Nice software, but ... buggy?

[Reenen]

I recently downloaded the software. And it's awesome, though there is a couple of stuff that could really improve it, and then there's downright buggy. My issue is really that the software is "mature (but developing all the time)", and some really basic stuff is out of place.

Where to start?

• Deck building in quest mode (and draft and sealed deck). If I add a card to my deck, and filter on a colour, and unfilter, the card is back in my pool as well as my deck.
• Phases are unintelligent. I know I should play better (and Forge forces me to play better), like I should declare what I want to do before paying for it. But I've always tapped first... in real life tapping 8 mana just makes the opponent wonder "what's coming?!".
• I'm sure you all know that some cards are buggy, and stops working properly. Can we get a "solid" version of the game, where everything works, but perhaps have less cards.
• User interface is generally ... unintuitive. Keep windows the same size, make things like the red X at the top right function, rather than making me find the "return to the main menu" button.
• The enemy's health is not displayed properly (20 looks like 0, 14 like 4 etc.) (on my screen)

Ran out of time, but I think we should focus on fixing the UI up a bit.

[friarsol]

[*] Phases are unintelligent. I know I should play better (and Forge forces me to play better), like I should declare what I want to do before paying for it. But I've always tapped first... in real life tapping 8 mana just makes the opponent wonder "what's coming?!".

Care to elaborate? I spent a lot of time semi-recently fixing the Phases to work both accurately as well as to be flexible. What does tapping first have to do with Phases?

If you find yourself in the Draw phase tapping lands, you can set Forge to skip certain phases in the Phase Stop menu bar that you don't need to do anything in. I would highly recommend choosing your Ability before paying for it though, as this allows Forge to keep track of how you are paying and "unpay" it if you cancel out. (There are only a handful of cases where mana needs to be generated before the Ability is activated, mostly in the "Remove X Counters: Generate X mana" type)

[Hellfish]

Hey, Reenen. (Had to look up what you're a developer of, DA looks cool)
1.Last I heard, Fnoed,Rob and Chris were making great strides in deck editor and quest UI.
2.You can tap your lands before casting. Just click on the mana pool when it prompts you to pay.
3. I suppose one could pare down a version to the bare functional cards (Just those that use the older AbilityFactories, I'd wager) but I personally, at least, prefer to fix the issue instead.
4.See point 1.
5. That is an issue with screen resolution. If it doesn't cause your battlefield area to become too small, you can drag the players area of the UI to resize it. That will let you see the entire life total.

Well, at least we are going the right way

[Chris H.]

Forge has more than a single deck editor class. Bug fixes and added features that are merged into the constructed mode deck editor do not automatically show up in the other deck editors.

At some point, all of the editor code should be combined into a single class and this would likely take care of the types of problems that you have noticed. It is on the todo list.

I helped Choppic make a few improvements to the constructed mode deck editor. It takes time and I agree with Hellfish that we are moving in the right direction.

Choppic also has some really great ideas for improving the player panels used by the battlefield display. Unfortunately, he is currently busy with another project and the rest of the team is working primarily on the new Ability Factory system.

Fnoed did a fantastic job on improving the quest mode UI. He made several other big fixes and updates to this section. We all appreciate his efforts.

When Rares first released forge into the open source community, a sizable number of the then existing cards were incomplete and/or buggie. Our current Ability Factory system that we are developing will replace much of this older buggie code. Granted, we are busy fixing the new bugs that are appearing in the Ability Factory system. But his will eventually lead to less bugs and incomplete cards and rules.

[mtgrares]

Forge is buggy and some people hate the bugs and other people don't. Forge is a little "too ambitious" and tries to do too much. Forge is miles away from nice, store bought software, not that there is any store bought software that is similar.

From the end-user experience I could see how Forge's bugs were a deal breaker compared to mainstream videogames.

[Reenen]

5. That is an issue with screen resolution. If it doesn't cause your battlefield area to become too small, you can drag the players area of the UI to resize it. That will let you see the entire life total.

