Feature requests

[pedro1973]

After playing and loosing all the time:( That's what i think that can improve the playing experience...





There should be icons indicating the phase where you're playing, because always looking left to see what phase are we playing is very tiring and make the game flow a bit slower. There could be also an icon showing the avatar of the players turn. Of course there could be an option so who don't like to have this icons here just could hide the and play as the game is now.

An important feature and a personal request, if possible, is to use the right mouse button to pass priority. This will improve gameplay and speed, so you don't have always to click the button to pass priority and pass priority wherever the mouse button is. I think you can use keys, but i prefer to play only using the mouse.

The icons of the hand, graveyard, remove zone, players battlefield and battle zone, should be bigger, 64x64 or 32x32 so you can use more expressive icons to the meaning. The icons for passing priority and undo should be configurable too, so they can be in style with the theme.

As for my anterior post you should have the possibility to use a sound whenever there is an entry in the stack, so we don't need to be always looking at the stack each stage.


That's all for now...

THX

[ubeefx]

This feature is probably most interesting when playing full screen on large monitors.
I prefer playing Magarena in a medium sized window.
I also designed the UI so that this would be possible.
So everything is always in the center of my screen.

[pedro1973]

Well, I've just tested the new limited version 1.13...

The right-mouse button is a great addition, but it should be usable anywhere and not just in the hand zone. Sometimes I'm in the battle zone activating an ability, or over the stack and i still have to press the action button:(

As for the sounds,they are a great addition too, but it needs more sounds options, like i mentioned before:

Click a button
play Instant
play Sorcery
Creature into play (summon)
Forest into play
Mountain into play
Swamp into play
Island into play
Plains into play
Draw card
Counter effect
Damage
Destroy
Discard
Enchant into play
Life loss
Regeneration
Sacrifice
Tap a card
Untap a card
End of turn
End of phase
Artifact into play

If you could do this is would be great:)

Then the experience will be similar to play a MTG official game, but now, with a good AI:)

The game misses 2 other important Things:

A tournament play, not just a single play as for now. This will be great if you can implement it. Playing against some player in a tournament mode would be great.

I know you intended Magarena to be a "casual", "fast" game to people play when they have a little time. But now, Magarena is the reference in MTG play with an AI, I've tested Wagic, Forge, Mage, and the AI sort of sucks. I know your life isn't just Magarena, but you could make from Magarena the MTG players dream come true. A MTG program with great AI. I think the worst part is done, just a few more tweaks and your "baby" could be perfect.

And for last, keeping record of all the games you won and all the games you lost. Each time you start Magarena looks like you never played it, except if you load a game, because there is no record what you've done before.

I would like to see the total number of games I've played in Magarena and the number of games lost an won. This is an incentive so we keep coming back and play to improve our global performance.

Another little thing...

When you chose to play 3, 5, 7... games should it be a best of 3, 5, or 7 games. If i chose to play 5 games for example and i won the first 3 games, whats the point to play the other 2 missing games. In the worse possibility i will win for 3-2. I think it was better to turn this games to a best of X games or create this possibility.


I think that's all, for now:)

THX

[ubeefx]

Thanks pedro1973, I appreciate your feature requests to make the game experience better.

About the right mouse, I tried it and it indeed works well and you are right it should be everywhere.
But I still need to examine how to do that, so only hand for now.

I tried to keep the sound effects to a functional minimum. Less is sometimes more.
I just want to avoid hearing dozens of sound effects together.
But indeed maybe there could be some other ones.

The idea is to win as many games as possible, not just the best of. Could be made selectable.

There used to be a tournament in the earlier life of Magarena.
But then you had to play with same deck a much longer time, so I went for a duel.

About the statistics, that was already requested.
It is indeed not very hard to do but I do not care much about that.

About being the reference for MTG, well, that is of course very cool to hear, but it is NOT rule compliant.
And that was also done to get a better AI experience, tradeoffs as usual.

[pedro1973]

If its possible to bring back the tournament option, if you already have made it in the past, it would be cool.

