Commiting to svn & QuestMode discussion

[Max mtg]

Hi, I've picked just for test an issue #103 from mantis. http://www.cardforge.org/bugz/view.php?id=103

I've got a resolution of it, but have no idea what to do in order to submit the result I have achieved.
Please give me some instructions.

[Chris H.]

Go to your User Control Panel and click on Usergroups. Select Developers - Forge and then Select Join selected and click the Submit button.

I think that this is the way to gain access to the SVN. Welcome aboard.

[Braids]

Go to your User Control Panel and click on Usergroups. Select Developers - Forge and then Select Join selected and click the Submit button.

I think that this is the way to gain access to the SVN. Welcome aboard.

you didn't warn Max mtg about the initiation rites. . .

[Max mtg]

Go to your User Control Panel and click on Usergroups. Select Developers - Forge and then Select Join selected and click the Submit button.

I think that this is the way to gain access to the SVN. Welcome aboard.

Many thanks.

[Chris H.]

My username and password from CCGH don't work. It could be due to updates being delayed or maybe because there is a space in the username (and svn probably restricts spaces from usernames)

I'll try again in a while.

By the way, what are the hottest topic that need development in the project?

As for me, I decided to do some coding because I've spent a whole day in quest mode (treat this as "the quest mode is interesting and very addictive") and hated the ugly UI while playing - that is being unable to sort and filter cards by CMC, edition and type (when i uncheck 'artifact' the 'artifact creatures' are hidden too) and inability to choose a reward from the quest - so that I receive a lot of old and unfamiliar cards and cannot build a good deck. Thus, I would love to improve the quest mode first of all, and after then... well, my dream is to see forge playable via network, so that WotC stops pumping $10 to $25 from me for every game against live people.

But, returning to the original question, I'd love to hear your opinion - what are the parts of forge that need improvement most of all?

`
I am moving this content to the forum since other people might have some input to add to this discussion.

My username also has a space character in it so I do not think that is preventing you from committing. It may take some additional time before your acceptance to the dev team reaches the sw responsible for the SVN.

Then again, I may have made a mistake when I added you and Hellfish to the list of devs this morning. I was still working on my first cup of coffee.


Fnoed improved the UI for quest mode some time ago. But there is still room for improvements. Rob is working with Marc to improve the New Game window. You should check out there work.

The deck editor code for quest mode is located in a different class than the deck editor code for constructed mode. It would be great if someone had the time, ability and interest to combine the deck editors into a single class.

I helped Choppic make a few improvements to the constructed mode deck editor last year. Rob made an adjustment in this class that fixes the filtering problem but I do not think that it made it's way over to the quest mode deck editor.

Sloth, Corwin and I have slowly made improvements to the AI decks that are a part of the quest mode over the last year or so. This is also a work in progress.

[friarsol]

Combining the Deck Editor from the Deck Editor used by Constructed Mode would be extremely handy, it probably would fix a lot of the issues you mentioned above.

I think getting unfamiliar cards is the best part about playing Quest Mode. Don't be afraid to build a 40 card deck. Also, in the first 10 or so games of Quest Mode the cardshop has a ton of cards available to aid in building a quality deck earlier.

[Chris H.]

Also, in the first 10 or so games of Quest Mode the cardshop has a ton of cards available to aid in building a quality deck earlier.

`
And you can sell some of your un-needed cards in the cards shop. This should give you enough credits to go to the bazaar and buy yourself a plant wall and one of the pets.

You won't have enough credits to fully train both of these but having them at the start of a quest can make a big difference.

[Max mtg]

Combining the Quest Deck Editor from the Deck Editor used by Constructed Mode would be extremely handy, it probably would fix a lot of the issues you mentioned above.

I think getting unfamiliar cards is the best part about playing Quest Mode. Don't be afraid to build a 40 card deck. Also, in the first 10 or so games of Quest Mode the cardshop has a ton of cards available to aid in building a quality deck earlier.

I'll think about combining them - mostly depends whether I'll be able to handle it.

Look, the mechanics of cards from older sets are different. Cards from the same block help each other, thus a T2 starting cardpool is better to start with, than just a random pile of cards from across all editions, because they grant very different effects. It is hard to them combine into a deck able to withstand the great precons the AI is playing. What is the chance to get a Mox Ruby from Cardshop or a prize booster? Yet, AI freely plays them at starting with hard level.