No it's an issue with the UI not working nicely with my screen resolution. But Java UI is a PITA.

Forge has more than a single deck editor class

I guess when you are doing "all card" decks, "sealed", "draft" and "quest" (did I leave out one?) then the end goal is not necessarily the same. And some need to keep track of the "pool" as well as the "deck" (and then in some modes you may need a sideboard too?)

So have a deck editor class which has a pool (card list + qtys) as a parameter, and make the "all card" pool just have infinite qtys in it. Quest mode has price as a column too.

Care to elaborate? I spent a lot of time semi-recently fixing the Phases to work both accurately as well as to be flexible. What does tapping first have to do with Phases?

For 1, I can't untap mana, or 2, move back in phases. Obviously in competition terms, that makes sense, but when I'm playing a game, if I've tapped mana in my draw step, and haven't used it during it... just untap it for me, and tell me it's procedurally bad - ie. teach me, but don't penalise me. (Or give me a warning, then a Game Loss, then a DQ)...

If I haven't done anything in the next phase, surely I could still argue its still the previous phase.

Btw. the card I played with with a bug, was a green creature with "if you play a spell return this creature to your hand" (oh.... I've been away from magic SOOO long)...

So when I play a spell, the game throws exception, and I click cancel, and continue with the creature in play.

OOOOH... Another thing I sorely miss... A log I can follow. The next card being played isn't flashed in the middle of the screen (feature request? Put the stack in the middle of the screen, with the images?) and I can go...oh, that's what happened to my creature. I sit there, clicking OK, OK, OK, oh... my critter is gone... lets look through the opponents graveyard... Oh... Swords to plowshares? Ok good to know.

[Reenen]

Hey, Reenen. (Had to look up what you're a developer of, DA looks cool)

DA unfortunately is written in Lazarus, and I found it extremely hard to implement networking. Also tiring and boring. I have a passion for UI, and DA has a pretty UI. Also it uses Apprentice as it's database, which is stupid as Apprentice isn't maintained for 15y or so.

I've toyed with redoing it all in python (or lua?) but I've been out of the magic scene since my brother (lvl 2 judge) left the region, and my own passion for magic mostly came from the gaping hole in terms of decent software to play it on. (Even Magic online, from what i've seen is... iffy)

1 Last thing I'd change... is the name. Daring Apprentice is an awesome name, but you want software to not hit sites selling the card when people search for the software (not so easy to hit google #1 hit).

[Incantus]

Seeing as how Incantus is implemented in python, I think python is a good way to go.

Also, it's pretty easy to make nice UIs (using pyglet - a nice wrapper around OpenGL) - viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4136&p=55793#p55740

[craygz]

No it's an issue with the UI not working nicely with my screen resolution. But Java UI is a PITA.

an issue that is fixed by resizing the frame once...

For 1, I can't untap mana, or 2, move back in phases. Obviously in competition terms, that makes sense, but when I'm playing a game, if I've tapped mana in my draw step, and haven't used it during it... just untap it for me, and tell me it's procedurally bad - ie. teach me, but don't penalise me. (Or give me a warning, then a Game Loss, then a DQ)...

The current system is perfect as it mirrors the RL game experience.
there are cases where you want to tap lands regardless of whether or not you are using the mana (Citadel of Pain, anyone?) - so you can't just let the game automatically untap the lands you didn't use.
Another case would be where you are floating mana and destroying / bouncing the mana sources afterwards, or using painlands - you can't untap that stuff at the end of turn without incurring some kind of rule abuse.
those are all part of the game experience - and there to learn from your mistakes.

if you don't want to waste mana by not paying attention, click on the card you want to play first and click the mana sources in response.

If I haven't done anything in the next phase, surely I could still argue its still the previous phase.

if you click on the next phase button (OK) it's like saying in a RL game "next phase" or "end of turn" - can't undo those either.

