exception immediately when being launched this way. If you experience any problems like this one, the alternative (albeit suboptimal in certain ways, see above) way to launch the game is through the primary Java executable directly (forge-mobile-vX.X.X.jar), which seems to work correctly on this system. I don't have any Windows machines myself and I'm using Linux exclusively, so personally I can't test, reproduce or fix this issue. Anyone willing to look into this issue is welcome to do so, the source code for the launcher is available in this post: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=23104&start=15#p230465

Hope you find this version enjoyable! Good luck and have fun!

DOWNLOAD HERE:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q51lnylkmxd02 ... 1.zip?dl=0

- Agetian

[verdealex79]

Wow! Really thank you! This is tasty!!!!

[Agetian]

UPDATE (12/10/18): Forge Mobile Backport was updated to v1.6.19.002, it's a quick hotfix aiming to fix some AI issues which managed to slip through.

@verdealex79: Thanks! Glad you found this interesting!

- Agetian

[siyiye]

4K 43'≈1920x1080 *4 fullscreen

very nice!

[Agetian]

UPDATE (12/10/18): Forge Mobile Backport was updated to v1.6.19.003, which fixes a regression in mobile Forge code which made it impossible to tap bottom lands in stack by clicking a tapped land on top of the stack during mana payment.

- Agetian

[RationalGaze]

Downloading now, can't wait to try it out. Will share any technical feedback as it arises.

Thank you for your efforts as always!

[Agetian]

UPDATE (12/10/18): Mobile Forge Backport was updated to v1.6.19.004. It's a hotfix addressing various slowdowns and weird side effects caused by the AI trying to play abilities from cards it doesn't control (for example, fixes Emerge). Sorry for a lot of updates, guys, but it's a big release and certain things were overlooked even after a lot of playtesting. :/

- Agetian

[drdev]

Great idea!

[illuknisaa]

I've tried running this but once I get to the main menu the screen is flashing when I move the mouse or press buttons. Nothing happens when I try to click anything.

[Agetian]

I've tried running this but once I get to the main menu the screen is flashing when I move the mouse or press buttons. Nothing happens when I try to click anything.

What if you switch it to windowed mode, for example, 1440x900 or 1920x1080 windowed (whichever you can support)? Does it still flash?

- Agetian

[Agetian]

UPDATE (02/02/19): Forge Mobile Backport v1.6.20.001 has been released, it's based on Forge for Android v1.6.20.001. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: When upgrading from v1.6.19.004, make sure you delete the old .jar file (forge-mobile-1.6.19.jar) and completely replace the "res" folder! Probably the easiest and the safest way to upgrade to the new release is by extracting the new version to a completely new folder, then copying or moving the "profile" folder and the .ini files (MobileForgeLauncher.ini and screen_resolution.ini) from your old v1.6.19.xxx folder to the new v1.6.20.001 folder.

If you are having visual issues with this backport (misaligned elements, screen flashes, etc.), please try running it in windowed mode in one of the supported 16:9/16:10 resolutions and see if that helps fix it. If it does, you can try changing the fullscreen resolution and seeing if that works too.

- Agetian

[Jessica]

Hi

I can confirm version v1.6.20.001 is working on Windows 10 64 bit with latest Java 8 update. I have a PC with 16 GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 1070, so fast enough for Forge Mobile.

However I can only run it when I run "forge-mobile-1.6.20.jar". I can make decks, see all card images (when using Forge's card images) and play all the game types. No crashes found yet.

When I run "MobileForgeLauncher.jar" (as recommended) the launcher is shown, I can run MobileForge by pressing the button, but the program terminates itself. So in this way, I can't run the program.

In the attachment you can find the log file and the contents of it below:

Code: Select all

Language 'java.util.PropertyResourceBundle@1178e43' loaded successfully.
(ThreadUtil first call): Running on a machine with 8 cpu core(s)
Ignoring unknown type in set definitions: name: M19 Gift Pack; type: Special
Read cards: 18449 archived files in 815 ms (25 parts) using thread pool
Read cards: 52 files in 5 ms (1 parts) using thread pool
FSkin$loadFull: Missing a sprite (default icons, preferred icons, or foils.
com.badlogic.gdx.utils.GdxRuntimeException: Couldn't load file: ./res/skins/default/sprite_foils.png
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Pixmap.<init>(Pixmap.java:140)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.TextureData$Factory.loadFromFile(TextureData.java:98)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.GLTexture.createTextureData(GLTexture.java:185)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.<init>(Texture.java:103)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Texture.<init>(Texture.java:95)
   at forge.assets.FSkin.loadFull(FSkin.java:190)
   at forge.Forge.afterDbLoaded(Forge.java:115)
   at forge.Forge.access$300(Forge.java:36)
   at forge.Forge$1$1.run(Forge.java:105)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.executeRunnables(LwjglApplication.java:246)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.mainLoop(LwjglApplication.java:199)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication$1.run(LwjglApplication.java:120)
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Error loading pixmap: outofmem
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.g2d.Gdx2DPixmap.<init>(Gdx2DPixmap.java:57)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.graphics.Pixmap.<init>(Pixmap.java:138)
   ... 11 more
EDT > java.lang.NullPointerException
   at forge.assets.FSkinColor.getAlpha(FSkinColor.java:266)
   at forge.screens.match.TargetingOverlay.updateColors(TargetingOverlay.java:48)
   at forge.assets.FSkinColor.updateAll(FSkinColor.java:262)
   at forge.assets.FSkin.loadFull(FSkin.java:262)
   at forge.Forge.afterDbLoaded(Forge.java:115)
   at forge.Forge.access$300(Forge.java:36)
   at forge.Forge$1$1.run(Forge.java:105)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.executeRunnables(LwjglApplication.java:246)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.mainLoop(LwjglApplication.java:199)
   at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication$1.run(LwjglApplication.java:120)


[Jessica]

I really like you can easily set the card pictures, ... folders in Forge Mobile just by choosing a folder inside the program!
Is there a possibility this feature could be added to desktop Forge? I know you can change the folders there too, but it's not so handy because we need to edit a settings file.

Jessica

[Agetian]

@ Jessica: Hmm, that's a weird problem. Sadly, I can't reproduce it on my systems (and I don't really have Windows 10, or Windows-anything-else, for that matter...), so I'm not sure how to help for now. The error log indicates that the program can't find one of the resource files, which is odd since you're saying that the game works fine if you launch it with the main .jar executable. I'll think what I can do, but not sure yet :/

UPDATE (02/18/19): Forge Mobile Backport v1.6.21.001 has been released. It's a release based on Forge for Android v1.6.21.001 and desktop Forge v1.6.21. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT UPGRADE REMINDER: When upgrading from the previous version of the mobile backport, please remember that it's always best to start with a fresh empty folder, unpack the new version there, then move the profile folder from your previous version to the new folder. This will help avoid mixing executables and resources from the old and the new versions of the game.

- Agetian

[Jessica]

Hi,

The same problem exists (and exactly the same log file) in Forge Mobile Backport v1.6.21.001.
I did a complete clean install: made a new folder and extracted the zip file.

But, very strangely, running "forge-mobile-1.6.21" works perfectly

I have a question about the automatic update feature: in Forge Android everything is updated automatically (I run that version too on my tablet and it works great). Why is this update feature removed from Forge Mobile Backport? (at least: it's not updating automatically here on my PC)

I'll keep testing new updates, but this weird problem isn't real bad for me, because "forge-mobile-1.6.21" works perfectly