I don't ming receiveing unfamiliar cards, but I want to be able to arrange the thousand cards I'm given after 40 games... I also want to build a decent deck, preferrably without using the bug which allows the player to add multiple instances of a card, while he owns only one.

[Max mtg]

Also, in the first 10 or so games of Quest Mode the cardshop has a ton of cards available to aid in building a quality deck earlier.

`
And you can sell some of your un-needed cards in the cards shop. This should give you enough credits to go to the bazaar and buy yourself a plant wall and one of the pets.

You won't have enough credits to fully train both of these but having them at the start of a quest can make a big difference.

This reduces player's chance to switch to a different color later.
For instance, I got Tempered Steel in starting boosters and decided to build an artifact deck around it, so I sell most colored cards at the shop. After 30 games I'm sick and tired of that myrs, but I cannot switch to a different strategy because the cardpool has no appropriate cards. Even if I had a ton of money there is no way to switch to a different colored deck - because booster rewards is random as well as cardshop contents. In reallife one would just buy the singles he needs... but here it is totally impossible. So one has to play continously through the games to gather some... for instance red cards. Yet he is strongly advised to win most of the times to avoid credits loss.

[Braids]

. . . By the way, what are the hottest topic that need development in the project? . . . But, returning to the original question, I'd love to hear your opinion - what are the parts of forge that need improvement most of all?

Here are the unassigned issues in our Mantis issue tracker, sorted first by severity, then priority.

Here are the unassigned feature requests in Mantis, sorted by priority.

As for me, I decided to do some coding because I've spent a whole day in quest mode (treat this as "the quest mode is interesting and very addictive") and hated the ugly UI while playing - that is being unable to sort and filter cards by CMC, edition and type (when i uncheck 'artifact' the 'artifact creatures' are hidden too) and inability to choose a reward from the quest - so that I receive a lot of old and unfamiliar cards and cannot build a good deck. Thus, I would love to improve the quest mode first of all, and after then... well, my dream is to see forge playable via network, so that WotC stops pumping $10 to $25 from me for every game against live people.

could you please search Mantis to see if any of these features have been requested? if they have not, could you please report them? at least before taking one on.

as for Forge being playable human to human, that would take considerable time. one of the first things that needs to happen is the separation of general logic from the user interface. i started out wanting to code a minimax AI for Forge, but there is a lot of prep work needed for that. for one thing, we need the game state segregated from the match, quest, and application models and made easily compared and duplicated. i think you'll find even more prep work necessary for human to human games.

. . . Fnoed improved the UI for quest mode some time ago. But there is still room for improvements. Rob is working with Marc to improve the New Game window. You should check out there work.

there are quite a number of people involved with GUI improvements. i do not know at what point adding more people would start to make things more difficult. there is no harm in asking. the topic for that is Know any UI Developers? (Bounty Inside) .

The deck editor code for quest mode is located in a different class than the deck editor code for constructed mode. It would be great if someone had the time, ability and interest to combine the deck editors into a single class.
. . .

that is issue 51. please familiarize yourself with the Java-Yield package and its Generator instances. Forge continues to use excessive heap memory allocations, and these utilities curb that. please also keep issue 134 in mind. they are marked as relatives of each other in Mantis, in case you forget one of them.

edit: p.s. i have found even the easy quest mode challenging. i have yet to win the first game. i know you get lots of cards even if you lose, but it is still uncomfortable.

[Chris H.]

Forge only had about 1200 to 1500 cards when quest mode was first released. Things were different back then. Sol added in the T2 starting card pool feature recently and Rob added in the card set info recently also.

We are starting to get to the point where with almost 9000 cards implemented and having most sets at 75% or better ... well things are changing. Some ideas have been suggested over the last six months or so. Would it be possible to give people a choice of several different sets to start with?

Combining the two decks editors would be a start. I have been working with Sloth and Corwin for some time trying to improve the opponent decks.

What sort of changes would you like to make? And what sort of changes would you be capable of making? Play balance can be a tricky issue. Quest mode is fun to play and we all enjoy it ... granted, improvemnts to the quest mode can be a good thing.

[Rob Cashwalker]

my dream is to see forge playable via network, so that WotC stops pumping $10 to $25 from me for every game against live people.

Forge will NEVER be a human vs human app. I don't play Magic Online, because I refuse to pay full retail price for virtual cards. I do play a lot of cardboard and even pay MSRP at Target or Walmart to pick up packs sometimes.