OOOOH... Another thing I sorely miss... A log I can follow. The next card being played isn't flashed in the middle of the screen (feature request? Put the stack in the middle of the screen, with the images?) and I can go...oh, that's what happened to my creature. I sit there, clicking OK, OK, OK, oh... my critter is gone... lets look through the opponents graveyard... Oh... Swords to plowshares? Ok good to know.

while not in the middle of the screen the cards played are displayed in the window on the left - the Swords even list their target there. Are we playing the same game? o.O

displaying the whole card in the middle of the screen isn't that useful as it would become difficult to precisely tell which part of the card effect is used, on which target etc. pp. and what about activated effects of permanents - showing that card again even though it's already in play? or not showing the effect at all? both bad ideas.

[Xitax]

I've harped a little on this before, but I sorta agree with him on two points.

1. A game log - I think every other game like this I've ever played has had one. It's more than just a convenience to be able to see a little back into game history.

2. Do something to draw my attention to the sorcery or instant my opponent played - it's waaayy too easy to click through it without noticing. As he said "What happened to my creature. *go look at computer's graveyard. Oh, I see." This is especially easy to do since there is quite a lot of clicking on that ok button to move the game along. You know, maybe flashing the card into the play area at the same time as it's put on the stack would be enough... I don't know! - I don't have the perfect answer, but I'm sure something good can be dreamed up.

Now enough with the harping, me! This is really nearly the best game I play on a regular basis. I wouldn't harp if I didn't care!

[Reenen]

an issue that is fixed by resizing the frame once...

So run the resize frame code once, after displaying the screen. ?

The current system is perfect as it mirrors the RL game experience.
there are cases where you want to tap lands regardless of whether or not you are using the mana (Citadel of Pain, anyone?) - so you can't just let the game automatically untap the lands you didn't use.

I read that the game would stop you with "timed" effects, even if you have that phase not "selected" for the OK button. So the game is pretty smart. It would know if you tapped the land for mana or not. But I guess there could be some sculduggery reasons for you to have your lands tapped during draw phase, but then you'd know the reason you're doing it.

Another case would be where you are floating mana and destroying / bouncing the mana sources afterwards, or using painlands - you can't untap that stuff at the end of turn without incurring some kind of rule abuse.
those are all part of the game experience - and there to learn from your mistakes.

You float your mana in your draw phase? Not a lot of land bounces are instant, but I guess... Though the "those are all part of the game experience" YES, and that's my problem! Why is it? It shouldn't be part of the game experience.

if you don't want to waste mana by not paying attention, click on the card you want to play first and click the mana sources in response.

Yes, I should.

If I haven't done anything in the next phase, surely I could still argue its still the previous phase.

if you click on the next

?? Where is the next button in RL? That's my point. (it's the OK button)

while not in the middle of the screen the cards played are displayed in the window on the left - the Swords even list their target there. Are we playing the same game? o.O

displaying the whole card in the middle of the screen isn't that useful as it would become difficult to precisely tell which part of the card effect is used, on which target etc. pp. and what about activated effects of permanents - showing that card again even though it's already in play? or not showing the effect at all? both bad ideas.

Erm... You have a log (should have a log), you have a card bigger than life you can write the effect on, you can draw arrows (or targets?) to targets... In terms of cards already in play, use a dotted line to show from where that effect is coming from. Also when it goes onto the stack, animate it so you can visibly see that the effect is coming from that card. Also you can animate cards from the hand to come from the "hand" (or the player)

[friarsol]

Reenen,
It sounds like you are much more knowledgeable about UI topics than any of the devs currently working on Forge. Unfortunately, no active work is being done to overhaul the UI at this time. If a proficient UI developer would like to do so, they will find welcoming arms.

It would be nice to have a game log, it would be nice to have a much better UI that wasn't ugly, clunky, and patchworked together. But we don't have that, but we can still build an engine behind it. Once we find someone to build a UI, or one of us break down and try to learn Swing (or whatever else Java has to offer in this area) it will be improved. But it seems you put a lot of requests into one big rant, that many of us who have been around for a while would love to see done.