At least I'm very interested in that.

THX again:)

[Milod]

hi i would like to see

muligans
max hand size of 7
search library efect cards
unlimited deck size
deck editor

and can u explain me in short why plainswalkers are not alowed in?
has it to with reprograming the ai source code?
and is it even possible to have planewalkers in this game? planeswalkers are wat make the game fun

thnx for your great work for keeping this magerena up

[ubeefx]

I can give some background about the Planeswalkers.
I never played with them yet, but I suppose they can be fun.

Why are they not in?
1. Magarena, for me, was about limited gameplay, and there they play a less significant role than in constructed.
2. There are only few of them and they add a lot of complexity, so cost to benefit ratio is high.

What complexity do they add?
1. They require additional basic engine support : card type, legendary status, loyalty, etc.
2. They have more than 2 abilities, the UI only allows two for the moment.
3. They require changes to the targeting code.
4. They have a complex set of abilities, sometimes needing extra support in the engine which is not always there (for instance library manipulation).
5. They require some serious changes to the combat code, which is already the speed killer in the AI. Also this requires additional UI support.

First three require several smaller changes. Fourth makes adding them a lot more work.
Last would require some serious thinking in how to limit the combat options the best way in the combat option builders.

Hope that answers your question, but they are not impossible to add, it is all about choices.
Melvin might think otherwise.

[madmarcel]

Working on a deck editor at the moment, will put up a screenshot sometime soon.

Ran into the 'two activated abilities per permanent' limit the other day, when I implemented
Thornling and Morphling . So I've got code for those, but I have to rejig the UI first.
(The AI can use the cards and all the abilities though, and very effectively I might add)

[ubeefx]

Working on a deck editor at the moment, will put up a screenshot sometime soon.

A lot of people will like that feature.
I personally do not care a lot about deck building, hence the random decks.
But I guess for other people it is an important aspect of the game.

[madmarcel]

It will certainly make the software more 'accessible'.
Runs as a separate app at the moment, using the magarena.jar file.

[melvin]

hi i would like to see
muligans
max hand size of 7
search library efect cards
unlimited deck size
deck editor

ubeefx has tackled the issue of planeswalkers and I agree with all of his points. One of the main principles that we use to determine what features to include is whether the AI can make use of it effectively. A single player game like Magarena would not be challenging/fun if the human player has too much of an advantage over the AI and can easily win many games.

Mulligan can be added to make Magarena closer to MTG rules but currently I am thinking of tacking the issue of "luck" in a way that is possible because this is a computer game. We already have a smart shuffle algorithm that should alleviate the need for mulligans but sometimes the card order can still be rather bad if you are unlucky. Rather than emulating MTG directly, I think it is more interesting to seek alternative solutions.

Hand size is unlimited to make it easier for the AI as the number of way to discard cards can grow very fast. However, this does make card drawing a lot more powerful. I think we should have this, but it is pending on adding fast discard evaluation to the AI.

search library efect cards same as for hand size. I think we should add this if we can get the AI to do something intelligent here without taking a lot of time.

unlimited deck size is already possible with custom decks. For generated decks, I think madmarcel has something in the works that can generate larger decks to support formats that have more than 40 cards.

thnx for your great work for keeping this magerena up

Thanks for your support and suggestions.

[melvin]

It will certainly make the software more 'accessible'.
Runs as a separate app at the moment, using the magarena.jar file.

I like the idea of a separate program for deck editor

[Nilzark]

Please add an option to turn OFF card highlighting.

This is one thing I do not like about electronic Magic games because it just points me to the card(s) that should/can be played.

I want to be able to make mistakes and take the time to read the cards.

Thank you and I love Magarena regardless.

~Nilzark

[Huggybaby]

Interesting request.

In the meantime, you can edit theme.properties:

color_choice=00,00,00,00
color_combat_choice=00,00,00,00

And those selection colors will be invisible.

[Nilzark]

@Huggybaby

That tip for turning off highlighting worked well. Is there a way to turn off the Green and Red borders on usable cards?

~Nilzark