Some of our users hadn't played Magic in a LONG time (probably didn't even think about Magic) until they discovered Forge.. they may not currently buy product, so there's no real loss to Wizards.

If folks use Forge to avoid buying product (cardboard or virtual) then there's a real measurable financial loss. It wasn't until Duels of the Planeswalker that Wizards had a somewhat financially viable AI-based product, with human vs human functionality.

There are other free apps that do human vs human... just about all of them, actually.

[Max mtg]

Forge will NEVER be a human vs human app.

Why? The code can be improved enoght to allow this kind of gameplay... it's a matter of efforts and developers' skills working on this project.
The wizards - they won't be happy, but who cares? They won't be able to persecute developers. That are players who use their copyrighted content, they are numberless and annonymous, they are legion.

If folks use Forge to avoid buying product (cardboard or virtual) then there's a real measurable financial loss. It wasn't until Duels of the Planeswalker that Wizards had a somewhat financially viable AI-based product, with human vs human functionality.

How can you be sure? Maybe that folks would not buy those cards anyway for not having that much money or just being greedy or saving for something less virtual and more permanent... like a car?
Why do you care about wizards' profits and losses?

DotP has uncomfortable deck building UI and a limited set of decks, 2012 being even worse than the 2010 edition, it also lacks cards collection, (as well as experience, achievements and so on...) - it is not a competitor niether to Forge, nor MTGO.

What sort of changes would you like to make? And what sort of changes would you be capable of making? Play balance can be a tricky issue. Quest mode is fun to play and we all enjoy it ... granted, improvemnts to the quest mode can be a good thing

QuestMode first of all - better collection management, more reasonable rewards (ability to choose the prize booster edition or block at least) involving both UI and logics, while sticking to the MVC pattern to keep code like quest.addRares(10) away from Gui_WinLose classes. I would also love to make cards from different editions distinguishable, be stored as different cards, to make UNH-Plains a reward more rare than common lands from core sets.
I don't like booster generation rules and fantasy-quest-store contents being hardcoded for now - would like to store these settings in XMLs... that is while I've looked through quite a little part of code.

Later switch to duel UI, help separating logics from UI, develop a protocol so that two forge clients can communicate to each other directly or via a trusted "judge" forge-server.

That is a big plan and I doubt if I'll be able to complete everything in practice, however these are my aspirations.

[Hellfish]

Forge will NEVER be a human vs human app.

Why? The code can be improved enoght to allow this kind of gameplay... it's a matter of efforts and developers' skills working on this project.
The wizards - they won't be happy, but who cares? They won't be able to persecute developers.

They can, and in fact must do so periodically, in order to protect their trademark.You may not have noticed the recent move from google code svn->gitorious GIT->Slightlymagic svn. That was because of cease & desist letters from WOTC, the second time they have been sent, I believe.

they are numberless and annonymous, they are legion.

Please don't do that.

If folks use Forge to avoid buying product (cardboard or virtual) then there's a real measurable financial loss. It wasn't until Duels of the Planeswalker that Wizards had a somewhat financially viable AI-based product, with human vs human functionality.

How can you be sure? Maybe that folks would not buy those cards anyway for not having that much money or just being greedy or saving for something less virtual and more permanent... like a car?
Why do you care about wizards' profits and losses?

Because when Forge starts to noticeably impact WOTC's profits (and even before that, see my first quote reply) they are within their full legal right to bring the proverbial hammer down, HARD.

Welp, I started writing this post with the intention of realism rather than pessimism.. Sorry about that.

[Chris H.]

QuestMode first of all - better collection management, more reasonable rewards (ability to choose the prize booster edition or block at least) involving both UI and logics, while sticking to the MVC pattern to keep code like quest.addRares(10) away from Gui_WinLose classes. I would also love to make cards from different editions distinguishable, be stored as different cards, to make UNH-Plains a reward more rare than common lands from core sets.

I don't like booster generation rules and fantasy-quest-store contents being hardcoded for now - would like to store these settings in XMLs... that is while I've looked through quite a little part of code.

`
We have had a wee bit of discussion in the recent past about allowing the player to select not just T2 but various sets at the start of a quest. Some thought was also given to having some sort of a starter card pool(s) available that may not be set specific but theme specific.

I think that is was Sol who came up with the idea that players could buy these groups of starting card pools with some amount of credits.

You have a nice set of goals for yourself. Even if you can only accomplish a couple of them before running out of steam Forge will have improved.