As I said above, none of us have that particular skillset, or those that may have a touch of it feel their time is better spent working in different areas.

However, I don't think that phases need to be change from what they are doing now. I fear this would lead to abuse versus the AI since it could let you "forecast" if the AI would do something, and then back out and play your hand differently. If the interface could make it more apparent that the Stack is empty, it may alleviate some of your issues with tapping land not when you wanted.

I might be able to "unpay" some of the accidentally tapped land, but things like City of Brass or other cards that trigger in a similar circumstance wouldn't be able to be undone.

[Chris H.]

I agree with Sol. Over the last several years people have expressed a mutual strong desire to have an improved UI. We all want it, but most of us do not currently have a strong enough skill set to pull it off.

I gave Choppic some help with the constructed mode deck editor and was able to add a few features that improves this one area. Fnoed did a great job improving the quest mode UI. Snacko did most of the work found in the new battlefield GUI display.

I have been with this project since late 2008 and have watched as this project went from a very incomplete and buggy pre-alpha to this current state. I think that we are now out of alpha and into beta, but there is still much work to do.

Once the current team finishes the Ability Factory we may find that things start to slow down ... and this might lead to an artistic person or two stepping forward to help improve the UI.

We tried very hard to be supportive of the recent UI changes made by Fnoed and Choppic. We may have been able to work more closely with them if we had not been overwhelmed by the Ability Factory project.

[Reenen]

I cannot program in Java.

But http://www.miglayout.com/ seems awesome. I played with the demos, and it looks powerful and neat. I'll try to do a mock up of UI stuff, per screen, and make suggestions.

[Rob Cashwalker]

miglayout sounds familiar... {checks} Yep, it's already referenced in Forge.

I'm a native VB programmer, struggling to deal with UI elements from scratch... The eclipse UI builder can't read our existing code and the platform Rares used originally was Borland JBuilder, which is long-defunct.

The UI for the card game portion just showed up one day... Snacko hadn't discussed much of it on the forums. I'm not sure if we can draw an arrow from one panel to another.. Consider it lucky we were able to put the status icons and mana symbols.

Daring Apprentice is pretty much ONLY a UI. You were able to focus on making the card game look good. You probably don't have to program a single thing about how the cards work other than turning the picture sideways... Likely a bare minimum about the game (life, game zones and deck manipulation) and turn structure.

Forge's UI is functional, though utilitarian. However, we need code for all the cards work, code for how they interact, and code to make AI decisions about the cards.

When Rares stopped developing Forge, there were barely 700 cards. Most of them were hard-coded, other than basic creatures with simple keywords. What was worse, many cards with similar functionality had entire blocks of code duplicated, with the only difference being a couple numbers. When I began developing the project I didn't really know a lick of Java (and I'm still not really proficient at it) but I began the trend of coding dynamic card abilities. Through my keywords, I was able to provide for adding well over a 1000 cards. There are still many cards that require dedicated, specific code in order to operate. The current overall goal is to nearly eliminate the hard-coded cards.

Lately, I've been focusing on something some-what UI related, that being handling sets in Forge. It's not simple, as it has caused numerous issues with memory usage, picture folder structure, URLs, deck import/export, draft, and others I may not even be aware of yet.... The first thing I changed was the UI to handle loading the different pictures. Then I hacked the existing download UI to download the set pictures, which caused me to get a website to put the pictures. Then another UI change to enable the constructed deck editor to select cards from particular sets, and then save the choice with the deck file. Now I'm working on the draft to make the user select the draft format and block/set selection. And there's still so much more to go with adding something seemingly simple, like Sets...

Posting your suggestions/complaints here is OK for discussion, but I think it would benefit us more if you isolated them and posted them as issues or suggestions in the bug tracker on the google code page. That way we can focus on one at a time.